High-Stakes Testing; Bear Market Facts; Playing By the Rules; Sleeping on the Job; Censorship on Campus; Goodwill Ambassador; True Public Servants; Expulsion and Rehab; Tax-Cut Tirade
High-stakes testing
WHENEVER STANDARDIZED TEST scores rise dramatically and quickly ["At the Crossroads of Invention for Edison," March 26], it is almost always the result of teachers teaching toward the test rather than toward the broad body of skills and knowledge that the test represents. The high scores put the school in the headlines, but students are shortchanged in the test-boosting process. That's the price paid when high-stakes tests are misused in an attempt to improve educational quality.
WALT GARDNER
Los Angeles
Bear market facts
WHAT INITIALLY CONTRIBUTED TO THE market's decline was the sharp increase in puts, calls, shorts, margin debt, and day trading by March of 2000 ["What Kind of Bear?" March 26]. The result was that equity valuations fluctuated wildly and prices shot up well beyond their normal price-earnings ratios. This extreme volatility did not bode well for companies and brokerages that would rather have seen a steady increase in equity prices for investors. What is needed is a third capital-gains-tax rate of 60 percent for equities held less than two weeks. This tax on short-term holdings would significantly reduce day trading and margin debt since few investors would be willing to take the risk of day trading and pay a 60 percent capital-gains tax on their profits. Stability would return to the markets, fewer investors would lose their shirts, and companies would have a good idea of their valuations each day.
JOHN M. LEMANDRI
Washington, D.C.
YOUR "BEAR TRAP" COVER STORY UNfortunately continues to help perpetuate the myth that the cuddly Australian marsupial, the koala, is a bear. It is not a "koala bear," as too many children the world over grow up believing. It is a marsupial. The double-page photo spread headed "What Kind of Bear?" features in its gallery a grizzly, a polar, a black and other bears . . . and then the cuddly koala. While we know this moot point has nothing to do with bear markets or the economy, it gets to the point where one wonders just how much offense a koala can bear.
SANDI LOGAN
Public Affairs Embassy of Australia Washington, D.C.
AS A LONGTIME SUBSCRIBER TO YOUR fine magazine, I send this letter only to help make it better. The title "What Kind of Bear?" would have better been titled "Which One Is Not a Bear?" The koala is a marsupial related to the opossum and kangaroo, not the bear family. I've received a first-class education from your magazine over the years. I feel it's time I gave something back.
ROBERT C. CACKETT
Utica, N.Y.
I'M IN KINDERGARTEN AND MY CLASS is learning about Australia, where koalas live, and my teacher Mrs. Baker said they are not koala bears, they're koalas.
STEFANIE FARRINGTON
Gorham, Maine
Playing by the rules
THE CENTRAL ISSUE AT STAKE IN "Hold That Conscience" [March 26] is not whether churches can adhere to their own religious tenets, as John Leo asserts, but whether institutions that employ and serve the general public must play by public rules. A Catholic university, for example, that accepts public funds, employs a religiously diverse workforce, and educates a religiously diverse student population is a public institution engaged in a secular activity. It is only fair that it should be required, along with other employers, to provide coverage for prescription contraceptives in its otherwise comprehensive insurance plans for employees and students. Contraception is a basic healthcare need. Women make personal, conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. We do not "erase pluralism" but promote it when we refuse to permit institutions operating within the public sphere to impose their religious "monoculture" on others who do not share their beliefs.
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