The Failure Isn’t in the Classroom

Re “U.S. May Force California to Call More School Districts Failures,” Feb. 17: What good does it do California’s children to have their schools identified as failing by the federal government? Schools across the nation can’t keep up with requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act because they’re impossibly demanding and funding is too little and too restricted.

Could it be that the Bush administration wants public schools to fail? This would allow Bush to usher in the voucher system, one more part of his destructive “ownership society” plan. California lawmakers should follow the lead of the Utah Legislature [which because of insufficient federal education funding is considering a bill that would give priority to state education standards over those of the federal law].

Tell Bush that the Constitution guarantees local sovereignty over K-12 public education. We know our schools, our children and how to help them improve. We’ll follow our own path, thank you.

Linda Jurewitz

Claremont

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I just read the front-page story and I’m hopping mad. I also feel so daunted that I’m ready to quit teaching. I want to invite the U.S. Department of Education to come visit my school and see how hard the teachers work to help our students. There are a myriad of factors affecting the test scores of our students, mostly socioeconomic, but they are improving. Now the threat of cutting funds would put these children at more of a disadvantage.

I teach hearing-impaired students, which is considered a severe disability. The expectation is that they improve and perform academically on a par with their hearing peers. It is a waste of their precious learning time for me to be shoving grade-level skills and assessments at them when what they need is the steps to get there.

I invite George Bush to come see my classroom and witness the tears and frustration of these kids. Then he can sanction them.

Maribeth Doherty

Redondo Beach

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As a retired professor of education, I was appalled and angered over the Bush administration’s latest attempt to make local school districts comply with the failed No Child Left Behind program. In my history of education classes, we discussed one of the time-honored “sacred cows” of American education: “In the United States, education is a federal interest, a state responsibility and a local function.” It’s obvious that the neocons want public education to fail so their underlying goal of total privatization will prevail.

How do you do that? First, set the bar so high that high failure rates will prevail. Second, create “feel good” titles such as “No Child Left Behind” and then underfund such programs so that failure to meet the goals is inevitable.

Sadly, this president has not been willing to admit that it’s poverty that breeds failure in some of our nation’s schools. Private schools are attended only by those who have the money. Such students do well, and the poor ones don’t. Dozens of studies show that.

So this president’s demand that more public schools be branded as failures may be little more than part of his master plan to privatize and corporatize all that goes on in the U.S. Apparently this is true in California, one of the “blue states.” It’s payback time, and California’s public education system appears to be the loser.

Bruce M. Mitchell

Oxnard