Why schools should check their math at the beginning of the year

When I'm not writing captivating blog posts such as this one, I am employed as a product manager, and one of my major jobs is to write marketing requirements. These marketing requirements, derived from various sources, are then turned into system requirements, then design, then actual software code which undergoes up to five separate tests before a customer site goes live. One of the things that is drummed into all of us is that mistakes that are caught early in the process are much less costly to fix than mistakes that are caught later.

That paragraph really doesn't have a lot to do with this Daily Bulletin story, but the same principle (heh) applies. If someone had done their homework (heh) at the beginning of the school year, things would have been much better for kindergarten students at the Ontario-Montclair School District.

After an audit revealed that kindergarten classes in all Ontario-Montclair School District's schools were short 10 minutes of instructional time each day, the Governing Board voted on Saturday to amend the 2008-09 student calendar and tack on 10 days of instruction to all kindergarten classes in the district.

More here.