My Response to an Indianapolis Star Editorial published 5 May 2006

Titled:  We can’t afford not to pay for full-day k

We can’t afford Full-Day Kindergarten

The Indiana Public School System is funded at the rate of number 12 in the country.  In the national testing system known as the standardized SAT, Indiana rates at number 41 right behind New Jersey (funded at number 1) and New York (funded at number 2).

Indiana Public Schools do not even rate in the top 50% of U. S. public school systems. They don’t even rate in the top 50% of the bottom 50% of the U. S. public school systems. We have a failed Indiana public school system.

In a state with public schools rated so poorly there can be no justification, by anyone, anywhere, for increasing public support of that system by funding another year of wasted student time by adding full-day kindergarten.

This is the same school system that guarantees not to teach its students to read until the end of the third grade. (See the Indiana P-16 Plan, page 22.) Why on earth would we want to give it another grade to teach, along with more funding, when the schools can’t even teach reading and writing in the first semester of the first grade? From your own pages, August 9, 2004, we see that this Indiana school system can’t even teach Phonics.

In order to create successful schools we have no choice but to immediately change to independent school systems as both New Zealand and Sweden have done.

Ed Sparks

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