Madam Chairman, Members of the Board, Dr. Spillane:
The reason the school administration has not renovated McLean High
School for forty years is because millions of school dollars are wasted
on ineffective programs. For example, even though schools spend $10
million a year on extra reading teachers, Fairfax County's average
reading score on standardized tests is still only at the 65th
percentile. Schools could raise that score without extra teachers if
they adopted phonics-based reading instruction. Even though schools
spend another $10 million a year on elementary guidance counselors,
student behavior is worse. Guidance counselors actually contribute to
the problem by teaching children not to obey rules, but to do what
they, the children, believe is best. Schools now spend $30 million a
year on the seven-period day. The average student could not handle
seven academic subjects if the subjects were taught rigorously. Over
the last five years, these three programs have absorbed over $150
million, which would have been enough to renovate McLean, Stuart, Lee,
Madison, and Annandale high schools.
Now the administration wants to spend $11 million to put
confidential student records on the Internet. The schools' Chief
Information Officer has acknowledged that school staff members could
create files of student records and email those files anywhere in the
world. The SIS is on the Internet so Fairfax County can transmit
student records to a proposed federal Labor Market Information System.
Why do we need this? The SIS is not going to raise student achievement,
improve student behavior, or reduce the number of administrators; and
the federal data base will not improve student employability. If the
SIS would make these improvements, then why don't school planning
documents say so? Why is it that school board members are so concerned
about protecting student privacy that they object to releasing the
Centreville High School election results but are willing to put 140,000
students' health and discipline records and grades on the Internet? Why
do some school board members oppose a new federal testing bureaucracy
but support a federal student data base bureaucracy? Why does the
federal government need student health records in an employment data
base? Why do we even need a federal employment data base?
So-called software "firewalls" are really only packet filters and
are vulnerable to hackers. Statements that the new SIS will be the most
secure SIS in the nation are misleading. The current Local SIS (LSIS)
is far more secure because schools are connected to it through dumb
terminals, not computer networks. There are only one or two terminals
per school, and these terminals cannot create and email files of
records. What is truly needed - new printers, fixing the year 2000
problem, and adding a few new fields such as the names of both parents
- can probably be done for $2 million by upgrading the current Legacy
SIS, thus saving $9 million.
Upgrade the existing LSIS and spend the savings on building renovations. Don't put student dossiers on the Internet.
Thank you.