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Highlands Today

Education A Concern

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Jim Rahenkamp

Published: September 4, 2008

Justifiably, our greatest local expense and concern is the education of our children.

We rejoice with successes and are concerned about failures. The problem always has been and always will be in diagnosing failure causes.

Subjectively, I will list the causes and affix a percentage value to each cause: Too much or too little funding, 5 percent; student lacks native ability, 8 percent; insufficient effort by the student, 25 percent; poor teaching, 15 percent; poor parenting, 27 percent and grade inflation, 20 percent.

Grade inflation is much more serious than most people are aware. When a student fails the standardized test on a subject but is awarded an "A" or a "B" by a teacher in the same subject, there is little incentive for the student to work harder or for the parent to be concerned.

Jim Rahenkamp
Avon Park

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