Readers React: High expectations for impoverished students

To the editor: As Garret Keizer points out, some students manage to overcome the effects of poverty and do well in school. But not many. (“A level playing field at school can’t make up for a broken democracy,” Op-Ed, Sept. 27)

Grit, determination and the best teaching in the world has little effect when students are hungry, are ill because of lack of healthcare, and have low levels of literacy because of lack of access to books.

Existing evidence strongly supports Keizer’s observation that school success does not magically improve one’s economic status. And improving test scores will not help our economy: It works the other way around.

Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”

Stephen Krashen, Los Angeles

The writer is a professor emeritus of education at USC.

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To the editor: I also bear witness to the impressive academic achievements of students from impoverished backgrounds.

I taught in an inner-city area of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and I remember one of my first graders fondly. She was like a sponge, learned to read in no time and had a very supportive mother, who was at my door every afternoon after school and wanted to know how her child was doing and how could she help her more at home.

I am sure there are many such students in this world, and I often wonder what she is doing now. Did she go to college and achieve great things?

It is enough for me that I could help one such student and many more like her under very difficult circumstances.

Hilda Fogelson, Studio City

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