PROTEST OVER SCHOOL STANDARDS IS TOO LATE

A group of Missouri school superintendents recently criticized the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Ordinarily, any uprising of local school officials against an arrogant, arbitrary and unaccountable bunch of state education bureaucrats would be welcome indeed. Someone, somewhere needs to take these educrats down to size and begin the needed process of curbing and radically reforming a bloated state education bureaucracy.

Upon first hearing of the superintendents' complaints about their treatment at the hands of this arrogant bureaucracy, one is tempted to cheer them on. And then you confront exactly what these superintendents are saying. At issue is the Missouri School Improvement Program and how it will affect school districts with heavy percentages of students from poorer homes. State MSIP reviews will be based on state performance standards that are vague and of dubious validity for measuring anything.

Michael Greene, superintendent at Winona in economically distressed Shannon County, offers this argument: "National and state data show that ... children from affluent and middle-class districts have better attendance, better test scores, lower drop-out rates, higher graduation rates, higher ACT scores and higher numbers of students who attend college." Greene says of his superintendents' group, "This has caused them to approach the state department of education with the idea that this fundamental fact should be acknowledged and broader consideration given when conducting state MSIP reviews. The controversy concerns the validity not of applying the same standards to all students but of applying the same standards to all students under the same time frame, without regard to the background of students in each district." In other words, Greene's group seems to be saying it needs more time students to meet the new standards.

The group began principally among poor districts in Southeast and Southern Missouri but now claims dozens of other superintendents across the state. Because of the way the superintendents have cast their argument, they have allowed DESE commissioner Bob Bartman to position himself in the role of defender of objective standards against those who would dumb down the schools.

Many of these superintendents are the same ones who filed the suit a few years ago that resulted in a judge's ruling that the state's foundation formula was unconstitutional. This ruling formed the pretext for passage of the Outstanding Schools Act of 1993. It is this law that set in motion the process these same superintendents now find objectionable. Most of them were silent during the process of drafting the so-called standards on which they will be judged. Now they object to a state bureaucracy wielding the immeasurably increased power handed it by the very process begun by these poor districts. Strange indeed.

ACADEMY GIVES STUDENTS A LOOK AT CAREER OPTIONS

The Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School is sponsoring its first Summer Academy of Engineering and Industrial Technology this year. The academy, which ended Friday, allows high-school students to examine careers that relate to engineering and industry.

Sixteen students from four area schools visited industries, construction sites and Southeast Missouri State University's Industrial Technology Center. They also performed laboratory and classroom experiments and shadowed professionals within these fields.

Jerry Witvoet of Cape Central High School is director of this year's academy. Witvoet says he hopes "the students come away with a lot more knowledge and experience of industrial careers and see more relevance in their high school courses that apply to the industrial setting."

Establishment of this academy is a positive step toward preparing youngsters for the exciting opportunities that lie ahead. Here's hoping that the academy can be expanded in future years to open doors to many more bright and capable youngsters.