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.
CATHERINE WEISS
Director, Reproductive Freedom Project American Civil Liberties Union New York
THESE SO-CALLED CONSCIENCE clauses are actually loopholes that allow religious institutions to deny their female workers insurance coverage for birth control. Supporters of these clauses suggest that they protect the local church from violating its beliefs. But what they really do is give employers the right to make healthcare decisions for their employees. The Catholic Church has been one of the most vocal supporters of these loopholes. But the Catholic Church's corporate structure employs or provides services to millions of individuals who don't necessarily share its beliefs. For example, in New York, the Catholic Church bought an interest in a secular health plan, MDNY Healthcare. Should those employees and the individuals enrolled in MDNY's plans be excluded from receiving coverage for contraception? The loopholes advocated by the Catholic Church, ultimately, do not protect religious freedom; they place institutions in control of a very personal part of their employees' lives. Individuals' healthcare decisions should be in their own hands--not their employer's.
KELLI CONLIN
Executive Director, New York State Affiliate National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League New York
JOHN LEO OVERREACTS WHEN HE claims churches would be forced to violate their principles if health coverage included reproductive services. That would occur if church employees were forced to use birth control. The only compulsion on the church is to pay slightly more for its employee health coverage. If, in fact, church employees never use these services, the church should be able to negotiate a lower rate after a year or two, thus removing even this imposition. If, on the other hand, church employees choose to use these services, they will have been well served by the expanded coverage, as they otherwise would have been deprived of coverage that nonchurch employees enjoy.
DAVID WILKINS
Menlo Park, Calif.
Sleeping on the job
IT IS REFRESHING TO SEE SOME POLIticians actually try to get elected to serve the people and not their own agenda. In regard to the Washington Whispers article "It Pays to Snooze in Congress" [March 26], I would vote for anyone who sleeps in his or her own office rather than someone who can easily afford two residences. I feel like they are more in touch with the common folk of America. More power to those people--I wish Reps. John Shimkus and Jack Kingston were from Indiana. I would vote for them in a minute.
TONY MELLENCAMP
Berne, Ind.
Censorship on campus
THE JOHN LEO COLUMN ["THE NO-Speech Culture," March 19] was long overdue and what we in the great majority need more of. It is no surprise that college campuses and academia in general censor the free speech of men like author David Horowitz, even though his arguments are embraced by almost all Americans. No institution is more subjected to the propaganda of modern PC than the American college campus.
W. L. BROWN
Portland, Maine
AS A COMMITTED LIBERAL, I TEND TO think that John Leo is obsessed with the PC boogeyman. But his column about the University of California-Berkeley's reaction to David Horowitz and his views on reparations was right on the mark. I think that a lot of good people are going to spend the next 10 years chasing a pot of gold that will never materialize. Nor should it.
FRANK PAUL VENIS
Evanston, Ill.
Goodwill ambassador
I'M SURE YOU MEANT TO REPORT THAT Will Farish [Washington Whispers: "Bloodlines," March 19] has been appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom, not England (remember Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland?).
SARA PENNY
Wife of a Scotsman Lakeland, Fla.
True public servants
AS A MOTHER WHO HAS CHOSEN TO stay home with her two young children, I read your article about the so-called mommy tax with interest ["Guess Who's Footing the `Mommy Tax,' " March 19]. But I was disappointed that the real problem with the earnings gap mothers face was not addressed. A woman who has a working husband and who chooses to stay home knows she is giving up earnings and advancement she probably will never recover. The rewards of her job must balance that decision for her, and she is getting full financial support from her spouse, precluding the need for her to equal him in earnings. However, what happens when the spouse decides he wants out and the marriage fails? While they were involved in the team effort of raising their children--he in the workplace, she in the home--he was gaining career advancement while her skills grew out of date. When the marriage dissolves, the mother is hardest hit. The investment she spent in that team effort now leaves her ill equipped to equal her husband in the marketplace, while his career moves smoothly ahead. This scenario is what really makes the earnings gap a problem, and it's a pretty common one. Solution: Make fathers truly remain an equal part of the parenting team, especially financially. Make those dads pay! Fairer child support laws and better enforcement of them would combine to keep that "mommy tax" low and the mother's investment intact. I believe that mothers who stay home with their children are the only true public servants--they work free, making the future of society secure. They don't need or expect reimbursement by the government, but they do need fair treatment in the courts.
