Bravo to Lateagain for bringing up the issue no politician seems to want to address: the appalling quality of teacher education in U.S. colleges and universities.Yes, there are exceptions and many brave and competent educators out there trying to make a difference.I especially applaud the second career professionals who go into teaching.

Take another look at the depressing reading scores in our schools. The least a school district should do is guarantee adequate reading instruction to the community it serves. Now look at the growth of Sylvan, LIndamood-Bell and other supplementary tutoring programs in recent years. We're not talking about exclusive private schools and wanting to shield our kids from social realities--just wanting to ensure that our children 1)get a basic grounding in literacy and 2)learn in a safe environment.

Instant improvements to public education? Provide at risk schools with the money they need to attract qualified professionals into the system and provide adequate resources for them to teach with. This, by the way, includes insuring that non-special ed students are getting just as much attention as the special ed students.

In the wake of the lack of money, people have tried all sorts of experiments with America's school systems. (Great article in the NY Times magazine on New Orleans and the charter school experiment.) While these are understandable and may yield results, the old machine would work fine if people just paid some attention and provided some money to make it work.

(Incidentally, to those that think this is an L.A. thing, I assure you it is not. In the northeast, class divisions between the cities and the suburbs are particularly stark. A quick perusal of major Supreme Court cases on education will also reveal that many prominent integration plans that were challenged came out of the midwest.)

Ah, a West Sider ;) Now I definitely believe that your neck of the woods might be more racially homogenous... (uppity Heights bias? Or simple awareness of the fact that the Heights are much more racially diverse than most suburbs on the West Side -- or, indeed, the country?)

Anyway, I definitely agree with your point about political diversity at Said Jesuit Institution. And they have some phenomenal teachers there -- I was jealous that my brother got to take multivariable calculus with some guy who had a PhD in math and just felt like teaching high school, while I had to truck on over to Cleveland State my senior year to do the same. And, while the demographics of the school are pretty much the opposite of the demographics of the neighborhood, I do think it's really good that so many of these teenage boys who might otherwise not know what downtown Cleveland even looks like have to do things like take the Rapid each day and hobnob with people from very different circumstances. I think they could do more to engage with the neighborhood, but at least they try.

And, as for your letter about tutoring places -- I agree completely. I worked as a private SAT tutor while I was in college (not in Cleveland), and private tutoring is really kind of a racket. Sure, there are legitimate tutoring centers designed to help low-achieving or learning-disabled students who need more time and attention than they might get in the classroom, but the recent boom in tutoring centers (and private tutors) has really been aimed at upper-class families who want to be absolutely sure that little Johnny and Susie will get into an Ivy League. What I found most atrocious as a tutor was that the impetus for getting these kids into programs came entirely from the parents, and was often way out of line with the kids' actual abilities -- like the mother who said she would only pay for Harvard, Yale, or Georgetown, when her kid, while not an idiot, didn't have a chance in hell of getting into any of those schools; or the father who enrolled his daughter in SAT math tutoring just to make absolutely certain that she would get into a top school -- in spite of the fact that she earned perfect or near-perfect scores on all the diagnostic tests and didn't need our help in the least! Both families were really just throwing their money away, albeit for entirely different reasons, and the only purpose for it was to assuage parental anxiety.

Sigh. Education is such a mixed bag...

I just typed a long letter to you but it got erased b/c we turned the corner on the day in California, so I'm not going to redo at length. In a nutshell:

1. Can't say specifically where I teach after I've trashed the teachers. Generally west side. But remember I'm a substitute so I have lots of schools.

2. Said Jesuit high school still more diverse than my own southwest suburban high school. Can you believe? By a mile. Socioeconomically as well. Also politically: teachers there are surprisingly liberal except for the theology department, but of course there's a big divide among the student body. My son put it this way: 1/2 the kids are apolitical. Of the kids who are informed and care (the other half), 1/2 are liberal and 1/2 are conservative. But when there are fake elections or whatever, the 1/2 who don't care go with the conservatives b/c of their parents or the theology department. But the teachers go with the left. I have no issue with this kind of diversity. It's good for my kids to develop arguments, think independently, or even learn a thing or two.

3. I too went to a private girls' high school, in NY. Loved it. And no doubt influences my unwillingness to knee-jerk dismiss all private school kids and parents and teachers as worthless and shallow. But I'm not so failing in imagination that I can't fathom public school students and teachers also having excellent experiences. Just that my own anecdotal, first-hand experience as a teacher demonstrates very poor quality. But as I've mentioned, there's a big disparity b/t districts.

What districts have you been teaching in? My mother was at Mayfield for almost 15 years, and my father is with Orange (although he teaches at Beech Brook, the county special ed program that just happens to be situated in Orange -- which, nicely, means an Orange salary for him, and the program is extremely diverse). Anyway, in her later years at Mayfield my mother noticed a huge influx of African-American students (in addition to the usual high numbers of Russian immigrants).

My brother went to that same downtown Jesuit school as your son. Where "diversity" means less than 5% African-American. Um, no. That place is notorious for its LACK of diversity. I went to the all-girls Catholic school in the Heights, where it was 40% African-American -- not quite representative of the demographics of the area, which is about 50/50 black/white, but a whole hell of a lot better than that Jesuit place downtown. Of course, the Heights aren't exactly anyone's idea of lily-white suburbia anyway...

And, to neptuneflame: Here's an example for you. At my parochial high school (where I went not because my parents didn't believe in the public school system in our city -- all my friends went there, and did very well -- but because they were deeply religious), we had a number of science teachers who were not certified teachers, but who had been practicing scientists, usually with master's degrees in the field. They were all invariably older women with high-achieving husbands who had moved around a lot for his job, gotten tired of new labs all the time, and decided to teach science instead. They were also the greatest teachers I ever had, by a LOT. A lot a lot. They were all (and I went to a small school, so I'm only talking about three people here -- not a representative sample, but still) loving, patient, understanding people who had gravitated towards teaching because of those traits, but who all had an incredible depth of knowledge to be able to challenge even the brightest students.

Conversely, I had a physics teacher who had a teaching degree and certificate and who didn't know calculus. Let me repeat: my physics teacher did not know calculus. I took an advanced math class the summer before my senior year of high school and ended up more or less teaching all my classmates the math they needed to understand the material. This teacher -- certified! Trained in education! Taught how to reach students! -- was absolutely the worst I ever had, because she was incapable of explaining even the simplest detail from the book. But, ah, she knew how to "discipline"!

Anyone who thinks mastery of the subject is secondary deserves to be taught physics by someone who doesn't know calculus. It is every bit as essential to being a good teacher as being a caring person and strong communicator, and among the people my age (mid-20s) I know who have gone into teaching, all the ones who have succeeded most brilliantly have had a degree in their fields. Some have had an additional teaching degree as well and some have not, but all have a degree in their fields. The ones I know who studied education as undergraduates and went right to work as certified teachers? They have yet to impress their students or administrations in the same way. And while not everyone I know who went into teaching with a degree in another field has stayed there, those who didn't succeed at least had a way out -- while those with only teaching degrees are stuck being mediocre teachers for a whole lot longer.