Two ladies who presented the Hinshaw & Culbertson report charged "that the district failed to uniformly award credits to students taking courses paired with Advanced Placement classes." This is a straw man. AP classes should continue to be paired with another section so that they can meet daily with their teacher for 180 days for 87 minutes. This is totally good for the student, totally good for the school, totally good for real estate, totally good for the knowledgeable teacher. It doesn't matter what guidance or the Florida DOE wants to name the course. If an AP teacher doesn't use all this time, he should be replaced. It's not easy to teach an AP course. It creates lots and lots of out-of-class work, demands rigor and good technique in the classroom as well as continued study to maintain expertise in the teacher's subject. The reward for the student is 2 high school credits in the subject, in-depth understanding of the subject, and hopefully a good score on the AP exam. A good score on the AP exam means 6 college credit hours in the subject granted by the admitting university--and these _do_ mean top tier universities _do accept_ AP best scores for full credit. That Mr. Baker permitted this is a great good. That Dr. Thompson does not permit it is a great evil. That Dr. Thompson attacks Mr. Baker for permitting the practice of paired courses for AP for being illegal is fallacious reasoning: the argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To assert that it is bad for students to earn 2 high school credits in the subject, in-depth understanding of the complexity of the subject, and hopefully a good score on the AP exam in May is illogical reasoning, a fallacy. A good score on the AP exam means 6 college credit hours in the subject. If a student is successful in only one AP test and is admitted to a $47,500 top-notch university that requires 10 semester hours the first year, he saves $9500 for his father's pocket. More AP test scores of 4 or 5 provides more money saved. Multiply this by the number of Collier County students currently on track for success on the AP tests in various subjects, and the taxpayers are allowing parents substantial financial assistance and enabling students to attend much better universities. The group that disallows this and fired Mr. Baker for it have done us all a terrible disservice. Attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. It's OK for students to learn as much as a good teacher has to teach, score it how you will. Mr. Baker did not permit a bad thing by permitting courses paired with AP courses. Different credit for individual students in the same paired course, although deconstructed by Hinshaw & Culbertson, is not an unsound practice. Mr. Baker should not have been fired for this issue. ____________ Teachers at our school have been told "never paired classes again. It's against the law." We are also told that our school is losing numbers of students daily and that people are walking away from their foreclosed houses, even on Marco. Of course, no one in the school administration would dare admit any responsibility for families and their students leaving the area for any other reason than "economic downturn." Read your property tax bill carefully. Mine arrived yesterday. Note the two figures on it for schools. Multiply that by the appraised value of local property. Do we have enough money to play this Baker game? The school board evidently thinks so. While I don't have high regard for trials and the legal process, nor do I have faith that it will determine the real truth, I'm happy Judge Carlin has done what's necessary to take the matter to a jury. If Mr. Baker's attorney is really "super" (as advertised), maybe something good and true and just will come of it. Even if we pave all of South Florida, Gators will probably be here for much longer than Gatorhater. Maybe one will come knocking at his door or lay eggs in his swimming pool. I wonder if it's not alligators he hates but graduates of the University of Florida. Anti-intellectuals, having little experience acquiring them, always scorn "advanced degrees" as something quite easy to come by. If enough of us teachers operate on his children's minds, perhaps they won't continue with the prejudices of their father. Whoever thought when [Deltona Corporation] drained the swamp, we'd be . . . .