I am bewildered by the Seattle Schools stance on the four-period day at the West Seattle High School.

When you look at the complaints about the four-period day (23 percent less instruction hours, 8 percent larger classes, and 29 percent less seat time per credit compared to a six-period day) common sense tells you that these are not positive differences.

Study less in a larger class and do better? Is it really surprising to hear that West Seattle's pass rate for all three subjects on the 2006 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning test is the lowest in the district when adjusted for poverty?

So why is the school district administration working so hard to hold onto something that everyone else has abandoned? They say that West Seattle shows the greatest improvement in test scores. Well, if you are doing the worst, chances are you can show more improvement. This doesn't mean you're doing well.

My children attend public school in West Seattle. In the next couple of years I'll have a child entering high school. The Seattle School District says that they welcome input from families. My input is to abandon the four-period day. It is a 13-year experiment that is not working.

As Albert Einstein so eloquently said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Katy Thompson

West Seattle