LAUSD, Cal State Remedial Classes

On March 26, The Times reported a Cal State system finding that 80% of incoming freshmen need remediation in math and English. Two days later, principals across the Los Angeles Unified School District were notified that remedial classes in high school English, math and science are to be phased out by the year 2001.

Unfortunately, this policy hurts the very people it is designed to help. High schools today need to offer not fewer, but many more, remedial classes in English, math and other basic subjects. Students with poor reading and math skills need smaller classes with a concerted effort at remediation when they are still young. Such students need an opportunity to master the skills and problem-solving techniques necessary to succeed in higher-level classes.

One day these students may have a chance to succeed at the state university level. Instead, the LAUSD is eliminating remedial courses. Students in need of remediation will face a continued cycle of failure until all courses are bureaucratically “watered down” to even lower levels. Phasing out remedial education in the public high schools only to have it reinstated at the college level is a perfect example of how not to solve a problem.

LORI McNEAL REECE

Los Angeles

* There could be a simple answer to the “unprepared” freshmen at Cal State colleges. Why not use the placement tests given by the colleges to the incoming freshmen as a teaching guide in high school? Math and English teachers could see what their students are expected to have mastered. They might even use some of these as tests in their finals.

There would be little question that the students were prepared and maybe it would become a yardstick for the schools’ abilities to prepare their graduates.

VICTOR GREEN

Anaheim

* Once again the issue of remedial education has raised its disgraceful head in the Cal State system, and the pious platitudes flow forth from administrators who refuse to admit that unqualified students are admitted for one simple reason--they are an economic unit essential to the system’s survival.

Without belaboring the lack of entrance standards that has created this situation, I pose a single question to the powers that be in the CSU system--why should taxpayers fund millions of dollars in remedial classes in the CSU system when students could take those courses at less than half the price to taxpayers in the state’s excellent community college system?

JAMES E. NILES

President, Board of Trustees,

Mesa Union School District

Camarillo