Public schools can succeed if they have adequate community involvement, funding and teaching standards. If you have doubts, talk to one of your classmates from Boston Latin. When the students and parents who are most concerned about education withdraw from public schools using vouchers, these institutions will decline further. Students that remain will suffer. These students-at-risk are ignored at society's peril.
Polls show that voters don't want vouchers at the expense of public schools. What they want in smaller class sizes and better reading programs. Public schools are in great need of improvement. We have a system in place that has the potential to provide good education for all Americans; we're just not using it. The answer does not lie in dismantling this system, but in investing a serious effort, every year and everywhere, to make it work.
Jane H. Martin '00
April 28, 1999