From Sunday's Newsday:
My first year teaching was at a Catholic school with a sizable population of Protestant students. Their parents spent their hard-earned money, not to get them a Catholic education, but to get them out of the "failing" public schools.
What amazes me is that none of the education reform experts, including your editorial staff, seem to have any clue about what these students were escaping. They weren't fleeing "execrable" teachers. They were fleeing their fellow students.
Fire all the teachers you want (and there are some who should go), but if you do not grapple with this inescapable fact, education reform does not have a prayer.
A while back a picture appeared in your paper of a Hempstead student attacking another one with a two-by-four. You can sack every bad teacher and even disband teacher unions, but if you think it will make a significant change in test scores, I have a bridge I am looking to unload.
Patrick Flynn
Wading River
The rantings of a teacher who retired from the classroom but not from education.
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