The true test of education

Re “Make ‘No Child’ honest,” editorial, Oct. 28

It takes only a C+ or even a C to note the pratfalls of the No Child Left Behind Act. The public needs to understand the vast intricacies of fairly assessing schools in order to find the mix that will assess while informing a school of what works best. It would take a B+ or better to convince parents that the days of the quarterly report card are over -- the cards give little evidence of how ready a student is to compete for a future. It would take an A or better to explain how the California high school exit exam has further muddied the waters of the testing environment.

Analyzing a bazillion lines of student data over a variety of tests reveals few surprises. Fixing some parts of No Child Left Behind may very well result in a new crop of inadequate measures. Such is the stuff of standardized testing, and such is the stuff of investing annual funding in testing to get results we already know.

Michael F. Katzman

Los Angeles

The writer is a data analyst for Local District 5 of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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I completely agree with the editorial. I have worked as a volunteer tutor with Latino children in poor schools, and it was tragic that a fifth-grade student was reading at the same level as one of my first-grade students. Why? The school does not have the time or resources to concentrate on that particular student. The school is already crowded and cannot afford to have students stay back a grade. Also, many of these kids come from families that barely know how to speak English, let alone read it. We need to stop shoveling kids from grade to grade or else our society’s future will suffer.

Jasmine Rausch

Los Angeles