Readers write

Responses to “Easy grades, failing grads.” News, May 3.

Learn it in high school

Colleges should not be responsible for teaching students the knowledge that they failed to learn in high school. If high school graduates do not have the basic English and math skills needed for college, why do colleges admit them? To admit such students is a waste of both taxpayers’ money and college resources. Such students should at their own expense do post-high school work until they have the necessary knowledge and skills to gain admission to a college.

It is sad that students who intend to go to college did not use the high school years to prepare themselves. Of course, with teachers so busy inflating grades and building self-esteem, perhaps the students thought that they were college-ready.

John Wells, Mableton

Costing us dearly

Why are Georgia citizens not up in arms over this waste of tax money? We are paying for students to learn English and math (and other key subjects) in high school —- and then we have to pay again for them to learn the same material in expensive college remedial classes. If they can learn the skills a year later in college, they certainly could (and should) have learned them a year earlier in high school! The problem of teachers being pressured to pass the buck —- I mean, the student —- from year to year is costing us dearly, not only in dollars, but in wasted opportunities for learning progress. Those years in high school and early college when the basic skills are not mastered prevent students from building on those skills to the more sophisticated levels they need to succeed in our current world.

Angelika Pohl of Decatur is founder and president of Better Testing and Evaluations

Conway should remember the lessons of Prohibition

If Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway really wants to get rid of outlaw drug dealers (“Drug sweep hits 11 metro houses,” Metro, April 30), he better remember the lessons of alcohol Prohibition —- particularly the fact that Eliot Ness and the Prohibition agents never put the bootleggers out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult alcohol use ended the reign of the booze barons.

The simple truth that history teaches is that prohibiting a substance with a market share only helps career criminals who dominate the drug black market created by lunatic drug laws.

Enforcing drug prohibition increases the price of illegal drugs hundreds of times, making the drug business one of the most profitable endeavors on earth. So much money can be made that no amount of enforcement can stop eager replacements from fighting to their last breath to take the place of those who die or go to prison before them.

The plain truth is that drug cartels could not stay in business without America’s brain-dead drug prohibition policy.

Ralph Givens, Daly City, Calif.

Georgia should ‘secede’? What would Good Ol’ Abe say?

The feeling of 18 percent of Georgians that we should “secede” from the United States (“Political Insider” online, May 2) must have Abraham Lincoln rolling in his grave. I thought that we settled that question with the Civil War.

This country is indeed in trouble, but individual states leaving is not the answer. We will sink or swim as a United States of America and not as separate states. There is no way that any individual state could survive. We will survive and prosper as a United States, period.

Bill Burns, Stone Mountain

MARTA always gets the shaft

When it was announced federal funds were going to be distributed as stimulus money, those who are in charge of the upkeep of our area roads called out in their great “need” while MARTA decided it would actually cut back on its services. While plans are being developed for laying more pavement in the upkeep of our roads on the premise that this will provide more jobs, many MARTA employees are being threatened by impending job loss due to a lack of adequate funding. Why is this always the case in metro Atlanta? Why do we always let transit take the fall while we focus all of our positive attention on our road system? Area transit deserves to have at least as much stimulus funding as our local roadways so we will not only be creating jobs; we will be preserving jobs. If we refuse to once again leave MARTA in the lurch and provide it with the money it requires to operate efficiently, we will save employees who operate the system while also aiding those who desperately need MARTA to get to their jobs each day.

Will Lance, Atlanta

‘Zigzags’ no cure-all

I read with skepticism about the state of Virginia’s attempt to reduce speeds at pedestrian crossings by painting zigzag lines on the road (“Zigzags meant to reduce speeding,” News, May 5). As a resident of an intown neighborhood that has implemented numerous passive devices attempting to reduce speed, I have witnessed first-hand that once motorists become familiar with the streetscape, these methods become effective only at hampering emergency vehicles. Until municipalities and neighborhood associations realize that the only tried and true method of reducing speed is an active police presence with speed limit enforcement, they should at least include educating pedestrians to look both ways before crossing the street.

David Holloway, Atlanta