This is the second of two rounds of letters in response to an Upshot article about fixing schools. The first round was published on Saturday.
To the Editor:
Re “Top Ideas for Fixing Schools, Ranked by the Experts” (The Upshot, Oct. 7):
Your expert survey rests on a premise that has undermined school improvement for decades: that better results come from choosing the right programs, rather than fixing the faulty machinery that public education rests on.
Walk into any classroom in the United States and you will see a familiar sight: a teacher, working alone in the classroom, delivering a single lesson to a group of 20 to 30 students in the same grade whose readiness to learn varies dramatically. This system wasn’t designed to bridge differences between students who enter the classroom as much as three or more grade levels below standard. Expecting it to do so is a recipe for frustration and disappointment.
If the problem is rooted in design, the solution requires more than replacement parts. Imagine teams of educators with distinct roles sharing responsibility for students, grouping and regrouping them by need rather than age so that each gets the instruction required to succeed. Ideas from the Times list, like tutoring and high-quality curriculum, would become core features of this system rather than add-ons vulnerable to budget cuts and implementation problems.
But we won’t get very far if we ask decision makers to rely on two-by-two charts. System redesign doesn’t fit on those charts. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right direction.
Ashley Jochim Redmond, Wash. The writer is a senior fellow for the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
To the Editor:
It was refreshing to see an honest, solutions-oriented report about American education and encouraging that small-group tutoring was labeled our most effective potential intervention. This is exactly right, but we must go further and fund specific programs for at-risk youth, like those in foster care or living in the shelter system.
Unsurprisingly, students in foster care underperform their peers academically, with lower test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment. Tutoring changes that.
The New York Foundling’s Road to Success program provides weekly tutoring to students in foster care, conducted by a full-time staff. The results: 98 percent of participants advance grades each year, all eventually graduate, and many enroll in college.
The experts are right: Tutoring works, even under the most stressful conditions. The next step is to scale this approach and extend it to other young people navigating complex circumstances, like America’s more than 1.5 million homeless K-12 students.
If we are going to expand tutoring, we have a moral responsibility to help students most in need. If we do, the evidence is clear: With a little support, they will thrive, for all our benefit.
Melanie Hartzog New York The writer is the chief executive of the New York Foundling.
To the Editor:
Of course disparity between schools is extreme! The way schools are funded in the United States is brutally unfair. Money should be allocated equitably so that all students have music classes, well-stocked libraries, safe school buildings, adequate supplies, etc. Not the current system where wealthy areas pay more in taxes and therefore get more for their schools while poor areas get so little.
Give every student the same amount of tax money. Of course the rich will always have more, but they can pay out of their personal resources, not our tax dollars.
Corinna Lewis Lexington, Ky.
To the Editor:
Your ranking of ideas for fixing schools gets an important point exactly right: Tutoring can be extraordinarily effective, particularly when it is frequent, targeted and delivered to students who need it most. Just as important is your concluding observation: Implementation matters.
I have spent the past six years watching that distinction play out through Teach for America’s Ignite Fellowship, which connects trained college students with small groups of K-12 students for tutoring during the school day. Across more than 200 schools in 50 communities, we have seen meaningful academic gains. In the course of just one semester, sixth graders made three times their expected growth in math, and elementary students reading at or above grade levels increased by 24 percent.
The model succeeds not simply because students receive learning tailored to their specific needs, but also because tutors are carefully selected and trained, supported by experienced educators and equipped to deliver instruction aligned with each school’s curriculum.
Successful programs are built on quality, consistency, strong relationships and deep partnership with educators.
Katie Tennessen Hooten Phoenix The writer is the founder of Teach for America’s Ignite Fellowship.
College’s Real Payoff
To the Editor:
Re “Which Majors Pay Off, and Where, and Which Don’t” (Business, Oct. 24):
Comparing graduates’ earnings by college and major offers useful information to students and families navigating the cost of higher education. But it also raises a larger question: Why do we continue to measure the value of college so narrowly?
Financial security matters enormously, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet an education’s return on investment cannot be captured by a paycheck alone. What about intellectual growth, meaningful work, civic engagement, strong relationships and the capacity to lead a flourishing life?
These outcomes are not beyond measurement. Gallup has long examined graduates’ well-being across dimensions including purpose, social connections, financial security and community engagement. And recent research conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities with the LearningWell Coalition found that students are motivated by purpose, identity development and personal growth.
We should provide transparent earnings information without allowing income to become the sole arbiter of educational worth. A democracy needs teachers, artists, social workers, scientists and philosophers, even when their contributions are not fully reflected in their salaries.
The question is not whether college pays. It is what we lose when we count only what pays.
Lynn Pasquerella Washington The writer is the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
A.I. Is Not Human
To the Editor:
Re “Stop Talking About A.I. as Though It’s Human,” by Leif Weatherby (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 5):
As an anthropologist who has written extensively about anthropomorphism, I’m pleased to see it so clearly critiqued. As the author remarks, applying this universal human tendency to A.I. is deeply misleading.
The author’s question about A.I. models — “Why are the experts on these technologies talking about them as if they had souls?” — may be rephrased as “Why do we anthropomorphize?”
Many answers have been offered, but I claim that anthropomorphism is a byproduct of an evolved, automatic human search for any humans, or traces or features of them, in our environment.
Amid chronic perceptual uncertainty, our involuntary strategy is to search with high sensitivity and a low threshold. The strategy often — as with A.I. — finds human features mistakenly, but the mistakes are usually cheap and the discoveries are invaluable. In the case of A.I., mistakes may be more costly.
Stewart Elliott Guthrie Boulder, Colo. The writer is a professor emeritus of anthropology at Fordham University.
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