School System Fails on Many Levels

Re “Study Offers Grim Look at Schools,” Jan. 4: California fourth-graders’ low performance on a national reading test in 1992 prompted the adoption of an extreme phonics-based approach, along with “tougher” academic standards. Now the Rand Corp. tells us that there has been no significant change in students’ reading scores since the early 1990s. The analysis shows that the high percentage of language-minority students does not account for the low scores. The report, however, fails to even consider the most obvious cause.

Research has confirmed that library quality is related to reading scores. California has the worst school libraries in the country and ranks near the bottom in the quality of public libraries.

Children improve in reading in only one way: by reading a lot. Without increased access to books, we can continue to expect dismal reading scores.

Stephen Krashen PhD

Professor Emeritus

Rossier School of

Education, USC

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Professor Elliot Eisner argues persuasively for inclusion of the arts in the reformed school curriculum (Commentary, Jan. 3).

He suggests that by emphasizing the four core subjects, reading, writing, math and science, and giving priority to “embedded traditions and our efforts to boost test scores,” we are failing to think about the ways in which a school’s curriculum is “a mind-altering device, a means through which children’s minds are shaped with ideas, skills and beliefs about the world.” But he stops short of fully answering his own question of why we teach what we teach. Could it be that the values of an arts education that he cites -- the ability to make independent judgments, tolerance of diversity and ambiguity in problem solving, flexibility and openness to change, familiarity with nonverbal and non-quantitative forms of communication, and the capacity to express feeling and emotion -- are not qualities that are desired or favored by the decision-makers shaping the workforce of the 21st century?

Peta Henderson

Palm Springs

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In Richard Lee Colvin’s Jan. 2 Opinion piece, “Congratulations! You’re About to Fail,” about the distressingly low number of students who graduate from two- or four-year colleges, he decries that today’s non-college-educated youth are unprepared to step into the “14 million white-collar jobs that retiring baby boomers are leaving.” Well, those folks weren’t prepared for the jobs either. That’s why they started in mailrooms, purchasing departments and reception desks and worked their way up, learning the business as they went.

With the twin delusions of twentysomething college graduates expecting six-figure salaries and corporations asking that applicants for a receptionist position have a bachelor’s degree, the average non-college-educated young person has little better to look forward to than “the jobs they do find as clerks, healthcare aides and the like.” Though I agree that we need to find a way to better educate the average high school and college student, I do not believe that every white-collar job requires a college degree.

Maureen Devlin

Peabody, Mass.

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In the Jan. 2 Opinion article, “Exit Exam Flimflam,” John Rogers fails to mention the No. 1 problem with the high school exit exam: The test reflects a system that allows social promotion over mastery of skills.

The standardized tests should be used to determine who moves on to the next grade level. Instead, students progress to high school whether or not they have mastered the reading and math skills required at each grade level.

How can the state even consider denying a child graduation based on the results of the exit exam when, by allowing that child to progress from one grade to another, it has confirmed the student is performing appropriately?

Laura Peters

Calabasas