I drew some conclusions from it that were a little different from the ones you drew. (Surprise! ;) ) And I am no fan of activist school boards, as you know.

From the article:
[T]eachers and administrators from across the division took to the podium in a concentrated effort to dissuade the board from implementing a policy change that educators said could be detrimental to the students' education.

Hmm. Why is the school board doing this? What are the schools' test scores like? What is their dropout rate? What is the rate at which their graduates pursue higher education? At what rate do their graduates complete higher education programs to which they gain admission? None of these questions are even addressed in the article. If the students aren't receiving a good education to start with, would change really be detrimental? Or is change itself considered the evil thing?

If a primary-school kid can pass language arts, which includes composition, analysis, and reading, but hasn't "passed" reading, that says more about the reading curriculum than it does about the kid's ability to read. How can you truly pass the former without adequate mastery of the latter? What is wrong with this picture?

From the article:
Also under the proposal, middle school students would need only pass three of four core academic areas to be promoted and each student would earn a verified credit for passing the applicable end-of-course state Standards of Learning tests.

I don't think reading should be eliminated from the curriculum, but I also don't think a kid at the middle school level should be forced to repeat 6th grade science, 6th grade math and 6th grade social studies, if those courses were passed, because that kid didn't pass 6th grade reading.

The fix here is obvious: Repeat the course, not the grade. It's perfectly possible to do this at the middle school level and above.

From the article:
Maniego said that during their studies, the curriculum committee found an "enormous" amount of failures and that the school division "has not been able to keep those numbers down because we have not met the needs of our students."
"We have failed kids two and three times in the same grade," Maniego said. One such case she pointed out was that of a 9-year-old in the first grade. "That child can't afford to fail again."

There is obviously more wrong in this school district than merely an activist school board. Numerous repeat failures in the same grade indicate that a change in teaching methods, more extensive student evaluations, and a broader range of alternative educational environments may all be called for. We all laughed at Jethro Bodine, but I bet that 9-year-old isn't laughing.

And I'm sorry, you don't flunk a Kindergartener. Kindergarten is about social development. We have tooooooo much emphasis on academics among the very young. So what if she can't write her whole alphabet? She's 6. She'll learn, with sufficient adult attention. The whole objective of Kindergarten is to introduce a child to group situations in a learning environment. Not all families can afford preschool; for those children, Kindergarten is the first experience of this type that they have. "You're too dumb to be here" is an inappropriate outcome for that age.

A pre-K screening program is a far better way to deal with "Kindergarten failure". If a child is truly too immature for school, a screening will inform the parents that the child would benefit from a year's delay in enrollment. A child's entry into school is then based on assessment of fine and gross motor skills rather than grandma's insistence that the child start school. It's also a dandy way to diagnose undetected vision and hearing problems, which adversely affect school performance. This program's prevention benefits are breathtaking. But it would, of course, take money.

Also from the article:
William Presley has five children in the Petersburg school system and said one is getting ready to graduate from high school when she probably shouldn't be, all the more reason why he said the standards are already too low.
"I know she can't do math but she's graduating anyway," Presley said. "Maybe a community college might be able to do what you couldn't."

OK, I see a couple of problems here.

First, the teachers practiced what is known as "social promotion", because their current system contains the Jethro Bodine Syndrome -- flunk one part, flunk it all -- resulting in no specific math remediation. A student repeats the whole grade until he outgrows the desks. Simply requiring a student to master the problem subject would short-circuit this practice, but it would require a summer school program, and the accompanying expenditures. I wonder to what extent the district's voters are willing to support that.

Second, parents have the right to insist that a child repeat a grade if they believe that the child would benefit from retention. Parents are also legally able to insist that a child receive educational evaluations and appropriate instruction, for which the school district will have to find the money. We have here a father of a 12th grader who states that he knows his daughter doesn't understand the math. Where has he been for the last 12 years? You're right to point to parental involvement as a key ingredient in good education. I wouldn't call this a good example of that.

This dad says the standards are already too low. So why is he opposing changes to a delivery system that obviously doesn't work?

Schools can only allow a kid to stay in school until the kid is 21. Then he's out no matter what. What I'm seeing here is not an attempt to eliminate reading from the curriculum. I see an attempt, if a hamfisted one, to fix a school system so that the students' weaknesses can be addressed in a more specific fashion than keeping a kid in school until he can buy his own keg.

Regards--
Mary Anne