Experience With Vouchers

* Re “School Voucher Program Teaches Hard Lessons,” Oct. 9: Thank you for an excellent article illustrating what happens to some private schools when they enter the voucher system and start accepting pupils that they would not ordinarily accept. Suddenly, they are faced with fights, discipline problems, absenteeism, uninterested parents, resigning teachers and lower test scores. Many private schools maintain high standards by sending such students back to public schools or by pretesting and not accepting them in the first place.

In reporting test scores, the scores of all students are averaged in together. Low performers, of course, lower the overall average. If the public is more interested in public school test scores than in the actual achievement of each individual student, there is an easy solution. Implement a voucher system for all low performers that is attached to mandatory transfer to private schools. Then watch the public school test scores shoot up.

MARGARET FINLEY

Banning

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* I wish there were some way to require every California voter to read your story about school vouchers in Milwaukee. Those of us who have worked in schools for years get very weary of idealists with great plans who have never worked with real children in real schools. Everyone agrees the situation needs to improve.

Reading the experiences of those who have tried to solve educational problems with mixed results gives a better picture than the opinions of political pundits. Neither carrots nor sticks for teachers will remedy all the ills.

VIRGINIA LaMASCUS

Covina

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* Again, public school proponents are spending a tremendous about of money to defeat Proposition 38, which they claim provides no accountability. They don’t want our children, just the money that is supposed to be used to educate them.

Why not settle the dispute? Give us the vouchers and see how many of us want to return our children to the public schools, which many of their children don’t attend. If the public schools are so great, why do they worry? Don’t they think we could use the vouchers there?

ANNETTE KIRT

Ventura

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* Before I step into the shower, I test the water with my hand. Before I prepare a recipe for a group of 50, I try it on two of us. It seems foolhardy to jump into a statewide voucher program. We need test areas, first only with the poorer children, to find out in practice what really will be the effects, good and unintentional, of the program.

GENIE KISER

Santa Monica