Letter to Senator Reed

The Initiation of Interaction

My life continues to become more and more hectic, but I will do as best I can to keep up with this new feature. Below is a sample letter that I will be editing and sending off to Senator Jack Reed. Eventually, I will post letters to other important Rhode Island politicians.

I attempted to keep the letter to one page in order to be succinct and concise. I wouldn't want to ramble when I'm trying to keep the Senator's attention throughout the letter. I tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but surely that will improve as I write more letters. Moreover, I again encourage you to write letters or e-mails of your own to Senators and Representatives. (especially ones previously listed on the site) I hope that you will take a lead from my letters, but definitely integrate your own personal touch to your letters. Remember, every small piece counts.

But without further adieu, the first letter:

[Return Address]
[Return Address]
26 March 2007

The Honorable Jack Reed
201 Hillside Road, Suite 200
Cranston, RI 02920-5602

Dear Senator Reed:

As a teenager and high school sophomore in Rhode Island, I find it difficult to avoid constantly being bombarded by my education. It began early, remains prevalent today, and represents the foundation of my future. Like your website states, I agree that “education is the key to our economic future.” This fact remains legitimate on the individual, state, and nationwide levels. In that regard, I am both grateful and impressed to discover that you helped engineer a program that has contributed nearly one hundred million dollars to school libraries.

Rhode Island is a great state, and I am certainly proud to live within its borders. Still, it is not without flaws. The most widely sweeping reform in national education over the past several years has been No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Frequently, the press touts this legislation as President Bush’s signature domestic achievement. However, I beg to differ. In my experiences with the programs and policies brought on by this federal mandate, I have met not only frustration and disappointment, but most of all a sense of infidelity to tangible student needs.

Especially in Rhode Island, the problems in education have been miscalculated. Proficiency-based Graduation Requirements (PBGR) allocate augmented burdens of stress to high school students already pressed with an assortment of academic demands. Still in its developmental stages, this system strives to standardize the success of every high school student in the state through the ambiguous label of proficiency. On a scale of just 1 through 4, each student’s work is evaluated, with a three representing minimal required proficiency. Keep in mind these rubrics are graded subjectively by hundreds of different teachers around the state. It is hard to argue that the premiere work of an Advanced Placement student can be equated with the best of a College Prep student. Furthermore, proponents of this incomplete system deduce that the e-portfolio will benefit students in the future. Frankly, however, universities and employers will not sincerely browse an applicant’s 24, 48, or 72 artifacts. My peers and I feel strongly about this issue, and we collectively urge you to further research the subject and exercise influence to rectify the matter.

Respectfully yours,

Theodore J. Capaldi
Student, Westerly High School

A Hard Hitting Realization...

You know, it may seem like what we present within the depths of this blog are hard hitting. Well they should be. However, I have discovered one fact which I hope may impact your minds even more to getting up and doing something to stop the PBGR's. For the class of 2009, we will need 48 PBGR's. Many of those 48 will be hard to aquire throughout our highschool lives due to lack of experiance and a lack of technology which will work correctly.

Some rubrics, though, will be impossible to obtain. Getting 4 history rubrics will prove to be one of the most challenging. Throughout our highschool carrers already, we've had 2-3 history courses. In these history courses we've only recieved 2-3 rubrics and that will be the final amount which we do recieve. How then, will it be possible to graduate if the opportunity to gain these rubrics is not presented?

I believe that is one question which you must ask yourself, and what our administrators, school board, state representatives, and what our government needs to think about. The government is not implicating the PBGR's for the bettering of the students. No, they are implimenting them so that all students, no matter what their thought level, looks exactly the same except for the grades they recieve and their extra curriculars.

Why should the students, who are already trying their best, be forced to go above their maximum and have to deal with even more stress? Why should students, who are able to think at levels above their age, have to be brought down so that the emotional stability of those below them are not hurt?

Do not take me wrong, I feel for the students who do try their best in school and just try to maintain "good grades" while balancing out other stresses too. I am one of them, I am one of you. I already have enough to worry about than just PBGR's. They are a nusiance which will be the downfall of every single student if something is not done.

If you want to fail out of high school and become just another homeless person, than it's your choice. But if you'd rather graduate the way you were supposed to, without the PBGR's, and make it to a higher education, than action must be taken. No one person can do it alone. We must all pitch in, as a whole, and put a halt to the PBGR's. Together, there is nothing that can not be accomplished, so band together today, write to your representatives, and let your voice be heard...

Leave Your Opinions and Thoughts in the Comments Section...

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century

This is what you need to know…

You have the right to remain silent. Everything you decline to say will never be heard. You have the right to remain hidden. Everything you refuse to do will never be realized. You have the right to sit back and relax, and let others run your world. You have the right to adhere to broken principles and guidelines that are anything but constructive.

You have the right to change. You have the right to redress. You have the right to assemble. You have the right to speak. You have the right to act out against a government that does not fully understand the high school environment and the education process.

How do you have all these rights? Even as a minor, you are a U.S. citizen, and the Constitution along with its Bill of Rights and other Amendments apply directly to you. Just because you are under the age of 18 does not mean your rights can be violated. It’s up to you to know your rights and understand them, though.

Among these Amendments, all twenty-seven of them, is the First Amendment. If you are at all familiar with this Amendment, you may recognize it as the freedom of speech. However, it expands well beyond that. Specifically, (and for the purposes of this article) the document also states that the government, “shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech… or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That government includes school districts, and thus we arrive at my dilemma.

