Report Card on U.S. Schools

I would like to respond to the article “Report Card Gives Schools a Poor Grade� (Part A, Sept. 27) regarding the report from the Department of Education that the performance of most American students is “low and not improving.�

As much as I respect Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos, I do not agree with him that our schools are deficient because parents need to give more assistance to teachers. Parents have nothing to do with school management in most of the school districts in our country.

It is school administrators who must be held accountable for the constant disruption of our classes. For example, last year at La Puente High School in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, I tallied all school bulletins: 70 different fund-raisers and sales were announced; the names of 4,348 students appeared on bulletins excusing them from classes for participation in extracurricular activities; two whole days of classes were canceled so teachers could attend irrelevant in-service meetings, and on 26 different days classes were shortened in order to make time for pep rallies and other non-academic frills. During the first two weeks of this semester, we lost 14 hours of class instruction because of teacher in-service meetings, a pep rally and six assemblies.

If Cavazos wants more assistance for teachers, he should suggest to all school administrators throughout the country to allow teachers to teach and students to improve their academic performance by not scheduling more than one school activity at a time!

GILBERT A. RUBIO

La Puente