Wilson Ties School Funds to Phonics

* Gov. Pete Wilson’s offer “to spend $127 million on textbooks and teacher retraining with the proviso that skills such as phonics and spelling be stressed”(May 7) perpetuates a false dichotomy between a “basics” phonics approach to teaching reading and “whole language” methods. Phonics versus whole language is not the issue; teaching is.

In order to promote and permit better teaching of reading (as well as all other subjects) in our public classrooms, it is imperative that we reduce class size. Today our children come to school with a host of issues that complicate the mission of teaching. Many students daily confront the realities of poverty, malnutrition and violence in their neighborhoods. Teachers need to be able to work with children in a more individualized way, which can only happen in smaller classes. Instead of 32 students, maximum class size needs to be reduced to 25, or better still, to 20. This must be accomplished while still providing teachers a respectable salary.

WAYNE D. CLAYTON

Los Angeles

* Wilson has decided that kids can’t read, so he is recommending that California buy more textbooks, set up a jobs program for reading specialists and university professors, and arrange for junkets for school board members. Want to guess how much of his $127 million will actually reach the kids?

Reading scores that are “second to Guam” didn’t happen overnight, or because we’re suddenly teaching whole language instead of phonics. California’s curriculum framework has always included, and still includes, phonics. The low reading scores predate the introduction of whole language.

The simple fact is, kids need books. Every other state in the nation provides, either through state law or regional accreditation standards, provision for school libraries, their staffing, budget and minimum standards for the hours that a quality collection should be accessible to the teachers and students. California, with no such standards, has the worst school libraries in the nation. We would have to hire 2,000 school librarians just to be second-worst.

RICHARD K. MOORE

Huntington Beach

* Re “The Right Direction for Reading,” editorial, May 9:

The people of California are forgetting the real reason their children are doing so poorly in school. The state ranks near the bottom in school funding. Too many people in California are forgetting just how good they had it as children in school.

I know firsthand about how poorly they fund our schools. At the school I attend, my tattered math book has corners that have been used for so long that they are now rounded out. For every lab (science), shop or art class I am required to pay a fee so that we can afford the necessary equipment. We can only keep a few restrooms open because we have one-third of the janitorial staff we had just two years ago. To play in high school athletics cost me $195 for a “transportation fee.”

Luckily I live in an affluent community where businesses donate money to schools, so I do not have it nearly as bad as other students in the state. Are the people of California so naive that they think test scores would not drop after hundreds of millions of dollars were cut from education spending?

NATHAN KORNIEVSKY

Irvine