DRUG TESTING AND FCAT SCORES

This is in response to the Charlotte County School Board's plans for random
drug tests for students.

It's another half-baked idea from a group of people who can't seem to
understand that their job is to see to the education of students. Looking
at the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores leads one to conclude
that they ought to be looking for new jobs, because they aren't doing the
job they were elected to do. Forty-five percent of the eighth-graders in
Charlotte County did not pass the FCAT for reading (up from a 41 percent
failure rate in 2003); 60 percent of the ninth-graders did not pass the
FCAT for reading; and 67 percent of the 10th-graders did not pass the FCAT
for reading (up from 59 percent in 2003).

Yet our local board thinks random drug testing will help students?

By the way, this is the same group that voted for mandatory uniforms at
Sallie Jones Elementary for a variety of reasons, which included, if memory
serves me correctly, the fact that parents wanted it because wearing
uniforms improves education.

Well, now our School Board chairwoman, Andrea Messina, says (regarding drug
testing), "Students have told us this will help them." Please! Are these
students the children of the parents who favored uniforms? And just what
were the scores of the uniform-wearing Sallie Jones students? Fifth-grade
math and reading scores went down. Maybe they ought to change the color
scheme of those uniforms. But I digress.

Random drug testing will add nothing to education.

Vikki Perrella, Punta Gorda