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With respect to the “scholarly” comment –- the parents involved in writing the reviews have many academic credentials, most have Master’s degrees, several are teachers themselves, some are published authors, and some have degrees in Education and English.
But all of these paper credentials really mean nothing compared to our most important credential, and that is that all of the reviewers at www.classkc.org are parents of children in the Blue Valley school system.
Currently, the only information parents have available to them about these books (other than to read the books themselves), are professional reviews and the reviews provided by the Blue Valley Communication Arts teachers. (This documentation is supposed to be available in all high school libraries, but even if you can find it, the documentation represents only two of the 14 criteria that policy 4600 says shall be followed in the selection of learning resources.)
The teacher reviews appear to have been created in the 1998-1999 school year, but many of them are neither dated nor signed. They do not contain any excerpts nor do they describe (or even allude to) the vulgar, sexually-explicit, and otherwise R-rated content of many of the books. Therefore, reading the teacher reviews about each of these books really doesn't give parents the information they are probably most interested in.
Not all of us are going to agree on what is appropriate or healthy for our own children to read at different ages, but regardless of our own opinions or English degrees, being more informed about the specific material that your child is being required to read is both a scholarly and valid pursuit.
For more information on why the literature that the children read is so important, click here.
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