All children have the same opportunities regardless of poverty or not in the public school system right now. The bad thing that I see in our system, and I am not sure if it is just Ohio Valley Local or everywhere is the labeling of kids with IEP's which I feel teaches them to be disabled and want something for nothing. That is NOT what a school system should be. We need to be educating and preparing kids for college which is so highly preached and is almost a joke. We pay thousands of dollars to attend school to go to class and be told to write a paper of so many words or pages. Now this is okay if you are going to be a journalist, but would hands on not make people learn more and more accurately? Back to our k-12 public schools, the typical children are getting lost in the shuffle while all personnel focus on getting IEP's. STOP wanting our schools to be like this and let's teach and not to a stupid standardized test. We all know that some children are better at one thing than another so let's focus on their strong points instead of trying to promote that they are weak in something. And we need to do something with this NO Child Left Behind thing. That is horrible to do to children. We set them up to become failures by moving them on to something that they are not ready for. To compare would be like me putting you in a sand pit and giving you a teaspoon to shovel yourself out with, while at the same time I put in shovelsful of sand, what is going to happen? You will be buried quicker than you will get out which is exactly what happens to these kids.They may as well learn in life that you will have times that you are mad, not as good at something, embarassed by something, that one child does better, and most of all that life is not the same for everyone. But they do need to be taught that if you set goals and have the desire to achieve them you CAN do so.We play this stupid pity party game and have sympathy for all and hold no one accountable which is horrible because they learn nothing. Our systems go hand in hand with it and do nothing to change it.We need to start with revamping our school programs, then move on to our welfare and disability programs. I am sure there are people out there who would have the backbone to do what is needed. Find that person and let's make things be better.Our workforces out there show the amount of knowledge that has been given, and it desperately needs to change. We have taught that you only have to do things half-assed to get by.

Posted by: Trina Sparks (Seaman, OH) on July 14, 2010 10:33AM