A lack of clear guidelines from the Deparment of Education leaves one Cottage Grove teacher wondering whether the department is too far removed from the classroom.

Why?

"We're up in the air" because the state Department of Education keeps tinkering with requirements, she says.

Some competency requirements -- such as keyboarding -- cause students with poorer skills to slow down more advanced students, she says.

Two CAM proficiencies cannot be taught for want of expertise, including marketing and management, she says. There are few business people actually coming into her classroom. "Just because kids leave (school) for a job shadow doesn't mean businesspeople are coming here," she says.

The school's business advisory committee, which used to be active, no longer meets, she says, having been supplanted by site councils with no direct contact with business instruction.

A Lane County teachers' group that convenes to share ideas on school change "has done nothing," she says. "Some hope it (transformation) is going away," she says. "Some just do what they've been doing and just change the name," she says.

Pittman, who has taught for 26 years, says that before the CAM "we had good quality kids coming out of business."

She wonders whether the Oregon Department of Education isn't too far removed from the classroom to know the burden its changing CAM requirements are placing on teachers.