Irvine Students Will Do Just Fine

* Re “A Formula for Disaster in Irvine School Funding,” Feb. 17:

I live in Orange. The difference in state funding between the Irvine and Orange unified school districts is $59 per pupil, a 1.4% difference.

Yet Irvine Unified has had many extras not found at Orange Unified. And IUSD student performance is better, not because IUSD is better, but because most IUSD parents and students are smarter.

It’s like at Yale and Harvard. Take in only the brightest and 20 years later graduates tend to be famous, wealthy and productive.

So not to worry about Irvine students. They will do better on average than OUSD students, regardless of the extra $59 given to OUSD. They just need to be sure that housing costs restrict students of lesser ability to 30% or less, as shown by research funded by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Research shows that if you send a reasonably bright kid, SAT 1200 or so, to almost any college, he will be successful after graduation to the same degree as if that college were Yale or Harvard.

All that is necessary is that IUSD students be taught to read, write and compute. True, cultural literacy takes a beating in state-mandated texts.

But the more alert parents, as most are in IUSD, can fill in here. Students in other school districts may fare worse, leaving only private schools as a solution.

IUSD parents should count their blessings. They have worked hard and chosen well. Yet statistics show that those that can afford the time or the money will get a far better result with home or other private schooling.

Perhaps there is profit in reconsidering the lure of free public education that requires supplemental home schooling in cultural literacy.

RAYMOND J. ROSTAN

Orange