This administration’s obsession with testing and data collection is relentless. About $1 million sorely needed elsewhere was diverted for these purposes. In 2013, 9-R and Bayfield hired a software company to create an online computerized testing program, School Vault, to prepare students to take the new statewide assessment that is also computer-based.

The glowing description of School Vault expressed by Superintendent Dan Snowberger (Herald, June 11), is utterly false. When Snowberger wrote his column, the district had experimented a bit with School Vault, but the results were wholly unsatisfactory, and that remains true today after an incredible amount of additional time and money have been poured down the drain.

The ugly truth is that School Vault is just another standardized test, but one written by local teachers with no qualifications to write test questions, no permission to use copyrighted material and no useful data generated. District teachers who will discuss the program are uniformly opposed to it.

The reason teachers are reluctant to speak out is a climate of fear and intimidation created and cultivated by the central administration. School Vault is a huge waste of money and time that the administration is nevertheless pushing into our schools.

Meanwhile, useful programs were pushed out. In elementary schools, almost no extra instruction is provided to students identified as gifted and talented, and the libraries and computer labs are no longer staffed by media specialists. The positions held by these highly qualified teachers were eliminated. The absence of media specialists diminishes the students’ computer skills, and poor computer skills call into question the validity of the School Vault tests.

Good, library-loving people of Durango, please, do not sit idly by and let this administration ruin our schools.

Michelle Harlow

Durango