Letters
Letters Trim the Fat Regarding Charlie Peters’ complaints about the Washington, D.C., phone book (“Tilting at Windmills, June 1998): Just take a very sharp knife and cut off the business...
...Stephen’s...
...THOMOA’SBR IEN DIRECTORO F RESEARCH Horizon Institute for Policy Solutions Spread the Wealth Pardon my naivetk as a nonparent, but it seems to me that there’s a major point not discussed in May’s excellent article by Richard Whitmire: funding inequity...
...The issue is not partisan allegiances and political factions, but the educational well-being of children...
...This kills all the birds with one stone...
...Why bother...
...NATHANLA NDAU Berkeley, CA Too Easy Brilliant is a modest word for Charlie Peters’ newest solution for one of the world’s most vexing problems - campaign reform...
...Re Senator McCain and the FCC: “Who cares whether the FCC or Congress does it, as long as the right things gets done...
...HAROLD DEAN TRULEAR DIRECTOR ESA’S Public Scholarship Initiative Cheats In the May issue, Charles Peters recounts the anecdote of a West Virginia post office that scored well on a mailing test by figuring out which mail was part of the test...
...Get people to obey them...
...We eliminate Congress and just let the prez and the various bureaucracies pass all the rules...
...JANE SORROWS Gaithersburg, MD Beyond the Rhetoric I commend Richard Whitmire for moving beyond simplistic, partisan proposals, recognizing that a limited, means-tested voucher program might indeed spell success for kids trapped in failing city schools...
...Far too many inner-city schools are in a disastrous state...
...The manner in which Mr...
...The third paragraph of Mr...
...The prez seems to like this idea, he’s doing it more and more...
...Letters Trim the Fat Regarding Charlie Peters’ complaints about the Washington, D.C., phone book (“Tilting at Windmills, June 1998): Just take a very sharp knife and cut off the business directory from the yellow pages, and you’ve got a manageable, light directory...
...With them in mind, I quote Mr...
...I have visited and met with Saturn workers and officials twice and read.their contract...
...Whitmire points out, vital compromise between liberals and conservatives to test vouchers may be necessary to effectively educate poor children...
...Stephen’s started its own school...
...That service has been absolutely reliable and problem free...
...We need to look at the promising opportunities that vouchers can offer to families who lack the educational options available to the affluent...
...States should make a large chunk of education aid contingent on improvements over the last year’s results...
...What is wrong with that...
...Objective measures of outcomes include improvements in dropout and truancy rates, student scores on statewide standards tests, and increases in students takmg Advanced Placement (AP) tests and the number of students passing AP exams...
...As Mr...
...Perhaps if schools got the same bucks-per-student, no matter where in the country they may be located, there wouldn’t be quite as much of a problem...
...Make the schools compete against their own performance of the year before...
...This strategy will fix accountability without the divisiveness inevitable with the politically difficult voucher proposals advocated by Richard Whitmire...
...MIKE PERTSCHUK via e-mail Setting the Record Straight It always irks me when I see inaccuracies in print, so I had to correct one assertion in the article on “Reforming the Teachers’ Unions” by Robert Worth (April 1998...
...Robert Worth is wide of the mark, however, in saying that merit pay plans are all hopeless: “Education critics on the left and the right agree that they’ve been a failure.’’ Merit pay plans that provide financial bonuses only for those schools that demonstrate objective improvements in empirically measurable student performance are the best hope - they reward whole schools and so encourage cooperation and esprit de corps, and are not divisive like subjective merit pay plans of the past...
...Our conventional garbage is picked up by regular city workers...
...As Mr...
...ESA is partnering with black and Latino church leadership in our Public Scholarship Initiative, calling for testing of voucher programs in failing urban school districts...
...They paid for it without weakening the public schools...
...But often the recyclables weren’t picked up, and we repeatedly complained...
...Whitmire on this issue...
...Whitmire points out, private schools through competition can challenge and even complement and improve failing public schools...
...You seem to resent the Clintons sending Chelsea to a private school...
...There are plenty of rules already...
...Talk about missing the point...
...At no time does one employee get a reward and another get sanctioned...
...THE REV...
...Evangelicals for Social Action, a group that for 20 years has called evangelical Christians to progressive stands on political and social issues, has come to many of the same conclusions as Mr...
...Now, the public school that serves Bishop McKinney’s parishioners is far more effective, rising to meet the challenge that the church school provided, although there is still a waiting list to get into St...
...A nonprofit environmental group under contract with the city is supposed to pick them up weekly, at the same time as conventional garbage...
...ED STANLEY via e-mail A Dangerous Breach As a subscriber, I am repeatedly disappointed when you endorse vouchers as the solution to problems in education...
...Bishop George McKinney, a leader in one of America’s largest black denominations, found this out first hand...
...Whitmire, “Let the public experiments begin...
...When it fails to meet expectations, everyone loses...
...Stephen’s Church of God in Christ in San Diego, a congregation of about 5,000...
...Thus, “23,000 families applying for 1,300 private-school” spaces...
...Worth’s article states that the Saturn “ ‘Risk and Reward’ program . . . provides incentives for workers who do well and sanctions for those who don’t.’’ In reality, the program has the opposite approach...
...And perhaps there wouldn’t be quite as much difficulty solving what problems there are...
...We were nonplussed to learn that our good service was because we had been placed on a “don’t miss” list...
...Do you remember the efforts our early leaders made for attaining separation of church and state...
...This way, only continuous quality improvement is financially rewarded...
...Worth depicts the system very much violates the Saturn creed, and I thought it important that he be corrected...
...Vouchers are a way to take much needed money from public schools thereby making them even worse, and helping those who can afford private school...
...BARBARSAT EIN via e-mail Some Merit Your articles on education reform (“Reforming the Teachers’ Unions,” April 1998 and ‘X Vital Compromise,” May 1998) are correct in asserting that teachers’ unions need to be pressured to compete and improve results...
...They remembered the problems in the old country where certain religions were favored with state funds and others discriminated against...
...This gave the local schools some competition for students...
...The Risk and Reward program does not differentiate among employees, but makes clear that everyone is dependent upon their colleagues and teamwork to succeed...
...This is reminiscent of our experience with collection of recyclables - newspapers, cans, bottles...
...After making countless unsuccessful attempts at reform in the neighborhood school, St...
...Then we noticed that the problem had vanished...
...Otherwise, as usual, he’s right on target...
...McKinney pastors St...
...As for free time, at the rate the networks are losing viewers, pretty soon only some hard-core teenagers will be watching...
...PAUL ENGEL via e-mail...
...That is, the districts with high property values tend to get more money for their schools than those with low...
...The experience also demonstrates that sometimes government is better than the much ballyhooed private sector...
...When the company exceeds its expectations everyone from the assembly line to the CEO gets a percentage reward...
...After all, no Congress, no need for funds, ergo, no need for messy campaign reform...
Vol. 30 • July 1998 • No. 7
