Vouchers and School Performance

It is apparent that President Bush’s proposed education legislation will have wide and bipartisan support (Jan. 23-24). The proposal, however, focuses too much on the schools’ performance without regard to the environment in which they operate. Test results clearly show that the scores of students who attend schools in affluent areas are significantly higher than those of students attending schools in inner cities, raising the question of whether it is fair to evaluate inner-city school performance without addressing or considering the distractions our inner-city students are exposed to on a daily basis.

Test averages are reduced by the performance of schools in disadvantaged areas. Without addressing the social problems in our inner cities, efforts to improve school performance have less of a chance to succeed.

KURT M. BEIER

Hacienda Heights

* Strangely, while Bush insists upon testing public schools and holding them to a standard, he does not include such a proposal for private schools that may be the recipients of students via vouchers.

It would seem that all that has changed in the White House is the name and party of the incumbent.

JACK SEIDMAN

Long Beach

* Re vouchers: Whatever happened to the GOP battle cry, “That’s just throwing money at the problem”? Are Republicans prepared to eliminate the Department of Defense as a budget offset to fund this? Or, could this be a sop to their right wing’s religious “schools,” few of which predate Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education?

Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are Republican. By the way, I’m Caucasian, in my 50s and have no children.

STEPHEN WILLER

Whittier