TAKS practice tests waste time

Last week two of my children spent the entire day taking practice TAKS tests during school. It was an absolute waste of a day in class. The reliance on standardized testing in public schools is wrong and does not well serve our children or the paying public.

The idea of “No Child Left Behind” is misguided. At Baylor University when coach Art Briles is recruiting, is he directed to “leave no football player behind”? Of course not. It would be absurd.

Yet this is the sorry state of our public schools and it will continue to degrade unless people begin to speak up. If we cannot get rid of standardized testing, then we should be allowed to have our children tested-out and not required to take it. One solution would be to administer TAKS tests during summer break. The children who pass should be placed in an accelerated program and not have to test again that school year.

Andy Sheehy

Waco

Blinding lights are a nuisance

I wonder how many people who drive on La Salle Avenue at night when there is an activity going on at Ferrell Center are blinded by those outrageous bright lights in the street?

The lights shine right into your eyes. I guess public officials think the lights are helping people, but I cannot believe that they don’t realize that they are blinding everybody approaching the area in both directions!

Could they reposition and adjust the lights to face downward towards the ground or street so drivers can actually see the road and other traffic on La Salle?

I also have noticed that police cars tend to park in one of the lanes, and their vehicles protrude outward, making it difficult to spot them until you are right up on them — again, because of the blinding lights.

Ruby Estes

Riesel

Death of unborn is unjust

How can anyone not sit down and cry when an unborn, already living, baby is murdered? This is God’s greatest gift.

I’ll admit the recent conviction of Scott Roeder in Kansas for murdering an abortion doctor was the rightful punishment.

God doesn’t differentiate killings. Any person involved with killing a baby will not be punished by man’s law. He or she will face a greater judgment.

I am amazed that the same people who get upset when fish are bothered in the ocean or want to shut down industries because of some small creature being harmed will protest when a convicted killer is being put to death. But do they get upset when a baby is killed? Can anybody explain this kind of thinking?  It seems like some people need to get their priorities changed.

Jerry Willett

Lorena 

President’s socialistic health care

Regarding the Trib’s Feb. 3 article, “Obama takes aggressive stance at GOP,” I find it extremely rhetorical that the former darling of the Electoral College — when he was being elected a little over a year ago — now brands Republicans as electoral opportunists who are more concerned about their own interests than the people’s simply because they have an equally aggressive stance against the president’s socialistic health care bill.

Obama chooses to see their lack of support as a partisan attack. He refuses to acknowledge that they might actually be responding to the message that American voters have sent — that we don’t appreciate how the Democrats have tried to ram this bill down our throats. We want less government control in our lives.

His comment that the Republicans are out of patience with business as usual is true, as are the American voters. What good is an insurance plan that, although it offers insurance for all, does not offer good insurance for anyone?   

Rita W. Jones

Axtell

The other side of war

I’m glad Trib owner Clifton Robinson is feeling “bullish about life” in his Jan. 22 column. I hope he knows the working poor and families of those killed in American military adventures overseas are not.

Mr. Robinson accuses the Obama administration of pursuing a “socialist agenda.” Does he know what “socialist” means? It means “public ownership of the means of production.” I don’t see that as a goal of President Obama or anyone else in his administration. Remember, the public bailouts of major banks and corporations began with President Bush and are not designed as takeovers or handouts but as emergency relief to prevent higher unemployment than the Bush administration already left us with.

At the end of his column, Mr. Robinson declares, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” I wonder how he reconciles this with Jesus’ words in Matthew 5, “Do not resist an evildoer” (v. 39), and “Love your enemies” (v. 44)? We know how all Christians interpreted these words for the first few centuries of the Christian church. They did not serve in the military or endorse violence of any kind.

Roger Olson

Waco

Let me get this straight

Let me see if I have this right. We want to spend money to make Valley Mills Drive (pictured above), a road that has plenty of lanes, have less when we have another road, Interstate 35, that needs more and we don’t have any money to widen it.

Do I have that right?

Karl Lauritzen Jr.

Waco

EDITOR’S NOTE: The proposal was removed by transportation officials last Wednesday after hearing several objections from merchants on Valley Mills Drive.