To the Editor,
I am concerned with the level of vitriol that I have observed in
the Mount Holly community over the upcoming May 30th vote on the future of our
schools. There are rational arguments to be made for each choice and we should
respect each other’s opinions. I have complete confidence that the teachers at
Mill River and Black River are equally passionate and committed educators who
will do anything to help their students achieve their goals.
However, I am deeply disturbed by the lack of recognition and
empathy for the dedicated people in our community who are devastated by the
prospect of losing their jobs and their students, and for the young adults who
may be losing their school. I understand that change may need to happen and
that a school may need to close but please, let us not celebrate this as if we
had just won the “big game”. To do this diminishes all of us and is
disrespectful to those who have focused their careers on helping our children.
There is one other issue that I find deeply disturbing; the
“informational” flier, Educational and Cost Comparisons of Area Schools. This
has been circulated and quoted at meetings and in letters to various outlets.
As it is unattributed, I am unclear about who the authors are but I can say
that they are either extremely naive or intentionally disingenuous,
cherry-picking only the information that supports their position. The data used
does not consider all the different variables that affect both reliability and
validity. Some considerations should have been given to sample size; were these
random samples, are there demographic breakdowns examining poverty, gender,
etc.?
I encourage you to go to the primary sites for this data.
On The Niche site you will find that The Black River students
had a higher rating on Reading than the Mill River students (57% to 52%) even
though it had a much higher poverty count (52% to 35%). Why did the authors
chose to leave this fact out? The highly discussed Average SAT score for Black
River relied on self-reporting and had a sample size of only 7. There can be no
statistical comparisons based on these numbers yet again the authors chose to
use them. Finally on the VTDIGGER site the authors chose to highlight that Mill
River’s 11th grade math students scored the second highest in Rutland County,
yet inexplicably the authors failed to inform us that the same cohort had the
second lowest scores in Rutland County on the English Language Arts exam. I
point this out not to denigrate any school but simply to point out the seemingly
intentional misuse of data. I firmly believe that both schools are making
strong progress helping each student succeed. In our small schools, each data
point is not merely a statistic; it is a young adult in our town with his/her
own set of aspirations and needs. Students in poverty do best when classes are
small and adult interactions are rich. I do not pretend to know the exact
class-size parameters that are the most effective for our populations but
please keep our at-risk populations in mind when you vote and please verify the
information that folks share with you.
Thank you,
Dan Connor
Mount Holly
Excellent commentary.
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