Reader's view: Those in the classroom know best what education needs

I don’t see the point of articles like the one Sept. 8 headlined, “Testing gap narrows, but minorities still trail.” There was little new or newsworthy presented. Quotes from the talking heads of think tanks who say things like, “More needs to be done to ramp up those results,” are pointless expulsions of warm air. And pontifications by administrators like, “Our focus needs to be on student success in life,” are meaningless noise. You may as well give cooking instructions from a drone a mile over the kitchen with no sense of the heat of the skillet or the consistency of the egg mixture when making a soufflé.
Why don’t we hear from the people on the ground, in the classrooms, who daily face the challenges of adapting white, middle-class, “research-based” educational materials to the eyes, ears, brains and experiences of racially, culturally,
environmentally and socioeconomically diverse students? They are the people who know what is needed to make it happen, not the ruminators and pontificators.
William G. Percy
Duluth