My name is Jay, and I graduated from Todd Beamer High School in June 2008 with a non-weighted G.P.A. of 3.93.

I exceeded every section of the WASL in 10th grade, including the science portion, without studying the materials in advance.

Among other things, I'm a Who's Who Among American High School Students member, a recipient of the University of Portland's Presidents Scholarship, the #1 high school chess player in the South Puget Sound League for three years in a row, an athlete, a musician, and an AP student.

Soon, I will be attending the University of Washington, Seattle and majoring in physics. Now, any statement that intentionally suggests something other than the complete and total truth is deceitful.

Therefore, in this message, I will try to be as honest as I can.

So, let's get started. The fact that your article's titles can be preceded by the word Solutions, is laughable and sad.

Your new article, titled, Why are our schools failing our children? is no different.

As usual, you snort at achievement, gather up all the negative information you could possibly obtain, and overwhelm your tiny paragraphs with pessimistic whines while presenting no alternatives whatsoever.

However, it is not enough to simply express how stupid you are.

For the benefit of the reader, I must use evidence to complete annihilate you. Okey dokey?

The WASL has been recognized as a measurement of 8th grade skills and we are excited that, for the state, the pass rate in English is 91.4 percent!

The Federal Way School District's rate is 95.8 percent.

While this sounds good at first, one has to recognize that this does not include the dropouts.

Federal Way's graduation rate, according to Diploma Counts is 56.8 percent.

First of all, without even knowing anything on topic, using simple logic, I can ask the question, what do graduation rates have to do with WASL scores?

But, here is what I have discovered with less than half an hour of research.

From 2005-2006, according to the Washington State Report Card from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Washington State had an on-time graduation rate of 70.4 percent, and the Federal Way School District had an on-time graduation rate of 72.2 percent.

Now, what's important in this statistic is not that the Federal Way School District beat Washington State, but that from 2005-2006 to 2007-2008, the Federal Way School District's graduation rate apparently decreased by 15.4 percent, an erroneous number at best.

Well, lets dig deeper.

When the Education Policy Analysis Archives examined the data that Education Weeks (or EPE) Diploma Counts used, they made this statement.

In our examination of the data and methodologies available to estimate high school graduation rates we have found that insights can be gained from household surveys and from administrative data on student enrollment and diplomas granted.

However, we find the measures of graduation rates in Education Weeks Diploma Counts project, computed from diploma and enrollment data, to be exceedingly inaccurate.

The main problem is the assumption that the number of students enrolled in 9th grade is the same as the number of students entering high school.

This assumption artificially lowers the estimates of current graduation rates, especially for minorities who are more likely to be retained (repeat 9th grade).

This measure also artificially reduces the growth of the graduation rate over time because the practice of grade retention has grown over time, again, especially among minorities.

The resulting errors are sufficiently large to artificially lower the graduation rate by 9 percentage points overall and by 14 percentage points for minorities.

Grade retention also differs sharply across states and localities, distorting geographic comparisons.

Last, these measures do not reflect the ultimate graduation rates of a cohort of students because the data do not capture diplomas provided by adult education and other sources than schools.

So, how inaccurate was the study? Washington State itself reported that its graduation rate last year was 79.3 percent.

The EPE study said 68.8 percent.

The worst state was New Mexico. The state: 85.0 percent. EPE: 54.1 percent.

A difference of 30.9 percent and thousands and thousands of students, an absolute abomination.

Now, I don't have access to Washington State's estimate of the Federal Way School District's 2007-2008 graduation rate, but, considering Federal Way's big increase in enrollment and other factors, it could be more than the state graduation rate!

Of course, I should be more conservative so lets put the error at two-thirds of the difference found in the statistics of New Mexico.

What would you get? I got 77.4 percent. Isnt that amazing? Mr. Hoff, I should receive some kind of award since I just increased our graduation rate by over 20 percent.

We are spending close to $200 million every year in Federal Way, and the outcomes are less reliable than the worst cars ever sold!

Any business that sold products with this kind of reliability would be out of business in a few weeks. First of all, you obviously don't know anything about cars, much less the worst cars ever sold, as if you've been to some kind of worst cars ever auction.

Second, you obviously don't know anything about sales either, since on average, a rate above 50 percent is not bad at all and an average above 70 percent would be excellent. Third, it is obvious to any reader who passed third grade that you cannot compare selling cars to inspiring students through high school.

But, whatever, lets play it your way. Let's compare selling cars to moving teens through high school, and, using this analogy, I will submit my idea of education to fill your lack of an idea.

When you are buying a car, does the salesman test you on vocabulary, Latin, and hip-hop? No.

When a student wants to become a musician, do you fill his/her head with chemistry and PNW history? Yes.

Is the salesman's boss standing next to him the entire time, telling him what do to and that if he makes a single mistake and doesn't sell this many cars in this many hours, he will be fired? No.

The boss might teach him things beforehand and evaluate afterwards, but if the boss interfered in the actual process, it would have a negative affect since he would be distraction.

Also, the salesman would be pressured to where he feels that he MUST sell, so he will abandon the quality of a normal seller-buyer interaction and become nervous and pushy.

Does the local, state, and federal governments order teachers around? Yes, and it's becoming worse.

Could it be that the accomplishments of a few, in a scholarly way, and the accomplishments of the athletes have camouflaged the real successes of our schools?

I think so. WASL results probably are a much better indicator of what the skill levels are for the majority of students.

Why then are the scores less than most would like them to be?

WASL scores will always be lower than what most people want them to be. What you, Mr. Hoff, really want is for almost every student to exceed on the WASL, which is impossible.

Youre vision of the perfect school would be considered a dystopia when viewed by other people.

In your school, all students would wear matching uniforms and black dress shoes. There would be no sports, clubs, or any kind of extracurricular activity; in your philosophy, if its extracurricular at all, then its obviously unnecessary.

They would all study from their textbooks, which are approved by the government and take tests based on what they read, which are created and administered by the government. The world measures success by comparing the self to others.

This is inevitable.

Thus, even in your school, there will be stronger students and weaker students.

You will offer additional resources for the weaker students, but it won't be enough.

Eventually, to achieve equality, you'll have to lower the standards, so that the strong students will be reduced to the state of the weaker students. In short, your vision of a perfect school system would be a socialist system.

This is why you ignore the accomplishments of the great, and stress the pathetic displays of the lower student class.

Let me make this clear: The best kind of school system would be a system where the ability of the student reigns supreme, where an individual would accomplish exactly what they are worthy of accomplishing.

This means removing any type of entity that would restrict this natural process: standardized tests, rubrics, unnecessary classes, and more.

These things are considered mandatory; sports, clubs, and arts are not.

Although the school system is not perfect, the accomplishments of a few proves that in its current state, it still kind of works.

Please don't ruin it. No special interests, no passions, and no goals are very common observations of some of the most talented students.

I have more goals and aspirations than you can fathom.

Jay Sun

Federal Way