State’s Low Reading Scores

Reading education in California is in crisis. Virtually everything that you say in “The Scores Still Say It All” (editorial, March 8) is true. The system isn’t working and there are teachers who aren’t prepared.

However, this is crisis du jour. Last year it was math and the year before it was science. Next will probably be history/social science. In attacking the current crisis while ignoring the total picture, you are incorrect in your solutions. True, better teaching and school discipline would help, but knowledgeable leadership from Sacramento is demanded.

Improperly trained teachers are the result of both a classroom reduction program done too fast, based on available teachers, and a bilingual program where the emphasis was more on second-language skills than teaching. These are both Sacramento-created problems. The flip-flops in curriculum and testing reside in Sacramento.

Leadership, not PC speeches, is demanded. A brilliant teacher, like a gallant soldier, may win a battle, but a poor leader will lose the war.

LARRY SEVERSON

Fountain Valley

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California’s tendency to embrace fads is one reason state reading scores are so low. And LAUSD’s tendency to flip-flop from one program to another is an additional reason. In my 35 years of teaching there has been absolutely no pattern of consistency.

The move toward standards is a step in the right direction. But the wake-up call to change should be put on hold. The experts should devise one program for the whole district. They should then retrain teachers and administrators and implement one drastic change, a program with no changes.

BARBARA SILLS

Manhattan Beach

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I notice that in your news coverage of our fourth-graders’ abominable reading scores and the editorial that followed, you neglected to mention the fact that since the passage of Prop. 13, California’s per-pupil spending has dropped to around 47th in the nation. Teaching phonics won’t save the day.

Reducing the clout of the teachers unions will only cause a siege mentality among educators to proliferate. I shudder when I hear those same folks who would lay California’s education woes exclusively at the feet of our teachers moaning about how we shouldn’t throw money at the problem. When I taught English as a second language, I would often find myself facing classes of 45 students and no textbooks.

Money would go a long way to reducing class sizes and providing innovative teaching materials. What we need are politicians with the guts to take on the sacred cow that Prop. 13 has become so that communities are once again empowered to raise the funds necessary to finance a first-rate education system.

CLIFFORD J. TASNER

North Hollywood