Letter: Too much pressure on schools
This is a first grade classroom at the end of the day Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2011. Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas
Regarding the story about Glen Cove schoolteachers who were fined for helping students to cheat ["Educators must pay," News, July 31], why did these teachers risk their careers and reputations to help these students?
The problem is that state and federal education officials are treating our children like numbers.
Our children should take tests written by their teachers, covering what was taught in class. Our children do not need a distant state bureaucratic Gestapo educational department, but a caring concerned teacher.
Newsday needs to seriously investigate the state Education Department and the politics within. Each school district needs a staff to work to educate children, not some political authority sitting at a desk in Albany. We want our children educated by teachers who they can see, talk with and interact with.
No one is condoning cheating, but the question -- why? -- has not been adequately addressed.
Thomas Berger, East Patchogue
