Examining How We School Our Kids

In the Jan. 2 Opinion article, “Congratulations! You’re About to Fail,” Richard Lee Colvin points out that “six out of 10 high school graduates in 2005 will start college in the fall, but half of them -- and more than two-thirds of the African American and Latino students who enroll -- will fail to earn either an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.”

Although Colvin discusses the effects of these statistics on students and the nation, he fails to mention important trends in public postsecondary institutions, where most students of color enroll, that contribute to dropout.

As financial pressures grow, many undergraduate classes have become large and lecture-based, therefore offering fewer opportunities for assigning the community-based service learning, internships and writing projects that influence retention.

As the emphasis on research increases, few tenured faculty are encouraged to teach smaller, lower-division classes or advise students. These factors, combined with the fact that university faculty are not adequately rewarded for successful pedagogies or assessment, inevitably contribute to student disaffection and failure.

Ann Johns

Founding director, Center for Teaching and Learning San Diego State University

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Another pitifully liberal view of things from The Times -- it’s everyone else’s fault that Latinos are unsuccessful and will “succumb to the tug of family obligation” and drop out of college.

I don’t get it; we keep pouring money into the minority community and these minorities keep dropping out of their ticket to success -- education.

Part of what schooling (life) is supposed to teach people is how to overcome and surpass adversity, not to succumb to frivolous needs identified by the media.

David Flynn

Tustin

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Four experts offer their opinions on the sorry state of education at the state and local levels (Opinion, Jan. 2). While we’re waiting for the dual pipe dreams of dismantling the LAUSD (Howard Blume) and federal standardization of testing (Barbara Keeler), I offer this modest proposal: The parents need to be accountable; need to check their child’s homework each day; need to stay in contact with all of their child’s teachers, even at the high school level; need to keep stacks of books in the house, instead of soda and candy; and need to take their children to the many cultural sites in Los Angeles, instead of stranding them in front of the TV.

Chuck Burdick

Los Angeles

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Barbara Keeler’s Jan. 2 Opinion piece, “Arizona’s Whiz, California’s Dunce,” about varying state standards for K-12 education explained the problem well, but arrived at exactly the wrong question in regard to finding the solution. She asked, “Who should be blamed” when kids who move from one state to another are subjected to different standards? Blame is entirely unimportant here. This issue is the perfect example of why states’ rights are the wrong approach to education, and why a national standard for education must be applied.

Our nation is in the midst of an education crisis precisely because our expectations are not high enough and are not uniform.

Evelyn Jerome

Santa Monica

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Re “Exit Exam Flimflam,” Opinion, Jan. 2: John Rogers implies that starting in 2006 we will be harming high school students by withholding diplomas from those who fail the exit exam. What I fail to see is how granting diplomas to students who simply fill a seat for four years helps those students.

Obviously having a diploma is necessary for entree into many avenues of life beyond high school, and it may seem that providing a diploma is a service to those students as they leave high school. But when they don’t possess the qualifications indicated by the diploma, that seems to me to be a disservice to the students who have attained the qualifications as well as to the colleges and businesses that use the diploma as a measure of actual accomplishment.

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I think Rogers needs to reexamine the question of what it means to grant a diploma.

David Salahi

Laguna Niguel