Importance of Parents, Teachers

Re “Why Not Create the $100,000 Teacher?” Commentary, Dec. 5: Lowell Milken states that “good teachers are . . . the foundation on which everything else is built.” It is the parents who build the foundation, who nurture the child from conception to the first day of first grade and throughout the child’s grade school experience. Milken proposes that “master teachers” should have a master’s degree and national certification. I would propose that formal education outside the home, kindergarten through 12th grade, is a local matter between parents and professional teachers. This is why PTA organizations are so important.

The quality of public and private education in California has suffered in response to the consolidation of authority in Sacramento and Washington. If we continue to promote and encourage foreign authority at the expense of local control and continue to assert that teachers are more important than parents, then we will continue to get what we have got.

DENNIS K. MOORE

Simi Valley

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I always read with interest your articles about the many new, inexperienced, untrained teachers, especially in the low-income areas.

I am a teacher in an elementary school in South Gate. We have a number of new teachers on emergency credentials. My experience has been that these people are bright, hard-working, caring, energetic and eager to learn and grow as professionals. They are all doing well--their students are well-behaved and growing in knowledge. The fact that this is not necessarily reflected in improved test scores has less to do with the inexperience of the teachers than the fact that these are second-language students who come to school with scant academic background and parents unable to help them academically.

Yes, continue to train these new teachers (experienced ones, too) in the latest academic techniques and methods, but let’s not be so simplistic that we hold these new teachers accountable for all the academic failings of their students. Rather, massive parent education programs are needed so these children enter school better prepared, with parents who have learned how to be academically supportive at home.

SUSAN SHAPIRO

South Gate