Zacarias’ List of 100 Lowest Schools

* Re “Zacarias Gives Deadline to 100 Lowest Schools,” Aug. 1:

As a teacher at Hollywood High School I read your article with dismay and outrage. Everyone, teachers and the public alike, wants to see improvement in our school system. Any chance for improvement, however, depends on legitimate measurement of student achievement.

Placement of high schools on the list was based only on the scores attained by ninth-graders on the 1996 Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills. How can any rational person rate a school’s performance based on one set of test scores from students who have attended the school for only one full semester? To find out what a high school has taught its students, any reasonable individual would test the skills possessed by its incoming ninth-graders and compare those scores to their level of achievement several years later.

RAY MILLER

Los Angeles

* I have two children attending schools on that lowest performing list and I cannot begin to tell you that a majority of the children who attend those schools come to school and put forth all the effort they can, but for some reason fail to achieve those high scores that other schools achieve. A lot of it has to do with poverty, with lack of materials at home needed to do the projects they need to do.

I have seen the children come to school in winter with no jackets or sweaters because they cannot afford them. You mention support from parents. Many of these parents themselves cannot read but are too afraid to say anything about their lack of education and therefore stay away from helping at the school.

Take a good look at where these schools are--South-Central L.A. Not just the community, teachers and parents need to get involved. If you are reading this right now, what are you going to do? Stop and think, they are our future and have hopes and dreams also.

TERRY VIGIL

Los Angeles

* In an Aug. 4 editorial, The Times stated that part of the reason for falling test scores at the allegedly 100 worst schools in the LAUSD was that there was “an over-concentration of burned-out, inexperienced or substitute teachers” in areas “written off as combat zones.”

I taught for 20 years as a permanent teacher and, for the last five, as a substitute at Glenwood Elementary, 67th on the list of 100 worst. I have found very few teachers, substitute or full-time, who aren’t putting their full resources, heart and soul, into teaching children of every nationality.

If test scores are to be the litmus test of success, and continued employment in the LAUSD, we can expect schools to “teach to the test,” at the expense of enrichments such as literature, art, culture, language and drama.

Moreover, it is unfair to attack substitutes as being partially responsible for low test scores. Our schools would be far poorer places without substitutes, many of whom are the most experienced teachers in the entire district. I hold an advanced degree in library science, as well as a lifetime teaching credential, and every time I walk into a classroom my only objective is to make children learn more, and to be happy as they explore knowledge.

LAURA JEAN MALAK

Burbank