Will Bigger Paychecks Mean Better Schools?

Leonard and Ellen Schneiderman may well be right that standardized tests are no real measure of teaching and learning (“Proposed Laws Don’t Address the Real Issues,” Opinion, July 8).

Unfortunately, their own trite proposals don’t address the actual issues either.

They suggest good teaching will increase after we offer salaries commensurate with it. Are we to assume that many currently teaching are sitting on their hands because they’re not paid enough?

If we increase salaries to get the best people, should we then fire such current teachers?

Also, the Schneidermans bewail shoddy physical plants. Just like salaries, buildings and grounds might reasonably be improved, but the connection here to actual reforms in teaching and learning remains tangential at best.

Most disappointingly, the Schneidermans tie true teaching and learning to a presumably neglected “child-centered” approach, ignoring that this sentimental, anti-intellectual focus is indeed the very dispensation under which we are currently suffering and from which we need relief.

Their suggestion is unwittingly to give the patient more of the disease.

Stanley H. Nemeth

Garden Grove