Successful Teaching

Re “New Pressures to Improve Teacher Quality,” Sept. 2: It is true that “good teaching is the most significant factor in how well students learn.” However, as usual, there are other factors that are removed from the whole dynamic of student learning in much of the media. Why are parent and student responsibility not considered in how well students learn?

In my 13 years of teaching in inner-city public schools, I have found that those students who achieve are the ones whose parents are active in their child’s education. The parents’ values and expectations of their children, and their education, are what raise student achievement. The formula is, and always has been: Active parents plus motivated students plus good teachers equal successful student achievement. It’s unfortunate that my colleagues and I find ourselves alone in educating many of the inner-city youngsters, who are so much in need of parental participation in their education, and in their lives.

SEMEEN R. ISSA

Arcadia

* Gov. Pete Wilson, the LAUSD and UTLA seem to be willing to sacrifice an entire generation of students in their efforts to appear to be doing something about the deplorable state of our city’s schools.

Richard Lee Colvin assumes in his column that the 17,625 untrained and unqualified individuals being granted emergency permits as a result of the class-size-reduction program will be teaching kindergarten through third grade. It is, however, the credentialed teachers with seniority who help themselves to these smaller classes and the inexperienced permit-holders are left with the larger classes of older students.

JOHN SHERWOOD

Topanga