LOS ANGELES, CA - Three weeks ago, I authored an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times proposing various pay performance incentives. I argued that teacher salaries in Los Angeles are already above statewide averages, and considerably higher than national trends. I sided with Howard Miller, the L.A. district's chief operating
officer, who claims "the system right now has failed a great many of our students. We believe that proof of
performance has to precede additional funding."

I expected the responses to be less than favorable, but the blasts I received proved truly educational. The
most interesting criticism came from a public school teacher who wrote several pages in longhand on notebook
paper. Apparently uninterested in a free exchange of ideas, the author did not identify himself or herself
and left no return address or phone number. As the argument went, I had no teaching experience and was
therefore unqualified to offer opinions on the subject. The mystery writer went on to claim that paying
teachers based on how much their students learn was pointless. The problem, the author said, was not with
the system or the teachers but the students themselves.

Too many of them, the teacher wrote, were "dummies." The only solution he or she could think of was teacher
strikes. Teachers of this mindset aren't dummies themselves. Racist is closer to the mark.

The education establishment is fond of attacking standardized tests and other measures as racist, claiming poor minority students simply can't achieve at high levels. Similarly, unions and others claim parental choice in education is racist. The worst students from broken, minority families would be left behind in failing public schools, while white students with active parents would be sent off to private schools in the suburbs.

While there is no evidence of these trends, it is the establishment's claim that poor children can't learn
that is rooted in bigotry. Students aren't dummies, they are trapped in a system that offers their families
no choice. Poor parents do care and sacrifice for their children. Across the country, Catholic schools educate
thousands of inner-city children whose parents have decided the public schools aren't serving the interests
of their children.

PRI is currently involved in a survey of Catholic school families in the Los Angeles archdiocese. Directly challenging the establishment's claims, one Hispanic parent, who has no college education and an annual income level below $20,000, was asked to which public school she would send her child. The parent,
whose child receives a scholarship, responded in Spanish that she had "no idea, the public schools are
just so terrible."

Not all public schools and teachers are terrible. There are examples of success here in California and across
the country. But if the system as a whole is to change, parents must be offered more choices. Poor families may
have more struggles than most, but government should not assume they can't decide which schools and teachers are best for their kids.

It is the government education monopoly that forces many poor children to attend sub-standard, often
dangerous schools. It is racist to demean these children as incapable of learning and reactionary to deny them any other choice.

-Thomas Dawson