Davis’ Plans for Education

Re “Davis Proposes Grants for 100,000 Top Students,” Jan. 5: Gov. Gray Davis continues the “savage inequality” of public school funding described in the book with that title by Jonathan Kozol.

While urban-center and rural public schools suffer from lack of adequately trained teachers, books and safe schoolrooms, producing Third World levels of dropouts, illiteracy and tested academic underachievement, Davis proposes grants as high as $5,500 to 100,000 top-testing students, amounting to $118 million per year. Most of these grant recipients attend better-funded suburban schools and have parents who could afford and were planning to send them to college anyway.

And Davis is a Democrat?

JO SEIDITA

Northridge

*

It was with dismay that I read about Davis’ plan to ask the Legislature to authorize grants to students who get the best scores on standardized tests. Haven’t we had enough evidence that tests are not the way to determine overall excellence?

And since when do the top students need more encouragement? As a school psychologist in public schools for 13 years, I see the need for encouragement in elementary school. Lowering the class size was a good beginning, but let us not now abandon the most vulnerable in order to reward those at the top.

The Georgia plan you mentioned seems sensible. It gives tuition-free education at Georgia’s public colleges to all high achievers. But the main focus of money for education must remain in the lower grades and in after-school programs for grade school students.

JOANNE NAGY

Granada Hills

*

Re Davis’ proposal to give a $1,000 scholarship to every ninth-, 10th- and 11th-grade student who scores in the top 10% in statewide testing:

Instead of giving the wealthiest, high-scoring students the scholarships, why don’t we do a household-income/parent-education index and peg the scholarship money to variable scores? For example, a student whose parents have a total of a third-grade education and an annual income of $10,000 would have to get in the 50th percentile to trigger a scholarship. That’s a realistic challenge.

A student whose parents have bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and an annual income of $100,000 or over would need to score in the 95th percentile to trigger a scholarship. That’s a realistic challenge.

Why give more advantages to those students who already have golden bank accounts? Let’s get real here for a minute.

VINCENT S. DeYOUNG

Oxnard