GERILYN MERRILL
Belleville, Mich.
ANN CRITTENDEN LAMENTS that women's worldwide oppression can be traced to the gender wage gap that arises from the female being paid, on average, less than the male because she raises the children. Crittenden ignores the fact that men, as providers, have always been obligated to raise the income that gives the wife the option of raising the children. If men refused to support women, there would be no gender wage gap. Instead of thanking men for supporting women and for not complaining about the gender time-with-child gap, she criticizes them for earning more. Her solution is not for women to allow men the same options men allow women, which would even things out all around for the sexes. It's to pay mothers for choosing to raise children. If the government shelled out to mothers the salary Crittenden has in mind (at least $50,000), millions of women would leave the workforce overnight and nine months later the population would explode. Thirty years of feminism and women's advancement would go down the drain as we returned to the 1950s and the sexes' division by labor was virtually locked in.
JERRY A. BOGGS
Livonia, Mich.
MOTHERHOOD HAS ALWAYS been an "all guts, no glory" occupation. To the devoted domestic artist who is skillfully sculpting an eternal masterpiece--money isn't the motivator. They're in it for love, not loot.
KAREN COLEMAN BROWN
Katy, Texas
Expulsion and rehab
SCHOOLS IN SAN DIEGO SEEM TO BE intent on expelling students for bringing cough drops, butter knives, and cap guns to school. Yet, I know of no school that has a zero-tolerance policy against bullying ["Betrayed by Their Silence?" March 19]. Many things high school students do to the less-popular students on campus would be grounds for termination or jail in the real world. In the meantime, stricter gun-control laws and blaming violent video games, TV, and music will not prevent a repeat of what happened at Columbine and Santana. More important, neither will teachers and school administrators who look the other way at students physically and mentally abusing other students. Any student who abuses another person should be expelled. Period.
KEVIN KEY
San Diego
BEING IN HIGH SCHOOL WAS NEVER easy, but it seems to me that it is growing increasingly harder. Every day my fellow students and I run the risk of being gunned down in our schools, an environment that should be safe. However, I don't feel it is necessary for the media to cover these shootings for days at a time. The troubled individuals who resort to such extreme measures need rehabilitation, not news coverage.
DAN BLIDNER
Shavertown, Pa.
Tax-cut tirade
DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN TAGGED AS "tax and spend." Are Republicans headed for a tag of "cut taxes and build deficits"? Mortimer Zuckerman's editorial ["A Bad Bet for the Future," March 12] should be required reading for all our senators and representatives.
ELISABETH S. DEWING
South Paris, Maine
OF THAT ENCHANTING REPUBLICAN "tax cut" it needs to be said: It's not a Bush; it's a plastic Christmas tree.
R. K. SMITH
Wilmington, N.C.
MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN CHARACTERizes the Bush administration's proposed tax cuts as a "giveaway" to the wealthy. How is it possible to give something to someone who has already earned it? Giveaways are gifts, bestowed, and have not been earned. The wealthy shoulder the burden of the highest tax rates and provide the vast majority of the costs of keeping the U.S. government supplied with the necessary money to operate. If there isn't a surplus of funds, it isn't because the wealthy didn't pony up. I agree that we should keep our fiscal house in order, but I don't agree that the bulk of it should come from 1 percent of the taxpayers.
HERBERT MCKINLEY
Johnstown, Ohio
BUSH'S TAX CUT IS VERY MUCH PREFerable to creating a feeding frenzy for the beltway's entrenched politicos, bureaucrats, and lobbyists by leaving a surplus of taxpayers' money on the table for new spending. If I hear one more talking head say that the surplus is derived from government "revenues," I'll choke. It isn't revenue, it's the overcharging of the taxpayers for the cost of government, never mind the silly pork-barrel projects that both Democrats and the GOP seem to thrive on. Get the refund for us, W.
GLEN BLACKMON
The Woodlands, Texas
This story appears in the May 14, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.