Letters to the Editors

Florida schools' problems begin in Tallahassee

In a recent speech at St. Petersburg College, Gov. Jeb Bush cited the fact that 47 percent of fourth-graders in Florida's public schools read below grade level. He charged that our elementary school teachers were not teaching reading properly. His concerns lead us to the question: What can be done to remedy this situation?

The answers lie in the results of extensive research done on how children learn to read. One point that must first be considered is that many of the "how-to-read" problems are settled at an early preschool age. At that time, pathways for reading abilities begin to form in the brain, and, if parents simply read to their children on a regular basis, those developmental pre-literacy processes start very nicely. If officials in Tallahassee really want to help, they should divert funding to help increase parental awareness of this important first step and/or provide more preschool programs.

The next stage is prekindergarten. A long-term University of Wisconsin study of the effects of good prekindergarten programs on Chicago's youths demonstrated that children who had been involved in them did better throughout their academic careers than those who had skipped pre-K. Good reading comprehension, of course, is essential in these results. What is Tallahassee doing to bolster this program? Nothing. Pre-K is a program that is not available to all children. It is also a program that is hanging by a thread from Florida's county school systems.

By the time children enter the first grade, many of the foundations for potential growth in reading ability should have been established. In fact, a great deal of research has been done on rescuing first-graders who are not grasping pre-reading concepts. It has resulted in an effective program called Reading Recovery. Despite its excellent results, this program, too, is disappearing from the Florida educational scene -- a victim of Tallahassee's unwise allocation of funds.

Small class sizes and teachers' aides also help the emerging reader. They both provide opportunities for more individual attention. Unfortunately, a lack of funding from Tallahassee is making class sizes larger and teachers' aides expendable in class after class.

By the time children are 9, it becomes much more difficult to teach them to read. A reduction in funding for the above steps, therefore, puts enormous pressure on fourth-grade teachers and makes Tallahassee's demands that they flunk the three in 10 fourth-graders who fail the FCAT test irresponsible, ineffective and brutal by modern academic standards.

Gov. Bush insisted, however, that the problem is that teachers are "not teaching phonics." This assertion is not true. Phonics is more widely used than he realizes, but, more important, it is only a part of the aforementioned larger picture.

We have a problem, but it's not in the schools. It's basically in Tallahassee. Our governor and senators should be pointing fingers at each other, not the teachers. That's where the reforms must begin; they should not be playing politics with such a vital issue.
-- Robert Baron, Port Orange

A way to even kids' chances

Re: Balancing vouchers, religion and public education by Martha Minow, March 3.

This well-written article suggests that vouchers to most parochial schools may well alleviate the educational problems faced by roughly one-third of our children who come from impoverished and/or single-parent families. Unfortunately, it does not recognize that families in our culture have experienced a major structural change since the last world war, when the "normal" family consisted of a male worker, a female homemaker and several children who were nurtured and brought up by a mother and father who also prepared them for public school at age 6.

In those days, relatively little was known about the physiological development of the human brain. With advances in medicine and technology, we now believe the basic structure of the brain is largely accomplished by the 10th year of life, yet public school still starts at age 6.

Minow writes, "Social science evidence has also shown that the socioeconomic status of a student body is the best predictor of individual student success; unfortunately most students of color attend schools that draw students from poor families."

If this is so, wouldn't we more logically solve our educational problems by requiring children from those families to attend public school at age 2 or 3? With specially trained teachers using the latest educational toys, and with training aids and proper parental authority, such children could be equally ready to enter the first grade with a relatively even chance of success as those children brought up under more favorable conditions.

In the long run, more than the costs of such a program would easily be recovered by the reduction of money now being spent on courts and prisons due to our undereducated and thus unemployable youth resorting to criminal activity to make a living.
-- W.J. Cichanski, Clearwater

Equality in public schools

Re: Balancing vouchers, religion and public education, by Martha Minow, March 3.

I notice the key word in this article is "equality." She mentions that vouchers could be the way to acquire a quality education for many disadvantaged children in our country, provided that we strictly weed out the religious aspects (if at all possible) in the education process before allowing for government-funded assistance. She could be correct by stating that some studies show that students opting for voucher-funded private schools fare better than those students remaining in the public school system. Maybe that becomes the point. Should a minority of the public school students be permitted to escape to a possibly better school system through public tax dollars while the majority of disadvantaged children remain in increasingly substandard schools? This remedy doesn't sound like "equality" to me; it sounds more like divisiveness.

