Alum is an example of Washington’s success

In response to Dick Fredericks' Jan. 9 guest column, I respectfully disagree with his claim that Cedar Rapids Washington High School is committing “academic child abuse.”

Principal Ralph Plagman could not differ more from the devious, arrogant caricature Fredericks makes him out to be. The academic atmosphere at Washington is nothing like the fiction his article constructs.

I am a graduate of Washington and in my final semester at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. I can say Washington adequately prepared me for college - and then some. At UNC-Chapel Hill, an academic environment where many of my peers went to top-tier private high schools and paid tens of thousands of dollars for their education, I can say that I got a similar caliber of instruction for free.

Mr. Plagman chooses to foster the school's academic environment in the ways that count, rather than focusing on ludicrous benchmarks that mean nothing. Other principals would do well to follow suit.

Additionally, Washington's role as an oasis of diversity in an otherwise homogeneous community benefits its students in a way that is impossible to measure. This benefit is more important than any of the myriad misleading statistics Fredericks' column presents.

Erin Becker

Chapel Hill, N.C.