Make GED test the target for students

Allegedly due to overcrowding in schools, we pass everyone onto the next grade. Then, in order to make that policy work, we "dumb down" the course content to allow those who should have been kept back to continue. We then require that graduating seniors demonstrate by way of a graduation exam, giving them four tries in two years, that they can complete eighth grade level work.

Now the superintendent announces that the new graduation exam will be dumb downed, allowing "moderate passing scores" because we're going to ask our high school seniors to demonstrate a level of proficiency at the 11th grade level in order to graduate. He also proposes a "safety net" for those who can't, after multiple tries, pass the graduation exam, and that is a GED track.

If a high school senior, trying his or her best after 12 years of formal classroom instruction, cannot pass a graduation exam asking common sense logic questions set at a grade level below theirs, how in the world will they successfully complete the GED test, which is written at a "13th grade" level? Perhaps the curriculum in our high schools should be oriented to the GED, then perhaps the students would find that the graduation exam is a cake walk.

David Reid
Millbrook

The people of Montgomery have been fighting to see professional baseball return to this city for 20 years now. Montgomery has more potential for growth, development, and original identity than most cities could ever dream of. But what do we do with it? Not very much.

We are on the verge of landing a Class AA team, properly suited to a city as large as Montgomery. This development could do wonders for our city, the largest in the United States without a professional sports team. But what does our mayor do? He delays the decision another three months after already putting it off ever since he took office. Continual delay of a decision puts the efforts at increasingly greater risk of dying altogether. What we need is someone who has the guts to really take charge and utilize all that our great city has to offer in order to move Montgomery forward rather than keeping it back.

We do not need another silly committee doing a "feasibility study" to waste time. Montgomery needs to use taxpayer dollars -- yes, public funds -- to pump energy into baseball and downtown development efforts in order to get it off the ground. Every dollar invested will be returned multiple times over, not wasted. Someone needs to step up and be a leader.

C. Bennett
Pike Road

As I was researching Al Gore via an online encyclopedia, a glitch took me to the dictionary, which brought up: "Algor mortis" -- "the cooling of the body after death." Did Webster know Al?

Armond Simmons
Pell City

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