I don’t know if any of you have tried to access “It’s Our Education” (IOE) from any of the Westerly Public Schools computers. What I do know is that no one has successfully done so. How do I know this? This blog is filtered – along with all other “blogs and messageboards” – by the district’s new security software system for its server. (Regardless of whether or not the blocks can be overridden by someone with the correct knowledge, it is the principle that is of importance here.)

In discovering this, I was understandably appalled. Surprisingly though, my grounds for indignation were by no means exclusively self-centered. As you may or may not be aware, some teachers at Westerly, mostly English teachers but possibly some others, actually use blogs - in some cases even this exact site - for school assignments, or at least they have in the past. This is an illogical connection. Somehow, a viable teaching instrument such as a blog is being electronically withheld from students within the walls of their learning facility. This utterly confounds me.

As for my rights (if you were concerned), they are in fact being violated, as the school is technically and extension of the government. Furthermore, I am actively pursuing an immediate solution, just as we are collectively here. Assuming that I am successful, you should be able to access the blog at school in the near future. However, this is but a small challenge, and many more will follow.

The struggle will undoubtedly trudge on indefinitely.

Remember, you have the right to remain silent. Whether or not you exercise that right is up to you.

A Testament to the Tribulations

An eventful day in my personal PBGR adventure.

“BEEEEEEEEP,” the bell rang and I left first period, embarking across the walkway in the bitter March cold. Fortunately, I survived the trek… somehow. It was a Wednesday – advisory day. Great! I would rant about that genius idea, but that’s for an entirely different blog.

I popped into 307, grabbed my graded work, and headed optimistically towards the computer lab in 222. Why was I optimistic for something I despise so? It was a perfect opportunity for some “research.” I situated myself at one of the shiny new computers. They were impressive. Then again, most school expenses are when they play an active role in government subsidy.

The scanners struck me as efficient as well. Certainly, they were efficient wastes of time and funding. But this is all beside the point. Why talk about the hardware, when there is so much to say about the software? Ironically, I know my way around the e-portfolio pretty well. I navigated to the site and logged in quickly, before anyone else had even pulled up Internet Explorer.

A new look greeted me as I found my way around the site. Everything seemed fine. Then, all the other 20-something students in the class started logging in. I tried to pull up my work, and molasses nearly started oozing from the monitor of the computer.

The confusing username/password system bamboozled students. If they can’t even log on at this point, what hope does the system have? Frankly, not much. Trying to explain the sudden slow-down, the supervisor for the period who labeled himself as, “just a science teacher who knows how to work the system,” (extremely official, I know) said there was probably just something being changed on the site, but it was obvious to anyone with more than half a brain that it was simply struggling with the spike in traffic.

Reluctantly, I did lower myself to uploading a single rubric. *gasp* Enough cynicism though. Let’s be serious.

When the 40 minutes were up, nearly 10 students uploaded nothing, and only a couple fewer failed to even gain access to their portfolio. That is not a very good percentage, especially considering the lack of guidance available and the rarity of openings for the scarce number of computer labs around the campus. Surely, this is a testament to the grim reality of the PBGR situation at Westerly, and judging from my inquiries of students in other computer labs, it was not a unique experience. Time is running out. Something needs to change.

Have any of you out there reading experienced similar situations? Maybe you can touch on something I missed, or just relate.

Talk back and be heard in the comments section.

Is There Light in this Darkened World?

As we gaze upon our future, we can see nothing more than darkness. Nothing more than the gray mist which covers our eyes. Our future, as we see it, is dying before us. The environment is rapidly transforming itself for the worse. It has become a virtual sludge pit and we have only ourselves to blame for it. We are using up to much energy on unnecessary things. We all want to go out and buy gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers but all you are doing is adding to the pollution of the world.

It may not seem like it's affecting your lives now, but in 13 years it has been predicted that the world will end because of global warming due to pollution. This years winter seemed warmer, yes? Well that is due to global warming which is not a good thing at all. The warmer it becomes the more endangered our world is. Before we know it, we will be perishing as quickly as flies do with bug zappers. If something doesn't change soon then the world as we know it today, will be gone forever.

NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is also standing upon our doorsteps, knocking furiously. And soon, it will take over our academic lives as we know it. Hell, it will even take over our social lives for we will have no time to ourselves. We will forever be in fear of the threat of not graduating due to some problematic program which our government instituted. This program does not help any student at all. It was instituted so that all children would be able to perform at high standards and not feel left out or "left behind."

This program however, only brings down the advanced students and creates harder situations for students who were already struggling in school. The PBGR's have become a burden for students and teachers. That, on top of the senior project and other difficult and challenging academic courses, makes life seem like a living hell. All of these tasks put together seem to be an impossible feat to accomplish in a whole life time let alone 3-4 years of our high school lives.

It seems like wherever we turn, there is no light to guide us through these darkened times. The light, however, is here and has always been here. The solution to our dilemma is...us.

We are the answer to saving this world. Will we allow our earth to go into a state so irreversible that our death would be inevitable? No. Will we allow the government to suppress our learning abilities, take over our lives, and oppress the students, teachers, and other great minds with NCLB? No. But the only way in which we can change these things is to take action.

We must band together, as one, and fight for our liberty and for our life. Fight for the environment and fight for our right to a better education. Speak out in your local communities, form groups and create posters, and actively write to your local state representatives (senators, governors, etc.) about these pressing issues. Do whatever you can to get the message across to others. We have to start saving our world by saving the environment and ridding our lives of the extremely pointless NCLB. No one voice can be heard alone, but as a single entity, then no man, no power, and no government will be able to stop us. So take action, and change the course of history for the bettering of your lives and for the lives of your children too.