School Reforms

* As a kindergarten teacher with some 25 years’ classroom experience, I read “State Report Urges Return to Basics in Teaching Reading” (Sept. 13) with great interest. It is my feeling that the call for curricular overhaul and reform is totally appropriate; still, there is significant value in many of the currently adopted methods of instruction. It is the “center” or “balance” that we have lost over the years.

As we take the first steps toward reforming the process of reading instruction in California, I pray that we can keep the children in mind, that they are indeed, and remain, our first and only priority and that we can thwart any and all attempts to turn this into a left wing vs. right wing, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative issue.

Did I say that? Dream on, Mark, dream on!

MARK CANTOR

Woodland Hills

* Re “An Idea Whose Time Has Gone?” Commentary, Sept. 7: Hidden in Prof. Charles Kerchner’s article (about breaking up the LAUSD) is an idea whose time really should be gone: “ . . . Schools need performance indicators . . . that help them get better in ways that standardized tests don’t.” He then goes on to point out that the recent Scholastic Aptitude Test scores did little to guide a teacher or school. The inherent contradiction should be obvious. The SAT scores, the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills and others mean exactly what they say. Some kids know their stuff and are ready to move on to a more sophisticated educational environment and some have not yet learned even the basics.

There is no cheaper or more believable method of finding that out than via standardized tests. The state should return to the practice of using the data (it is collected and reported via each district’s Prop. 98 report card) and telling substandard schools to improve in no uncertain terms.

The data should also be an integral part of the evaluation of curricula that the state recommends for statewide use. Glowing rhetoric, without supporting numbers, should be dismissed as useless and possibly even counterproductive.

Kerchner’s basic premise, that breaking up a large district is no panacea, is certainly correct.

WAYNE BISHOP

Los Angeles

* Kerchner’s article suggesting improvements in education did not contain a single word about class size. He should have added the suggestion that the public must be convinced that the best expenditure in education would be the reduction of class size. Forty-one boys and girls registered in one of my eighth-grade history classes this month. How much individual attention do you think I can give each one during our daily 52-minute session? Cut the class in half and their education will be revolutionized. With 20 in the room, I could reach everyone.

ANN BOURMAN

Los Angeles

* Kerchner hit the nail on the head in his article on educational reform and the breakup of the LAUSD. Reform plans like LEARN are misguided and do not address student learning and will have little or no impact on student test scores.

The breakup of L.A. Unified will only divide the present problems into smaller districts and will bring no solutions. I predict that the problems in some of the new smaller districts will actually get worse, but they will be smaller and less visible to the public.

WAYNE JOHNSON, Vice President

California Teachers Assn.

Burlingame