Costas

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No More Stop-Gap School Solutions

Your article, “L.A. Schools to Hire Private Firms to Tutor Students” (Feb. 9) is interesting and annoying. Annoying because we, the citizens, again get to see how mismanaged our tax dollars are. The idea of using outside contractors to do what our inadequately trained teachers have been unable to do is, at best, misguided. It is interesting because it verifies that our colleges and universities are doing a poor job of educating and training our teachers so they can properly teach our children. Additionally, the assumption must be that parents in the “100 worst school” areas are not taking an active and aggressive role in pre-educating their offspring before turning them over to our public schools.

As a taxpaying member of this community I need to ask, How about the other schools that are performing well or above average? What are those teachers doing differently? Are they being taught at different colleges and universities than the teachers who work hard in the 100 worst? Clearly, those schools must be in more affluent areas where the parents are taking a more active interest in their children prior to kindergarten, right?

The point is that spending millions of dollars on “Band-Aid”-type measures is not a viable solution. Does anyone out there, including the superintendent of L.A. schools, really think that once the outside contractors finish their work the student test scores will dramatically improve, and stay that way?

The problem has taken long to create and it will take much longer to rectify, and throwing money at it is not the solution. Let’s try revisiting the curricula at colleges and universities to instruct teachers on the special needs of children in schools in disadvantaged areas.

And let’s take part of the potential $10 million in federal education funds to “educate” the parents in areas where the 100 worst schools are, via a massive marketing campaign. Or must we assume that parents who live in disadvantaged areas don’t care? And how about reducing class sizes so teachers can really address the individual needs of the children at all grade levels?

To really make a permanent change, schools will need to hire highly trained teachers and pay them higher salaries. In my opinion, $100,000 per school is not going to create the higher test scores and higher skills levels in math and reading that our future leaders need if they are going to be competitive in the 21st century. Let’s stop wasting our hard-earned tax dollars!

If special contractors like Sylvan Learning Systems, Computer Curriculum Corp., Voyager Foundation, etc. can turn the student test scores around, why can’t we have equally well-trained teachers to do the job permanently? Aha, money! It costs a lot of it to have top-quality teachers. Let’s stop squandering it through proposals to use outside contractors for stop-gap fixes.

ANGELO COSTAS

Los Angeles

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