Letters to the Editor

The Nov. 14 article on the math achievement gap ended with, "You give kids two years of poor teaching, and it puts them at risk for the rest of their school-aged life." It's a powerful statement, grounded in current research. Good teaching is the most influential school-related predictor of student success.

I work with an organization that advocates for good teaching in all Washington classrooms. We know that we can improve mathematics achievement just as we have improved reading achievement -- and we should.

Washington's students need teachers who understand deeply the skills, concepts and processes of mathematics, and -- just as important -- how to teach mathematics to students with a wide variety of backgrounds, skills and learning needs.

Based on our research (www.cstp-wa.org), we know Washington needs:

Local adoption of instructional materials that match the rigorous mathematics expected by our assessment system.

Local decisions to assign only truly qualified educators to teach mathematics.

Local decisions to assign the very best teachers to struggling students.

Local and state investments in ongoing professional learning for all mathematics teachers, focused on the needs of today's students, related to today's standards and appropriate to the expertise of each teacher.

The vast majority of Washington teachers remain in this state for the duration of their careers. Investing in teachers will pay off for students and for our community.

Jeanne Harmon
Executive director
Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession
Bremerton

MONORAIL

Voting it down is a missed opportunity

Yahoo! The monorail is dead. Now what? By denying the permits necessary to build, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels with the support of many of the City Council proved their ultimate responsibility for the voter-approved elevated transit system. But where were they before all the necessary right-of-way was acquired? Why didn't they crack open the secret meetings that led this thing to ruin. Killing off the monorail was done by the mayor in a fit of pure expediency -- no courage required.

This month's vote was virtually meaningless. Now what? Every transit option put forward is trashed by opponents as insufficient to solve the city's traffic problems.

No one system will solve the city's transportation problems. It will take long years of expensive construction to keep Seattle livable as more and more people move in. The monorail is a missed opportunity unless someone at the city comes to their senses and realizes that there is a route that is ready for construction. Twenty years from now we'll either be glad someone had some real leadership and got a transit line built to serve the western half of the city or we'll be talking about how cheap it would have been to do it back then.

Kurt Engstrom
Seattle

SNOQUALMIE PASS

Banning trucks will make holiday travel much better

Here is something Gov. Christine Gregoire can actually do to ease the pain over Thanksgiving. Interstate 90 through Snoqualmie Pass may have 30-mile-long traffic tie-ups. This is not acceptable.

If trucks were banned from I-90 for the entire weekend, then traffic may actually move a little. As an appeasement to the trucking industry, she could relax the tax on diesel for a month.

Anthony Sarno
Mukilteo

HEALTH CARE

Private insurers don't operate in free market

Paul Krugman doesn't realize that health care private insurers do not operate in a truly free market (Nov. 15 and Nov. 20 columns). They are confronted by a multitude of regulations.

In this state, they have to offer policies that include more than 30 state-mandated benefits. Krugman extolls the virtue of the comparative low administrative costs of Medicare.

If that is the case, why is Medicare close to bankruptcy?

Bob Dorse
Seattle

URBAN FORESTS

Tools in place to save greenery; let's use them

Your recent series about the threats to Seattle's urban forest was very timely. Fortunately, all the ingredients to save our urban forests already exist, if our elected leaders are willing:

1. A Good Plan: The city's Parks Department and several non-profit organizations have assessed the threats. They know where action must be taken and what needs to be done.

2. Volunteers: Dedicated volunteers can make a difference, but their efforts alone are insufficient to overcome decades of neglect.

3. The Seattle Conservation Corps: The corps employs homeless and formerly homeless individuals in projects that improve the environment, while providing its members with the wages, support services and self-confidence to rejoin the mainstream. Historically, 67 percent of those enrolled move into homes and permanent jobs.

The corps is one of those small success stories that gets lost in the politics at City Hall. It's never been given a chance to reach its full potential. Restoring the health of Seattle's urban forests is an ideal task for the corps. In the course of saving our forests, we could reduce homelessness as well.

4. Renewal of the Pro Parks levy: The funding to employ the corps could be provided by the voters if the mayor and City Council include it when the Pro Parks levy comes up for renewal.

We have a plan, the volunteers, the Conservation Corps and a potential source of money. All we need is for our friends at City Hall to put the pieces together.

Tom Byers
Seattle

HOUSE ACTION

Bill highlights absence of morality in leadership

Compassionate conservatism is dead. The passage of the House budget reconciliation bill is one more example of an absence of morality in our current political leadership. It's a moral disgrace to take food from the mouths of hungry children in order to cut taxes of the feasting rich. Have they no shame?

I thank those House members who took the moral high ground in opposing this bill and did the right thing by voting against this bill. 2006 is coming!

Dan Dennis
Bremerton

GIVEAWAYS

Mining column a perfect example of Will's lament

What an irony. Across the newspaper fold from George Will's Thursday lament that Republicans have succumbed to "bending government for the advantage of private factions," Laura Skaer of the Northwest Mining Association celebrates the impending giveaway of public lands to the mining industry, which has been supping at the federal trough for more than a century.

Will calls out the egregious practice of subsidizing water to grow subsidized crops. He totes up the corporate welfare bill at $60 billion. Skaer sees nothing wrong with giving away the public's minerals without charging mining companies a cent in royalties -- a 133-year-old scam that has cost generations of overburdened taxpayers untold billions of dollars.

What's gone wrong with the conservative movement, Will asks. He need only look across the newspaper fold. Its political leaders give in repeatedly to the demands of giant special interests that are always first in line in Washington, D.C., with their hands out.

Jim DiPeso
Shoreline

IRAQ WAR

Who exactly wants us there anymore?

I'm trying to figure out just who it is who wants us in Iraq.

Do the Iraqi citizens want us there? Many Americans still believe that this war is good and protects Iraqis from insurgents.

But according to a recent poll by an Iraqi university research team, fewer than 1 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S./British coalition is helping to improve security. And more believe the insurgents should attack occupation forces.

Do the American people want this war? Despite being pummeled with all the grandiose reasons given for the war, such as spreading democracy, protecting our country from terrorism, ousting a brutal dictator, etc., most Americans now are not in favor of the war.

So who wants it? Could it be a few rich and powerful people who aren't actually promoting democracy in Iraq at all, but are setting up a pallid semi-democracy conditional upon serving U.S. corporate and strategic interests? This "free" country must allow the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to run its economy. It must privatize the entire public sphere, such as water or, especially, oil.

For the sake of all the rest of us, Iraqi and American, paying dearly for this war in lives and money, we must demand an immediate end to this travesty.

Jan Thomas
Seattle

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