Little faith in education reform

Re “We can’t quit on school reform,” Opinion, Dec. 23

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is way off base on the issue of educational reform. His plan doesn’t look like it improves accountability in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It looks more like a Rube Goldberg contraption that will make a lot of noise, belch a lot of smoke and produce very little at the end.

There is nothing in his Op-Ed article that even hints at how the educational process will be improved by his reform. He takes a Rovian swing at the school bureaucracy, asserting that it alone educates students. With all his experience, he must know that bureaucracies can impede or facilitate, but they do not educate. It is also ironic that his legislation adds layers to the bureaucracy (the Council of Mayors) and creates additional structures that look like they diminish accountability (the Mayor’s Community Partnership Schools). Villaraigosa has taken this thing in the wrong direction.

GARY R. LEVINE

Los Alamitos

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The mayor fails to understand that school reform is less a function of organization and structure and more about the critical transaction between student and teacher. It was Socrates who said that education could take place in a hovel as long as you have a teacher with something to teach and a student with the heart to learn. The ultimate solutions to the complex problems we face in education are not going to come from elected officials but through building the capacity of dynamic instruction and engaged learning, one classroom and one school at a time.

ROBERT GORDON

Moreno Valley

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The mayor insists that improving public schools will bring more middle-class jobs. He has it backward. He as mayor needs to attract middle-class jobs and subsidize homeownership for the middle class, which in turn will bring middle-class families. These parents will insist on higher standards for their children’s schools. This will lift the quality of education overall in the areas with so-called failing schools.

BARBARA STAM

Long Beach

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No matter who ends up governing Los Angeles’ schools, students will not get the education they deserve until the state opens its purse and starts putting its money where its mouth is. California is one of the world’s largest economies, and yet our per-pupil spending does not reflect this wealth. Our teacher-to-student ratio is dismal; we are third from the bottom. Make education a funding priority or spare us the charade.

CAROL TENSEN

Burbank