What I believe we really need is greater support and tax dollars for America's public school system, and then "equality" can be realized for all our children.
-- Glenn A. Paul, Indian Rocks Beach

Make insurance a standard for waste

Pat Oliphant's Feb. 28 cartoon showing how pollution cleanup is being foisted on the taxpayers is right on target. There is, however, an alternative that will be effective even when the big boys tell us cleanup funds have run out. Take an example that the Times recently brought to our attention: Experts seek options on piping phosphate waste into preserve, Jan. 11.

When the Piney Point Phosphate Plant in Manatee County went bankrupt, it left 27-million gallons of effluent for which the taxpayers must assume cleanup cost. Prior discharge had been dumped into Bishop Harbor, endangering the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve. The company's treatment had apparently been inadequate to remove all acid. Now the remaining waste must be disposed of promptly to avoid further pollution of Tampa Bay. All solutions involve considerable expense.

If, as part of a conscientious licensing process, the government had required adequate bonding and/or insurance, the cleanup costs would have been paid by stable entities. This is not an isolated case but an example of the importance of routinely including bonding and/or insurance as an integral part of licensing. Effluence should always be treated sufficiently to bring it to the same quality as the intake water.

These bond/insurance standards should be applicable to all types of industrial waste, thus mitigating taxes and onerous litigation.
-- Mary E. May, secretary, Sun City Center/Eagle Audubon Conservation Committee, Sun City Center

Strange manatee rhetoric

Re: Manatee debate creates rough seas, Feb. 25.

I think Rep. Lindsay Harrington may want to look up the word "prolific" in the dictionary. To say that the manatee, an animal that typically gives birth to one offspring after a gestation period of 13 months, is a "very, very prolific animal" is, at best, a gross exaggeration. What's worse, this person is the chairman of the state House Natural Resources Committee.

The manatee interferes with one of the state's most popular leisure activities: boating. Put simply, this is the whole debate. If we cannot, as humans, make small concessions to ensure the survival of this species, I'm afraid it may be an indictment of our future. "That is the big picture."
-- Pete Hines, Tampa

Let's have a, you know, contest

Re: Listen, dudes: At job interviews, like, chill, Feb. 24.

I was not surprised to read your recent article in the Tampa Bay Jobs section telling us that experts have noticed an increase in inappropriate language in job interviews, mostly by younger job seekers. For some time, I have decried the slipshod language that has bulldozed itself into the conversation of people in all walks of life.

While the newspaper article principally addresses Generation X job-seekers, I am glad the writer added that this downturn of communication skills is not limited to the 20-to-30 age group because one hears these "no-no" words and expressions from just about everyone, including baby boomers and the older generations.

Regardless of age, though, it seems that job candidates who pepper their talk with "like" and "you know" will automatically be rejected by some interviewers. Other language that annoys these would-be employers includes the expressions "totally," "cool," "bummer," and "it's awesome."

One interviewer said it bothers him that "you're welcome" has been replaced by people under 30 with phrases such as "no problem." Another spoke of a 24-year-old woman who ended most sentences with "and stuff."

Happily, there have been efforts in recent years to counter what once was called "the insidious proliferation of the youthful subdialect Mallspeak." Awareness seems to be the key. After a University of Nebraska School of Journalism graduate counted 117 "you knows" during a 60-minute radio show, he was instrumental in starting a "you know" contest open to students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The graduate, Barney Oldfield, donated cash awards for the contest. A high school senior from Geneva, Neb., won $1,000 for taping a 15-minute radio interview during which the phrase "you know" was uttered 61 times.

Can anything be done to raise awareness of these problem speech patterns that are so pervasive in today's relaxed society? Perhaps we need a countrywide "you know" contest.
-- Clara Morabito, Largo

Information for good health

Even with the continuing spate of articles and advertisements about the negative effects of cholesterol on health, no one mentions the fact that cholesterol is found only in animal-based foods like meat or milk. There is no cholesterol in the vegetable kingdom. So, though foods like avocados or olive oil may be high in fat, they contain no cholesterol. There is no cholesterol in fruits, nuts, grains or beans. It is much easier to make an "informed choice" if you are actually informed. Mother always said, "Good health is the greatest wealth."
-- Herb Shapiro, Brooksville

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