We need more investment in literacy programs

Thank you for the editorial page focus on education, and for the ongoing support for early learning [“Losing kids on the path to prosperity,” Opinion, Jan. 29]. Losing kids on the path to prosperity describes the education continuum from cradle to college, but doesn’t show that disparities are measurable by age 9 months.

Research demonstrates the amazing capacities of babies’ brains, if parents and caregivers nurture their development. Ideally the illustration would start with a baby cradled in her parents’ arms, and the action plan would highlight supporting parents as their child’s first teacher. Literacy is a needed state focus, as one-half of kindergartners, and one-third of third graders have skills below grade level.

The governor’s budget eliminates state funding for Reach Out and Read, an evidence-based early literacy program in doctors’ offices. At checkups from 6 months through 5 years, parents learn how to support literacy at home, and children receive a new book.

Fourteen studies show that it works: parents read aloud more often, children have improved language skills. The state invests $300,000 in Reach Out and Read. Serving over 81,000 young children and families, it is the largest early-learning program in the state, and costs less than $2 for a child in a year of state funds.

Doctors want to help “fix” our educational system by supporting parents, but we need the state to continue to invest in Reach Out and Read.

— Jill Sells, director, Reach Out and Read Washington State, Seattle

We need an improved prioritization of state spending

Your Jan. 29 editorial page on public education in Washington was excellent. I particularly appreciated Brad Smith’s point [on the facing page] that the success of public education in our state should be outcomes based, i.e. student success.

The one drawback to Smith’s guest commentary is the proposal of considering a “temporary” sales-tax increase as part of the solution. Easy for a Microsoft billionaire like Smith to say, but state citizens and small businesses simply cannot afford more taxes.

More revenue is not the problem. Raising taxes impairs economic growth because it diverts resources that would otherwise go toward promoting true economic growth (prosperity).

What we need is improved prioritization of state spending, shifting resources to areas that support and sustain long-term prosperity, such as education, and reducing resources that detract from prosperity, such as excess government, bureaucracy and administrative overhead. This is all part of the broader context of economic trade-offs in a state of limited resource availability.

We can’t have it all. Do we as a people want true prosperity or a perpetuation of big government?

— Robert E. Toomey, Sammamish

We need to have a commitment to early learning

The Seattle Times is correct in identifying early learning as the foundation for later success in school and in life in the latest installment in the “Just Fix It” series.

Research confirms what I have seen in my 35 years in law enforcement: many of the kids lost on the “path to prosperity” are lost before they ever arrive at kindergarten. The well-documented achievement gap is a product of a readiness gap that too often results in a child arriving at kindergarten without the skills necessary to achieve academic success and prepare for a productive life.

As sheriff, I’m seriously concerned about the number of kids who do not graduate from high school. Dropouts are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than youth who earn a high-school diploma.

And since high-quality early learning is one of the most effective dropout-prevention programs available, I’m also concerned about the thousands of low-income children who are left out of these programs due to lack of funding.

During these tough budget times, our state must at the very least maintain its commitment to early learning.

It’s good for kids, our schools and public safety.

— John Lovick, Snohomish County sheriff, Everett

We need students to be motivated to learn

I too agree with the editorial about the needs of schools but I’d like to add a few comments.

My 33-plus years as a school librarian gave me interesting observations on every teacher and their issues. In all that time I rarely met many bad teachers. I met a lot of frustrated ones. All of them would have succeeded if the schools and parents were supportive and the students had more desire.

Kate Riley’s column and the one by Brad Smith do not answer those needs.

All the blame is on the teachers and none on the students. Smith must really love more technology for schools because it is good for business. Microsoft loves to sell machines to schools but few really notice how education has actually dropped since their introduction.

Without Wikipedia, learning is stifled. And we know how much time students spend desperately learning to win at online games. Bill Gates did both good and bad for our students. He gave them tools to find a lot of information and provided them with games to distract them from it.

So now education is not good unless it is fun and certainly not hard work. A football star puts in as much on the field, so we need more trophies and cheerleaders for the classroom?

None of this gives the student motivation to learn. We do not succeed in valuing education for a future and reward students for failure by buying them more machines to play with and getting rid of teachers they do not like.

Throwing money at schools is not the answer. More desire for an education is.

— Mike Hendrix, Tacoma

We need to work together to have successful students

Having spent most of the last 20 years in the “Bermuda Triangle” of middle school, I know only too well about the “sink or swim” period.

Too often students enter middle school with serious deficiencies in reading, writing and math along with a lack of critical-thinking skills and poor study skills.

Somehow, somewhere, someone concluded that during their short stay in middle school “the magic” would happen and students would emerge reading at grade level, writing proficiently, solving higher-level math problems, thinking critically, and having both the content knowledge and study skills necessary for high-school success.

All this was supposed to take place in an academic environment where grades don’t matter: a student can fail every single class in middle school and will still be moved on to high school. In other words, we send them into the deep end of the pool before they can swim. Is it any wonder they sink or just tread water: drop out or just eke by, unqualified to go on to college?

Promoting students to high school when they haven’t mastered the basics in elementary and middle school just sets them up for failure. Lowering the graduation requirements isn’t the answer. If we have a shortage of surgeons, should we make it easier to get a medical degree?

“The standard” is the average, what we want the average high school student to know and be able to do.

If we want excellence, lowering the standard will only take us in the opposite direction. The “it takes a village” adage is never more applicable than when talking about education.

It’s about parents, teachers, administrators, business and the general public working together and holding one another and our children accountable.

— Janis Case, Edmonds

The implications of underfunding public schools

Thanks for the editorial highlighting the implications of underfunding Washington’s K-12 school system. The Seattle Times editorial board’s voice carries significant weight with community-opinion leaders and I appreciate your attention to one of our state’s most critical issues. And third-grade reading is certainly a significant measure of success.

However, I think your fact checker should have been more diligent. The piece states that “ ... a third of Washington’s third-grade students read below grade level.”

If you look at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s website, you will see that figure is actually 26.9 percent rather than one third.

It’s not enough, but please give the schools credit for every reader.

— Jeanne Harmon, executive director, Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession