Today's Opinions

In The Sentinel-News(“Shouldn’t we all be outraged,” Sept. 28) the Tonya Brown case called into question whether the commonwealth is doing an adequate job protecting its citizens in pursuing justice on behalf of victims of crimes. This letter is to inform the citizens of the 53rd Judicial District what happened in the Tonya Brown case and why certain decisions were made.

I was jostled from a questionable sleep about 3 a.m. Tuesday by the sort of cruel cacophony that makes you spring from your bed to see what was that clatter.

I first sprinted to the kids’ room, thinking one had called out. I found those visions of sugarplums must have been dancing, because they didn’t even twitch when I opened their doors.

But when I was returning to my bedroom, I heard the noise again, clear and loud, blaring through a third-story window opened for the cool autumn air.

We feel a little like a student in a statistics class because of the avalanche of data about the performance and progress of Shelby County’s Public School students that has covered our heads this past week.

To be able to digest the reports from the state’s about-to-be-dead KCCT tests, the federal governments’ trying-to-be-dead No Child Left Behind and the new buzzword of development – college and career readiness – is overwhelming to just about anyone who doesn’t get paid to spend full days evaluating what the numbers say.