Opinion

Core of the problem: Failure’s all-too-common

The Issue: The Common Core curriculum and tests that are being introduced in New York schools.

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Those who are on the front lines of the education system in this city have known all along that our children have been failing miserably for quite some time (“Spotlight on Failure,” Editorial, April 21).

The histrionics coming from the teachers’ union regarding testing is no more than a massive coverup of its own poor performance.

One would imagine that after finding out that our children rank so poorly among other nations in math and science, someone might care. This is not so in New York, where teachers only care about perks and pensions, not kids.

Theodore Miraldi

The Bronx

High-school grads not being college-ready is part of a tradition that goes back over 100 years.

More than half of Harvard freshmen failed the entrance exam in 1874. As a result of an analysis of essays, the Harvard Board of Overseers criticized high-school writing teachers for the students’ poor performance.

In 1930, Thomas Biggs of Teachers College wrote that high school English classes resulted in written English that was “in a large fraction of cases shocking in their evidence of inadequate achievement.”

If we believe this, our high-school students were terrible in 1874 and have been getting worse ever since.

Another interpretation is that there has been no decline in performance, we have always expected too much and are, for some reason, over-eager to scold students and schools.

Stephen Krashen

Professor Emertius

University of Southern

California

Los Angeles

I think that unions can serve an important function, but over the years I have derived a pretty good test for determining whether or not a policy makes sense.

If a policy provokes loud union opposition, like that of Richard Iannuzzi and the state teachers union, it is probably worthwhile.

Common Core is one such example. We must assess a problem before we can begin to solve it.

Teachers and the unions that control them must demonstrate with more than lip service that they have the best interests of our children at heart. Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati