'Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day'

Today is "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day."

According to the Associated Press, many school districts across the country are urging parents NOT to take their daughters and sons to work.

Many U.S. school districts are urging parents to keep their kids in class and not take them to work Thursday for an annual event they say disrupts learning at an increasingly critical time of year.

From Arizona to Illinois to Texas, educators are alerting parents that between high-stakes standardized testing in some areas and the H1N1 virus that kept thousands of children home earlier in the school year, the timing of "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" doesn't make sense.

"This year, of all years, to have a student miss a day for something like this that could be done anytime—it just seems the focus should be on students and their learning here," said Guy Schumacher, the superintendent of Libertyville Elementary School District 70 in suburban Chicago.

Some administrators said they recognized that spending time with their parents at work could be a valuable educational experience for children, but it does not justify pulling them out of the classroom—even for one day.

"Stakes have never been higher for student achievement," wrote Virginia B. McElyea, the superintendent of the Deer Valley Unified School District in Phoenix, Ariz. "Every day your child is out of school his or her learning achievement suffers."

Administrators have been complaining about the event's date for well over a decade. Some have said they've contacted the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Foundation to ask that it be held on a school holiday or during the summer, but the organization won't budge.

A spokesman for the foundation, George McKecuen, said it's important that the event—launched in 1993 for girls and expanded to include boys in 2004—be held during the school year so children can go back and tell their classmates what they learned. He suggested schools might schedule a holiday or teacher work day on that day or: "Maybe they can do their tests some other day."

"It's always there on the calendar, the fourth Thursday in April," McKecuen said.

Darrell Propst, principal of Taylor Elementary School in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, said it's the same day his third- and fourth-graders are taking the Ohio Achievement Assessment test. Like others administrators who sent letters or posted e-mail messages on school Web sites, he asked parents to find another day to bring their children to work.

I think it's really strange that the foundation won't budge on the date of the event in spite of more than a decade of complaints from school administrators.

"It's always there on the calendar, the fourth Thursday in April."

So what?

We have a history of changing the dates of holidays.

For example, we declared Memorial Day and Columbus Day and Veterans Day and other holidays to be observed on Mondays even though they always had been on the calendar on other days.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is January 15, yet we celebrate his birthday on a Monday.

If those holidays can be altered, I don't know why something as arbitrary as "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" has to be set in stone.

It's ridiculous for the foundation to be at odds with educators rather than be teaming with them.

President Carolyn McKecuen says:

Designed to be more than a career day, the Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work® program goes beyond the average “shadow” an adult. Exposing girls and boys to what a parent or mentor in their lives does during the work day is important, but showing them the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, and providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future and begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment is key to their achieving success.

Kids aren't shown the "value of their education" by missing a day of school at a very critical time of the school year.

I think the foundation has lost sight of its purpose.

I suppose there's a lesson for kids in that.