THE GLOBE reports that, after a long day of fighting for Massachusetts schoolchildren, Education Secretary Paul Reville had a flat tire near the site where he’d begun his career at a “school for former dropouts’’ (“Seeking calm after charter school storm,’’ Page A1, Sept. 29). There, by the side of the road, he was “reminded of the origins of my commitment.’’ I worked with Reville back then, as a founding teacher of Somerville’s Full Circle Alternative High School, and I have watched with dismay in recent years as he seems to have lost all understanding of our mission.
At Full Circle, we tried to provide students with engaging educational experiences and the intensive counseling that would help them stay in school. Now, Reville has embraced policies that label children from an early age, push marginalized kids out of school, and have been shown by independent research to increase dropout rates. Urban schools are all about high-stakes standardized testing; music, sports, art, theater, and counseling resources have been stripped away and replaced with MCAS drills.
Instead of standing up for the enriched and individualized education that at-risk youth need and deserve, Reville has spent most of his career promoting policies that ignore their needs and exacerbate their problems.
Mary Fusoni
Arlington 
