Students Not Succeeding in Public Schools

Re “Public Education: California’s Perilous Slide,” special report, May 17-19: Finally! Someone has looked at other reasons for students not succeeding in school! Most of what seems to be written lately is putting all the blame on teachers. As a teacher for 30 years of students with speech/language problems and learning disabilities, from preschool through high school, I have encountered many schools, teachers, students and families. Yes, there are some teachers who shouldn’t be teaching; but, they are small in number compared to the thousands of dedicated, hard-working, caring people who are working daily with your children.

The influence of family, culture and peers on a student’s school experience matters a great deal. I, too, have had many a student at the high school level who refuses to do any work or homework.

Let’s also look at all the students who are doing well, who are going on to vocational training, community college or four-year colleges. They are going in record numbers, as stated in articles in this very paper. There aren’t enough spaces for all of them to attend the schools they want.

SHARON J. HERDINA, La Verne

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I recently spent the day with my granddaughter’s fifth-sixth-grade class in Northern California, reinforcing for me the need for parental involvement.

During math time the teacher asked if I would help her in giving extra time to those students needing some individual attention. Without exception the problem was simple; they didn’t know multiplication. That is a fourth-grade skill that we all know requires nothing more than memorization. If parents aren’t willing to reinforce those skills in their children, what hope does a teacher have?

KAY STRATE, Dana Point

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Our schools are failing because students are not motivated to study hard and graduate. They are not motivated because there are no incentives for them to learn and continue their education. Why should they learn and get good grades, if everyone is automatically promoted to the next grade level, regardless of his/her level of competence in the subject matters of that grade?

What can be done? We should impose standardized tests across California for each grade level and require a passing score to go on to the next grade level. Bottom line, we should put an end to so-called social promotions. You cannot get the best results with the least amount of effort put into achieving those results.

KEVORK KEUSHKERIAN, Pasadena

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That teacher at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School answered the question, “Why are our schools failing?” when she said it’s not about us failing the kids but the kids failing themselves.

We’ve got to stop harping on teachers to be more engaging and start demanding that kids become more engagable. Poor, immigrant--their background doesn’t matter. Remember our new arrivals at Ellis Island, when they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with virtually no help from anyone? Why can’t today’s kids do the same? Because educators have enabled students and their parents to push all responsibility for learning onto the schools, and schools readily accept this mea culpa mentality because money follows those who offer solutions.

Pouring millions of dollars into schools while ignoring the fact that children are not motivated at home is a travesty that benefits no one but the educational bureaucrats.

JILL CHAPIN, Santa Monica

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Your May 17 section on California’s failure in education was profoundly disturbing to me, more so because I believe it is an accurate portrayal of much of what is happening in our schools. One area you mentioned only briefly, the lack of libraries and trained children’s librarians in the schools, is also of critical importance to students’ success in reading. Study after study has shown the importance of school libraries, yet California does not even require libraries or one trained library media specialist (a credentialed teacher with a special library master’s degree) per school district.

Without access to books, students won’t be able to practice their skills. Without access to progressively harder materials, they will not achieve higher skills. This is a fact and common sense. I hope your industry will champion the cause of children’s libraries in California; your fate depends on highly literate readers also.

ANITA LINN, Library Media Specialist, McKinley School, Santa Barbara

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You state, “More than 31,000 classrooms are presided over by men and women who do not have a teaching certificate--who are still learning their craft.” It would behoove The Times to report to its readers how many and what percentage of private and parochial school teachers lack teaching credentials.

The Times should be aware that private and parochial schools are under no obligation to hire only those who are fully certificated by the state in staffing their classrooms. Many teachers in these nonpublic schools do not have teaching credentials and teach outside their college majors or minors. As a public school teacher, I ask you to please exercise the same level of scrutiny in analyzing private and parochial schools as you do with the public schools.

ED PEREZ, Alta Loma

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I am glad that my fellow residents of Los Angeles and The Times have begun to take the L.A. public school system seriously. As a 1993 graduate, I can attest to being given 20-year-old books and Xeroxed chapters of books, as well as having to buy some books (my chemistry text, for example) myself. I can vouch for the frightening state of bathrooms. Finally, these problems are being revealed.

However, I was sad that my alma mater (L.A. Center for Enriched Studies) was nowhere on your list of schools. Despite its shortcomings in the facilities department, I certainly think it deserves notice. It is consistently rated as one of the best schools in Los Angeles. For parental involvement alone it deserves accolades.

WILLOW NARDONI-TEAYS, Los Angeles

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I am a Los Angeles Unified School District first-grade teacher who loves the class-size reduction program, but as I was reading your series a revelation hit me. I would be more than willing to teach a classroom of 30 students, if the millions currently being spent on new teachers and portable classrooms could instead be spent on ensuring that teachers have the full array of instructional materials we need to teach all subjects.

Class size is important and has made a marked difference in the level of instruction in my classroom, but it makes me wonder: Would it have been so difficult before, if I always had everything I needed?

TOMMY G. McCONNELL II, Los Angeles

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I was sorry to see that you deemed your latest public education bashing article worthy of front-page coverage (May 17) plus an entire section of highly misleading information from uninformed sources. How do you expect the children to do well when the media have persevered in the last two decades in destroying the children’s faith in their schools?

What is really impressive about the public schools is that in spite of all the attacks recent statistics have indicated that they are sending considerably larger numbers of their graduates to college than any previous generation in the history of public education. Find yourself a truly informed source and check it out.

PAULETTE MANSFIELD, Canoga Park

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Thank you for your education series. Now, to help your readers make the logical connections from effect to cause:

Education has been compromised because of overcrowding. Overcrowding has been caused by overpopulation. Overpopulation has been caused by the high birth rate of the foreign-born, here legally or illegally. And America is paying the price with an incoming generation of people not competent to continue our society.

It’s a problem that still can be fixed. But first it must be acknowledged by a responsible press and society.

ALF POWERS, Los Angeles

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As one whose long-term memory includes a time when California universities and schools were a source of pride, I was dismayed but not surprised to read your extensive series. One thought kept returning to me as I read: Where were the governors of California in the past two decades? It is good to see education become an election issue; however, in the spirit of accountability it would be nice to see the men who sat in the governor’s office for the last two decades get the credit they deserve for the lack of leadership that significantly contributed to our sorry state of affairs today.

Where were these men when we needed a leader to say education is important, to submit legislation, to fight for our children, to appoint people who would carry the banner, to insist education was more important than political posturing? Yes, educators should be held accountable, but the governors of the past two decades should not be allowed to smilingly stroll into posh retirements without anyone raising the disturbing thought that they were at the helm when California education began sinking.

CHARLES M. WEISENBERG, Beverly Hills

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Isn’t it interesting. Each of the four major gubernatorial candidates talks about the importance of education for the state’s agenda. Yet, not one accepted the invitation of the California School Boards Assn. to speak to over 300 school board members at a recent legislative conference in Sacramento, and not one accepted the invitation of the California State PTA to speak to its convention of several thousand delegates. I guess all their talk about education is just that--just talk!

MARY E. DOUGHERTY, Arcadia