"I appreciate that someone is looking at making some changes"

Bad with math

If you take 6 years and divide them by 1 test, it doesn't square

Editor, The Times:

As a parent of five children, when I hear state education officials quoted as saying "six years is not a long time for making revisions" in our math standards, I am shocked. Six years is an entire middle-school and high-school career for a student.

"State unveiling draft of math transformation" [Times, Local News, Dec. 2] missed the objectivity that would have come from listening to the parents and students who suffer the ramifications of our state's "experiment" with math education.

The existing standards are very much lacking in content and rigor, as shown by the very expensive study the Legislature commissioned last spring. However, the article said content was not the problem.

The article also stated "the goal is to realign what is being taught in the classroom with what is being tested on the WASL." This is a frightening goal, considering the WASL asks our 10th-graders to perform math problems that California eighth-graders would be expected to know (and 50 percent of our 10th-graders can't do it). If someone told me this was the goal, I would question their awareness of what makes for a meaningful measurement of student learning. And I would bring that discrepancy to the attention of the public.

Our governor wants more students to get to college and be educated to become contributing members in a thriving economy. How can we do this if we are not even succeeding in teaching our students eighth-grade math? Our state first needs to make the state assessment a valid measure, aligning with college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT, before changing everything to align with WASL.

— Shaun Brown, Liberty Lake

The obtuse angle

I was excited to read "State unveiling draft of math transformation"; however, I was dismayed to see that there is no "transformation," but just more of the same.

According to the article, this transformation is based on the state board's independent review of our math standards. However, the "transformation" is missing the point. Kathy Seeley, senior fellow at the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas, claims her new work is based on this report, but her new work doesn't focus on improving content. The board's report says, "there is insufficient emphasis on core mathematical content. Some math should be taught earlier in a student's schooling, and some crucial math is missing completely. Simply put, Washington is not focused enough on the important fundamental content topics in mathematics."

However, Seeley says, "The problem with the old standards was not so much the content but how difficult they were to use by both parents and teachers."

I appreciate that someone is looking at making some changes, but reporting should dig deeper to understand that this new offering is just the same old "new math" that is leaving our kids behind.

— Steve Hitch, Redmond

Do the geography

Dear Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction: Thank you for spending only $770,000 of taxpayer dollars on the draft math-standards report developed by the Texas-based Dana Center.

But can we Washingtonians just use the world-class-rated California math standards? They have a nice Web site and everything. Half of us are from California anyway.

— Jeff Heckathorn, Mill Creek

Home division

Incongruent result

"Tax deduction fairness" [editorial, Dec. 11] discusses the annual congressional spat over whether residents in sales-tax-dependent states will be able to deduct their sales tax from their federal returns.

The Times believes they should. I have written my congressional representatives several times on the matter of making it possible for taxpayers who do not itemize to also be able to deduct sales tax, but this real issue of fairness continues to be ignored.

It seems that this is another "tax break for the rich." By this I mean that the vast majority of those who itemize are homeowners whose mortgage-interest and property-tax deductions enable them to itemize.

As for those of us who are financially unable to own homes (a good percentage of Washingtonians) and consequently do not have the big tax deductions associated with home-ownership, we take the standard deduction. It appears we are being ignored.

It is grossly unfair to exclude us from being able to benefit from a sales-tax deduction because we are not able to own homes and it should be and would be simple to include the rest of us who also pay sales tax in Washington.

— Bruce Larson, Bellevue

Slick with numbers

The distributive property of oil

The Department of Ecology's estimate of 6 million to 8 million gallons of oil entering Puget Sound annually is five times higher than NOAA's 1988 estimate and only three times less than what the 2003 National Research Council (NRC) estimated was the average for oil entering the sea from land-based sources for all of North America between 1990 and 1999 ["Stormwater's damage to Puget Sound huge, report says," Local News, Dec. 1].

Despite the dubious nature of such estimates, Ecology compares the amounts of such chronic releases of refined oil with those of the devastating impacts of persistent oil spilled from ships that could be released in an unfortunate moment. In addition, Ecology did not include estimates of the tons of oil and grease it permits refineries to discharge on an annual basis.

A soon-to-be-released government report documents that 26,000 gallons of oil still remain in Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez spill of 18 years ago. Significant spills in San Francisco Bay, South Korea and the Black Sea demonstrate our continued risk and inability to effectively respond ["Giant oil spill blackens coast of South Korea," News, Dec. 9, "Worst SF Bay spill in nearly 20 years declared emergency," News, Nov. 9, and see "380-gallon diesel spill from fishing vessel in Tacoma," Local News, Dec. 11].

That is not to say we should be ignoring the serious problems posed by stormwater runoff; it's just that Ecology should make the point without diminishing the fact that we still have work to do, such as passing Sen. Maria Cantwell's bill requiring that the maritime industry fund the Neah Bay tug that assisted the Matson Kauai last Monday.

— Fred Felleman, Friends of the Earth, Seattle

Holiday figures

Work on some fractions

On my evening walk, I have been enjoying the seasonal lights. But tonight I spied a three-legged reindeer, a one-legged reindeer and a headless Santa.

Be kind to your luminescent lawn pets and show some compassion. Please, fix them or pull the plug.

Happy Holidays.

— Dale Peterson, Issaquah