College Prep Mandate

Re “L.A. Unified to Consider Mandatory College Track,� April 26: The idea of requiring more academic difficulty for all L.A. Unified students as a way to deal with the dropout problem makes as much sense as plugging more appliances into an already overloaded wall outlet.

School district Supt. Roy Romer and board President Jose Huizar have lost touch with the hundreds of thousands of students who do not have the ability or the interest to go on to college.

Romer and Huizar are attempting to lead us down an “educate the best and shoot the rest� road. We need more aptitude tests in the seventh grade to find out what our students are best at and more counselors to place them in the appropriate classes once they get to high school. We need to be careful to not eliminate secretarial, industrial arts, home economics and pre-apprenticeship programs before they get there.

The idea that jobs of the future require algebra, physics and the ability to interpret Shakespeare is a myth. The Department of Labor lists among the top 10 job needs of the future registered nurses, retail sales, customer service reps, cashiers, truck drivers and home health aides. None of those jobs requires a four-year college education.

Lou Rosen

Pacific Palisades

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I read with some amazement about the Los Angeles Unified School District students who complained that “nobody� ever told them about Cal State college requirements.

I can assure the reading public that every student in the district receives ample opportunity to learn the college requirements, starting in middle school. Letters stating the requirements go home with every student every year. Meetings setting forth the requirements and how to meet them are held at every high school every year at an hour convenient for working parents.

Those students who complained, frankly, must not have been paying attention. Teachers cannot help it if some students -- and their parents -- ignore college requirements for years at a time, then choose to blame others for their lack of responsibility.

Sylvia Weiser Wendel

Teacher, Taft High School

Woodland Hills

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It is easy to proclaim in the name of equity that all high school students should take a full schedule of college preparatory classes. But placing woefully unprepared students in classes that are far beyond their current capabilities does no service to them or their classmates.

I found when teaching huge classes of inadequately prepared students that I was faced with two unappealing options -- handing out overwhelming numbers of Ds and Fs or watering down the course material drastically. Unwilling to sabotage the educations of those few students who were genuinely ready for the course, I opted for the former.

This is the inevitable result of mandating a college preparatory track for those students unprepared for it. Either they will fail in unprecedented numbers or these “college preparatory� classes will be so diluted that they become remedial in all but name.

Altair Maine

Math teacher, North

Hollywood High School

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My former husband is a successful cabinetmaker. His passion for the craft was sparked while taking woodshop in junior high. He did not attend college upon graduation. Your story tore my heart out. I am opposed to this idea for reasons of justice, fairness and equality (three words nowhere in the vicinity of No Child Left Behind). The college track should be an option, not a mandate. Our future artists, musicians, mechanics ... and yes, cabinetmakers, are already being shortchanged by today’s high school curriculum. This mandate would only lessen the chance of a flame being sparked for the practical, industrial and fine arts L.A. Unified once nurtured.

Jeanine D’Elia

Granada Hills