No matter what the final APS calendar looks like, one thing never changes.

APS has published the school calendar for school year 2015-2016, link.  Ever notice that first semester finals are always the week before the winter break and not the week after?

Charles "ched" MacQuigg
APS School Board Dist 4

For whatever other reason first semester always ends before the winter break, finals are taken before the break because if the same tests were given to the same students when they came back two or three weeks later, their test scores would be lower, significantly lower.

It speaks to the transience of most "learning" and by logical extension the ridiculousness of trying to make children learn and be tested in unison over the very same material on the very same day for twelve years.

Individual lifelong learners created at the earliest opportunity.

Which would you rather;

• try to form thinking and learning "choirs" of  30 or more individual students who by their very nature resist standardization,

or

• enable students to learn out of control, under close supervision?

Worthy of civil discourse imho.




photo Mark Bralley