Vouchers, Other Ideas for Solving Public Schools’ Ills

* James Flanigan hit the nail on the head [“School Vouchers a Start, but More Is Needed” Oct. 4]. We need vouchers, but we also need fundamental change of the present monopoly system, which will continue to serve most children.

I was head of urban education and civil rights for Massachusetts for 21 years and grew convinced that the self-reform efforts were incapable of bringing the changes that are needed. The education establishment can’t reform itself.

CHARLES GLENN

Professor and chairman

of Educational Policy

Boston University

Boston

*

When your congressman says, “Do you really think throwing money at public schools can help the problem?” look at him, remind him that he is spending $20,000 to send his kid to a private school, and answer, “Well, yes! Throwing money at the problem might be just what we need!”

DUANE BEHRENS

Rancho Palos Verdes

*

Vouchers? Please. Instead, how about a blueprint for schools that dictates what a learning environment should entail. And fund it, too!

There are a lot of teachers doing a pretty good job in some very substandard working conditions. It’s time to trade in our rhetoric for some commitment to education.

RUSS REABOLD

La Puente

*

If the main objective is to offer children a better chance at education and the funds are available for pledge, why not put those funds toward improving the shameful conditions of public schools for the benefit of everyone, rather than a lucky few?

DENISE ESTRADA

West Los Angeles

*

Flanigan dismisses one of the largest problems faced by many school districts--the challenge of teaching immigrant children--by saying that public schools in years past managed to educate immigrant children without much trouble.

Yes, 80 and 100 years ago, urban school districts did educate millions of immigrant children--most of them through the eighth grade. At the beginning of this century, most young urban immigrants were headed for jobs that didn’t always require much English, such as factory worker and domestic. The reading, writing and math skills they learned in grammar school were sufficient to carry them into their working lives, and many of them were not expected to attend high school.

The expectations for today’s immigrant children--and for their teachers--are totally different. In our technological, service-oriented society, good academic skills are a must, and education past grade 12 is a requirement for almost any job that pays decently. The mandate for educators is no longer to help students understand and speak enough English to get by in a blue- or pink-collar job, but to get them through 12th grade speaking, reading and writing standard English.

ELLEN JAFFE-GILL

Culver City

*

My concern centers on the future of the public school system if private schools selectively take away gifted and talented students. Will the public school system be the underfunded system of last resort for the socially inept child, the developmentally disabled child, the handicapped child, the special-education child, the child without special gifts and the economically deprived child?

The only way the “competition” voucher would benefit the public school system is if competition operated on a level playing field. This would mean requiring credentialed teachers and open admission policies in the private schools. To do otherwise would not result in competition--it would skim the best and brightest from the public schools and leave the children who have the challenges that drive down test scores. It is easy to see who would win and lose in this kind of competition.

I believe in the ideal of free and equal education opportunities for all children. I am dismayed at the problems in the public school system and their effect on the education of all of our children. Yet I am not ready to abandon public education.

JOHN GRACE

Huntington Beach