School Monitoring

Your Jan. 19 editorial calls for intensive monitoring of Santa Barbara’s new bilingual education plan. All well and good, but where was the “intensive monitoring” of the present bilingual education mess? Or of all the other disasters visited upon our hapless schoolchildren by self-serving “re- formers”?

Actually, intensive monitoring wouldn’t have made any difference. The bilingual program’s educational failures were widely documented years ago. But its political support is powerful indeed, composed of the union and other special interests that control government education. No intensive monitoring needed. Who cares how students are doing when you’ve got that much money and clout?

PETER SEARLS

Los Angeles