KINDER'S COMMENTARY: A+ SHOULD HAVE SOME REDEEMING FEATURES, BUT...

So we're going to line up our 13- and 14-year-olds and, asking them to choose a general field of endeavor for the rest of their lives, place them on something called "career pathways."

Welcome to the A-Plus Schools program -- $218,000 worth of A-Plus Schools, mostly courtesy of a Senate Bill 380 grant to the Cape Girardeau school district from the friendly folks in my growing fan club over at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

For all I know, there are many laudable features to the A-Plus Schools effort. Many, no doubt, that will be effectively and creatively implemented by the kind of hardworking, sincere, dedicated teachers and administrators who spoke to the tiny group that turned out for last Thursday night's meeting on A-Plus Schools. (Looking around the huge auditorium, I was reminded of the quip by aging comedian George Gobel. Nearing the end of his career 20 years ago, he showed up for one last St. Louis gig at the old Kiel Auditorium. Surveying the tiny crowd, a bittersweet Gobel, his best career days a fading memory, quipped, "Did you all come in one car?")

Let us name, right here and now, a few of these fine and experienced teachers, counselors and administrators who gave up an evening to speak to our little clutch of school district patrons: Sheryl Dunavan, Helen Gibbar, Jerry Witvoet, Dr. Daniel Tallent, Bill Biggerstaff, Dr. Lannie Barnes, Dr. Harold Tilley, L.A. Strattman, M. David Papendick and Gerald Richards, whom I, rounding out a brutal, 14-hour day, dumbly and mistakenly called Gerald Johnson (apologies to both!). We're lucky to have them in our school system, and I know that none of them do it for the bucks. Without exception, impressive educators all.

Any program with a name as pretentious as A-Plus Schools, though, certainly should have some redeeming, perhaps even sterling, features. For my part I'm even prepared to -- as the lawyers say -- stipulate that such is the case.

And still I am puzzled. We're not, after all, discussing a change in the school lunch menu, say, from pizza to shepherd's pie. Consider: Cape Girardeau schools are among the first three dozen in Missouri to receive a six-figure state grant from SB 380 funds. Purpose: to achieve, as an exultant, now-retired administrator enthused last year, "a complete overhaul of the curriculum" of our local schools. Beyond that initial press release, there is essentially no information released to the public. For a year.

After some questions began to be asked, and asked again and again, a meeting is finally scheduled to explain what's going on. And what we learn is that they're planning to have our 8th graders pick a career path.

Is this what we want? Beats me. It may well be. For all I know, this may be just exactly where we want to go. For my part, though, I'll embrace the remark of a school board member from a nearby district with whom I discussed this notion. He voiced a skeptical attitude about fitting 8th graders into a career path before blurting out, "Shoot, I have a son who's 21-year-old junior in college who doesn't know what he wants to do!"

Still, even if this is the wave of the future, wouldn't you think our school district leadership would put out more information for public consumption -- before a year had passed -- on a change of this magnitude, this "complete overhaul in our curriculum?"

By the way, what is the guiding vision at work here?

Next: How the A-Plus Schools program fits into Hillary Rodham Clinton's grand national vision to reshape American schools, work force and society of the 21st century.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.