Readers React: Here’s an idea for rich education reformers like Bill Gates: Listen to teachers

To the editor: As I get ready to retire next week after 52 years teaching, I reflect on the great and the terrible I have seen in education. My final observation is that nobody, including The Times, listens to the teachers, the professionals who know what is needed to improve education. (“Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America’s public school agenda,” editorial, June 1)

Rather, what gets the attention are the “silver bullets” foisted upon classrooms by administrators pursuing their own selfish agendas. Nobody asks the teachers what should be done to improve education. Instead teachers and our unions are blamed for all of education’s shortcomings. But nobody wants to improve education more than teachers.

Unfortunately, almost all change is mandated from top down by people who are threatened by the creativity of the teachers. They don’t trust us. Too many administrators and philanthropists like Bill Gates, who “are generally not education experts,” seem to think that one size fits all and that they have the quick and easy solution to the problems of education.

They don’t have the answer, but there is one: Listen to the teachers — and get out of their way.

Sam Platts, Sylmar

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To the editor: Your editorial taking the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to task is too little, too late. Teachers everywhere could have told the Gates Foundation and the school boards that were taken in by the promise of philanthropist dollars what would happen with those initiatives.

Some years ago the Los Angeles Unified School District sent teachers and administrators to the Seattle area to gather information on the new Gates initiative on “small learning communities.” We learned from the teachers there that smaller hadn’t made a difference in student performance and things were much more difficult for English learners. We reported back, but LAUSD went ahead with the initiative anyway since major dollars were being offered. (It would be interesting to know how many non-Gates dollars were spent on this effort.)

Philanthropists would be wise to find out from the teachers on site what might make a difference rather than dangling money in front of school boards that promise to implement unproven programs.

Alexa Smith Maxwell, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I compliment the Gates Foundation and other groups groping for ways to improve our education system. All those efforts, however, are misdirected when they emphasize support of programs that aim only at what a teacher teaches.

The education establishment has failed to study those school systems around the world that have the most success on tests that evaluate the creativity and problem-solving abilities of high school students. These countries, Finland in particular, have put a major emphasis on teacher training and remediation and have recruited their top high school graduates to attend their teaching academies. These students are exposed to a rigorous curriculum of educational theory. They freely discuss curriculum and methodology collaboratively, defining the challenges they will face.

This approach makes the novice teacher aware that it is their skill in teaching that makes students learn and that all curriculum is a tool they use to help their students find success. Weak teachers always have strong teachers to lean on for help and are afforded the chance to observe their mentors in action.

If a teacher designs a curriculum program that follows educational guidelines, they will make it successful.

Bob Bruesch, Rosemead

The writer, a teacher, is a member of the Garvey School District Board of Education.

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