A Reading Program That Crashed

Re “Reading Program Didn’t Boost Skills,” Feb. 7: So the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $50 million on a computer system designed to improve reading skills. Good grief! Imagine the number of books it could have purchased and how many trips to the library it could have planned to instill a true love of reading, which is far removed from the set of skills required to play what is essentially a video game.

Reading is a delight that develops methodically over time, imbuing the reader with such life skills as patience and perspicacity -- proficiencies sorely lacking because most of what we watch and hear today is compressed into 30-second sound bites.

My mother was a teacher in the LAUSD for 35 years, and my fondest memories of her involve weekly trips to the public library. I couldn’t get over the fact that the books were free for our use for an entire week. Why are we not taking advantage of this very available tool? When did computers stop becoming useful devices and become wrongly recognized as sentient substitutions for both parents and teachers?

Monica De Vargas

Venice

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I have used the Waterford Early Reading Program in my first-grade classroom since it was introduced in the LAUSD. I feel that a few other points need to be mentioned. In the first year, I and a number of my colleagues found it extremely effective. I saw an improvement in my students’ skills after less than a month. I found that Waterford worked well with the Open Court Program.

During the second year, the district ordered us not to use the program at different times of the day. The result was a decline in usage and effectiveness. After this, a “new and improved” program was implemented, which we heard had been hurriedly produced for the LAUSD. Since there was evidently not adequate time to test the software, problems increased greatly, again resulting in a decline in effectiveness.

To the best of my recollection, at no time were comments solicited from us as to the program’s use or effectiveness. My personal feeling is that the district acted from the beginning as if this program was unwanted.

John Hathaway

San Pedro

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Sadly, Los Angeles Unified’s experience with the Waterford Early Reading Program is not unusual. Many districts in the state are looking for “magic bullets” to raise high-stakes test scores. Unfortunately, they tend to find them in programs that are scripted and leave little room for teacher choice.

As a middle-school English teacher with 35 years of experience, I know that these programs do not work. They usually cost a great deal of money and have no real teacher support because teachers are never given the authority to examine them fully before they are adopted, nor the time to implement them in the correct manner. The only group that profits from them are the textbook publishers, which earn a great deal of money from these sales.

The saddest ramification of this issue is the tremendous waste of funds that could have been spent on the real education of students.

If school districts truly trusted their teachers and gave them time to think creatively, then prepackaged programs proffered by publishers would be a thing of the past.

Gail McClain

Laguna Beach

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The LAUSD spends $50 million on a computer program to help kids learn to read, and it not only does not help but is found to “hinder” learning. I have an idea that I would be willing to sell to the district for a mere five mil. Books. Can’t beat ‘em for reading.

David Goodwin

Los Angeles