Teachers Should Teach, but Parents Must Parent

Re “A Beating for Good Schools,” editorial, Dec. 8: I do not have the time or energy at this moment to write a comment merited by your editorial. I retired from the Los Angeles Unified School District after almost 40 years of service and I am now in my sixth year as a two-day-a-week volunteer bilingual school psychologist in an elementary school in East L.A. (not to mention the time I spend keeping up with the history of -- and the more recent research in -- child development and attending professional seminars).

A large percentage of the student body in the LAUSD is poor and does not speak English as a first language. A large percentage of the immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries were not educated in their home countries and know little about the responsibilities of parenthood. If President Bush wants to really see to it that “no child [is] left behind,” he will start by urging Congress to authorize (with money) better training of teachers and better compensation for them -- and by teaching parents how to truly be parents in the 21st century.

I have had much experience in many elementary schools and I have never worked in one that has such an outstanding staff, from the administrators to the plant manager, but our achievement scores are low because too many kids come to kindergarten not knowing their names, the alphabet or the numbers. Whose fault is that?

Sylvia Simon Tansey

Los Angeles

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You describe the Bush administration’s approach to school reform -- forcing good schools within a district to accept students from failing schools even if the resulting overcrowding destroys the good school -- as a “strange” way to solve public education’s problems. Strange indeed, if the objective is to improve public education. But who said that’s the objective of the anti-government, pro-private-sector clique ruling our country? By destroying public schools, this administration can create a market for private and religious schools, which is its ultimate objective.

Paul Gulino

Santa Monica