Why a ‘Norm Day’?

Four to six weeks after the start of school is “Norm Day” (Times, Oct. 6), the day schools tally their enrollments and transfer teachers so that all the schools in the L.A. Unified School District have the mandated ratio of teachers to students.

Unfortunately, your article, describing the chaos of Norm Day for kids who six weeks into the semester find themselves with a new teacher, failed to ask the key question: Why have a Norm Day at all?

As an L.A. Unified teacher, I can attest to the confusion and consequent disadvantages of the current process.

Given the adverse impact of Norm Day on students, I can only surmise that some set of regulations and/or contractual obligations are being followed mindlessly to the letter, to the detriment of the students and the learning process.

I suggest the following: Assign teachers to schools based on the average number of students who attended that school the year before. Of course you won’t have the exact same number of students per class; some schools would have two or three more students per class, some two or three less. Annual adjustments would be made. Over time, every school will have had an equal number of years with incrementally larger classes and incrementally smaller classes. The students would not have suffered the ills of changing classes with a significant portion of the semester over, and the substantial administrative costs that go into norming and transferring would be avoided completely.

Why continue a system that is unnecessary, costly, and detrimental to students?

JEFF BERNSTEIN

Venice