Editorial
Testing your knowledge
You have to be willing to respect people who are willing to stand

up and put their knowledge to the test.

Lynn Frieberg Schuetter did this in one of the more fun and public ways as she stood up on the Jeopardy stage answering questions on a variety of subjects. Schuetter, who can't announce how she did until the show airs on Friday, Sept. 29, had the courage to give it a shot. No matter how she did she knew it was going to be aired on national television.

Teachers are also on stage every day of every week answering questions on a variety of subjects-because that is what students' brains come up with.

These teachers are being formally judged this week as the Department of Education releases the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) results and the Adequate Yearly Progress reports for local school districts.

Ashburnham-Westminster Regional Schools' Superintendent Michael Zapantis discussed the results of these assessments with the school committee at their most recent meeting. (See page 6 for the story).

The district meets all of the goals except in the area of special education, where students gained ground but not enough to meet the state's pre-set goal. This means the district needs to work harder in getting this subgroup of students to improve fast enough.

There seems to be a flaw with this theory though.

Isn't special education designed to educate the student in need to the best of that student's ability and not to force them to keep up with their classmates on a level that they can't. This is not to say a student with a mild learning disability, or one who has to work harder to remember the different between a verb and an adverb or the formula for the perimeter for a pentagon shouldn't have to take the same MCAS as every one else.

But to test a student's learning, a teacher's teaching and a school district's commitment to education based on a test that is not geared for those in need of special education does not seem to be in the best education for anyone.

Public school education should be a top priority for each and every community and for the nation as a whole, which is why Ashburnham-Westminster should be commended for the strides it has made in MCAS results.

Scores for the district improved by a number of points in the math MCAS, showing that the recent focus on that curriculum has succeeded. Now, hopefully the trend can continue and can spread to the English/Language Arts program, which is the next focus of the district's curriculum review.