Education letters 8/03

Merit pay without choice is mistake

Merit pay for teachers may be a good idea, but not in the current educational environment. Proponents argue that other professions have merit-based pay and that it works. In other professions, employers are held responsible to the needs of their customers who have options. In public education, though, customers don’t have choices. You go where you’re told.

If parents were allowed to choose where to send their kids freely, then merit pay would work. Paying more to better teachers for bringing in more kids is a sound idea, but one that only works when parents have choices.

Spencer Hughes, a Furman University student from Braselton

Open enrollment serves students and schools

Kudos to state Rep. Alisha Morgan and the General Assembly for enacting a public school open enrollment law. Our family recently returned to Georgia after five years in Colorado. That state has a well-established open enrollment law that allows parents to find a public school with a better educational fit for their child than the one down the street.

This initial skeptic saw two ways that open enrollment improved neighborhood schools. First, open enrollment evened out attendance at neighborhood schools as parents zoned for overcrowded schools placed their children in schools with lower-class sizes.

Second, open enrollment helped a new middle school principal clearly identify and correct a problem at her neighborhood school. Concerned that large numbers of students zoned for her school were choosing to attend another nearby school, the principal went to the district’s open enrollment office and discovered that rampant bullying was causing students to leave.

Parents’ ability to talk with their feet (and their students’ share of school funding) focuses a school leader’s attention on a problem much more effectively than any parent survey can.

Susan Drechsel, Marietta

Families deserve real choice in their schools

If the state Legislature was truly committed to providing parents with a choice in their children’s educations, legislators would back measures which would actually increase choice. If parents are to be given a real choice, no school districts should be allowed to opt out of Georgia’s school choice program.

Our Legislature should back vouchers so parents can send their children to schools more likely to meet the individual needs of their children. Legislators should also expand access to charter schools which are more efficient, provide smaller classes and offer better educations than many government-run schools.

Phred Barnet, Atlanta

Debate over language misses larger issue

Just as it was over 20 years ago, this ongoing banter about the value of foreign language education is vacant and pointless. High school students who are compelled to study a language to get an academic degree rarely acquire any practical utility from their studies and certainly do not become “citizens of the world.”

One hour per day in the course of a school year is simply not enough immersion to learn to function in a foreign language. Serious language students go to language schools. They put in the time and practice necessary to actually get a valid grasp of the target language — and this begins by following the same elementary steps a native language learner takes in the early stages of language acquisition, something that is never done in high school and college language classes.

And incidentally, it doesn’t matter if it is French or German or any other language for that matter. Secondary school is the wrong platform for learning the four skills of any second language.

Gary Kolar, Atlanta