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...

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.)

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.

Public schools are forced to teach towards the standardized tests, and this leaves very little room for actual learning. Generally, they simply teach how to pass the test. There is also the issue of school vouchers, which this article does not address.

Education is the most important gift we can give our children. Yet I work at a community college where the students (high school graduates) don't know how to write complete sentences, how to structure a paragraph, let alone an essay, and are intimidated by any assignment that doesn't come with a detailed outline. Abstract thinking is something they have never encountered. Granted, I'm not encountering the top ten percent of any graduating class, but then I was under the impression that a good education is something every student should be provided with. Condidering my on-going experience with the products of public education, I can't accept the rose-tinted view given here.

In the United States, middle class people like Loh generally have decent, even very good schools to send their children. Perhaps L.A. presents unique problems like New York city might present to the middle-class. However, the reality is that most middle-class people will be able to send their child to a good public school full of other middle-class children. Do we really need a rallying cry for that?

The real problem with public schools occurs at the poor end of the spectrum. Poor people generally have access to the least resources and this extends to schools. Sadly, their children will present the highest needs creating an enormous imbalance in which the "haves" continue to have and the "have nots" slip further behind. Until the day that our state and federal governments gets serious about meeting the educational needs of all children, this will continue to happen.