A good education

Regarding “TEA needs to get its own house in order (Opinion),” (March 24): I taught many students from HISD at a local community college for many years.

I had a 30-year career as an English teacher. A large number of my first-year students were clearly unprepared.

Many were not used to reading anything they did not have to read. Administrators pushed large classes on teachers in areas like English, where there was great need for individual tutoring and basic literacy work. There were simply too many students and not enough time.

At the root are two related problems: What, or who, we value and thus are willing to spend money on. Everyone values their own children and wants them to do well. We must value other children and help them, too. There is only one race, and that is the human race.

Another article cites a successful takeover in Massachusetts, a state that seems to value the common good more than the state of Texas. There, the students of low-income families improved in math and reading. A key reform was “increasing classroom learning time and targeted smallgroup instruction.”

Ruth N. López Turley, who directs the Kinder Institute at Rice, points out that increased funding is central. As she indicates, and anyone who has read much of the research knows, learning success is highly correlated with economic status. Parents have more leisure and energy at higher economic levels to give personal help to their children, as well as more school knowledge themselves. Turley notes that HISD comprises mostly poor children, not the well-off.

We must have a revolution of values, for the good of all.

Paul L. Rowe, Houston

From school shootings to school district takeovers, it seems that parenting is the real key. Here are my thoughts and advice to parents after 67 years.

• Return to the religious institution of your childhood. If you do not have one, start now and lead your family to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple. You need to establish the discipline of a moral compass that has stood the test of time, not the latest social media proposition or celebrity opinion.

• Get engaged in your children’s education. Go meet all the teachers at open house night. Go to the parentteacher conferences. Tell the teachers that if they have any discipline or learning problems with your child, please contact you and you will help them address the changes that need to be made. The community surrounding the school has a lot of influence on the outcome of the school. Be a part of making that a good community.

• Focus on your family until your children leave for college or adulthood. Love your spouse and try to make things work well. Give your children a good model of what a cooperative lifestyle and successful marriage looks like.

• Conversely, eliminate the things in your life that work against a productive home life: substance abuse, hanging out with people not aligned with your values, spending too much time away from your family on your hobbies or work. The list is long and is probably unique to your circumstances. But you know what it is and can figure this out.

• Move away, that’s right, from communities that do not uphold the law, legalize drugs, encourage laziness, and pardon criminal and irresponsible behavior. There is no view of the mountains or access to the beach that is worth the destruction to your child that these “hip” communities and states offer. Small-town America needs workers and families. The cost of living in these “hip” communities is unusually high, so you are also paying a lot of money to raise your kids in some hellhole for family maturity. Every community in America needs a few more good workers.

• Set high standards for your relationships and require the same of your children. Teach them how to recognize and move on from “friends” who exhibit bad, illegal, illicit, irresponsible and destructive behavior. Your children will be faced with bad choices of friends for the rest of their lives. They need to learn now and from you how to make good choices and how to invest in those relationships.

• Teach and lead your children to not waste their lives looking at screens on phones, computers or television. Most of the content available today on a screen is a waste of time, so you must learn to self-police your indulgence in screen time. Have a purpose when looking at a screen, realizing that the person behind the content is trying to influence your thinking or how you spend your time.

• Make the goal of your life something other than the pursuit of leisure and entertainment. Have a higher calling to a purposeful life. Leisure activities will soon disappoint you if they are constant.

Mark Brooker, Houston