Four education letters to the editor in one day.

In today's North County Times Letters to the Editor section, there were four letters published about K-12 education. I believe that is the most education letters in any non-electioneering month that I have seen.

The first letter (red) was from Peter Murnieks, a man I know. He is a good solid man. He thinks in very black and white terms. He wants to do right, but sometimes his prejudices get in the way. He makes one mistake in his letter. Obama never said fire everyone and start over. That is one of four choices in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. So it would be more accurate to say, Bush said fire everyone and start over.

I do not know the other three letter writers, but I reproduced their excellent letters below.

Solutions for fixing education

Re: the North County Times editorial, "What our children deserve," March 19: Problems with teacher seniority, tenure and the politics of education are addressed two pages later in the article "Obama effigy hung at R.I. school with fired teachers." Do not lay off teachers or anyone else in the system, but do what Obama says should be done in poorly performing schools — fire everyone and start over.

Class size, technology and teachers' time are parts of the only sane solution. Small class sizes starting in kindergarten and increasing in size through middle school.

As students enter high school, they should be issued laptop computers, which will not only serve as writing and reading tools, but also as a method of completing and handing in papers and tests. Research can be done by Wi-Fi Internet access. Much cheaper than hard-copy books and papers. The computers might just pay for themselves in one semester and also teach modern methods of providing and gathering information. Classes could be as large as 300 students, as lecture groups in college often are. Papers can be graded rapidly using computers, and tests could be graded automatically. Administration could monitor progress daily if so desired. Finance should only be local.

Peter Murnieks
Vista

VUSD teachers' anger is justified

In the recent article by Board President Steve Lilly and Superintendent Joyce Bales ("Inaccurate statements hurt VUSD contract talks," March 21), the class sizes in the Vista Unified School District secondary schools were described as "... among the lowest in San Diego County." In other words, neighboring districts have larger class sizes, so it's OK for VUSD to increase class sizes in order to balance the budget.

If the authors of this article used the same countywide method of comparing VUSD teacher salaries with those of the neighboring districts, they would find that Vista's teachers lag far behind in wages. The "wage gap" is $5,000 or $10,000 or $17,000 per year, depending on whose statistics we use. This wage gap between we VUSD teachers and neighboring districts' teachers hurts our families badly, and is the greatest source of anger and mistrust between the union and management.

Lilly and Bales used comparisons between districts to justify larger class sizes, but they ignore similar comparisons of teacher salaries and wonder why teachers are upset. Instead, they spend millions on pet projects (Lindamood Bell) and do not make public the results of those projects.

Robert Hutchinson
teacher, VUSD
Oceanside

Shadowing your student is a must

I challenge parents of all middle-school students to shadow them during school. My husband and I decided to do this, and our child had no idea we were showing up at his school.

As we sat back and observed each period, I can truly say that the teachers are doing their very best. If your child is having a hard time with a teacher or teachers, or if they complain, it would behoove you to find out the whole truth, just as we did. The teachers did not display inappropriate behavior with our students. We witnessed some students having no respect, displaying bad behavior problems and who were disruptive toward the teachers in some classes.

I see this as a reason for our children not being educated and dropping out of school because we as parents are not doing our parental jobs at home. The teachers expressed their desire for more parents to do as we did. Come to find out, not many parents get involved and have no idea how their children are behaving.
Parents, please take this to heart and visit your child's teachers. There are no regrets in the end, just a brighter future for our kids.

Rachel Quezada
Oceanside

A comment about merit pay for teachers

There is one big problem that I don't see addressed by proponents of merit pay for teachers: How will teachers be evaluated and who will do the evaluating? If you base the quality of a teacher on student performance, who will want to teach the kids who are unsupported or neglected at home, apathetic and unmotivated, or simply not very bright?

These children we teach are humans. They don't arrive in our classrooms with the same backgrounds and attitudes toward learning. We are not a homogeneous society here in Southern California. Families here come in all shapes, sizes and cultures and values. Teachers do what we can with whoever walks in the door in the morning.

If you are going to quantify the quality of a teacher, then be prepared to sort children by their culture, number of parents raising them, number of homes they live in, previous life experiences and whether or not they have a loving family willing to put educational support before activities that "babysit" the children.
Why do people insist on reducing our children to numbers?

Kathryn Graf
Vista