Don’t take your kids 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 cheap Nike Air Max 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 Nike Shox R4  District in Phoenix, Ariz. "Every day your child is out of school his or her learning achievement suffers."