PUBLIC FORUM : EDUCATORS ARE TRYING TO HIDE THEIR FAILURES.

I commend the Daily New for its June 29 editorial (``Naked emperors; their attempt to suppress school test scores betrays the public trust''), which criticized Oakland and Berkeley school district administrators and educators for wanting to suppress test scores of children with limited English proficiency.

But more has to be said. The majority of California school administrators are saying that the reason that these children - principally Latino - don't do well on English tests is because they are not proficient in English. But these same educators, who are now resisting Proposition 227, have been saying for the last 25 years, that bilingual education is the best way to get Latino students proficient in English.

Evidence that bilingual education is a failure was illustrated last year when the Daily News reported that the majority of Latino students enrolled in all of the Los Angeles Unified School District's elementary schools, who were considered as being limited in English and incapable of taking the Stanford 9 English test, were tested with the Spanish Aprenda exam.

Despite this, 61 percent of the sixth-graders who were tested in Spanish scored below the national average. It is difficult to envision that Latino students would have done any worse if they were tested in English.

Under California law, immigrant students who have been in the United States for less than one year don't have to take an English exam anyway. But these disseminators of doom, who ignore the fact that all non-Spanish-speaking immigrant children who do not have bilingual education took the English Stanford 9 exam, say that there is no proof that one year is enough for a child to learn English.

Had the school administrators researched how other countries do it, their attitude about implementing Proposition 227 might be positive.

In Israel, all arriving immigrant children are immediately enrolled in an ulpan.

An ulpan is a special school where children are immersed in intensive study to learn the Hebrew language. They become fluent in less than a year and quickly catch up with their native Hebrew-speaking schoolmates in all academics.

Although not mandatory for adult immigrants, they are encouraged to enter the schools as well. They do not segregate by sex, age, ethnicity, literacy level or native language.

Some critics of immersion say that immersion works in Israel because the literacy level of arriving immigrants is high, since they come from education-oriented European cultures, and so they cannot be compared to immigrants who immigrate to the United States from poor countries.

But these critics must not have heard of the famous airlift in 1985 called Operation Joshua, which rescued 10,000 illiterate and poverty-stricken Ethiopian Jews from famine and allowed them to immigrate to Israel. They assimilated into Israeli society and higher education as well as immigrants from European countries have done.

The public is tired of the school administrators' defiance and expects them to change their negative attitude and embrace Proposition 227 for the sake of the children. And besides, it's the law.

- Hal Netkin

Van Nuys

Jackie Fox-Ruby of the California Federation of Teachers told the State Board of Education that teachers are ``walking in the wilderness without any guidance'' in the post-Proposition 227 environment (``Teachers seek instruction on bilingual plan,'' Daily News, June 27).

Davis Campbell of the California School Boards Association warned that ``the danger is that we hastily design a program to implement a hastily and poorly designed initiative.''

What exactly is the problem? Proposition 227 itself is as plain as day: ``The language of instruction used by teaching personnel must be overwhelmingly the English language.''

Do we really need hundreds of pages of guidelines to explain that? How about just one guideline: ``Teachers should speak mostly English in the classroom.''

If that is a major challenge to lots of teachers and officials, then Proposition 227 passed just in time.

Douglas Lasken

Woodland Hills

``Teachers seek instruction on bilingual plan'' was quite enlightening. Educators are quoted as saying there are no ``textbooks, classroom materials, curriculum or lesson plans to translate the initiative from the ballot box to the state's 9,000 public schools.''

All of the above certainly exist for the purpose of teaching in English. The problem must therefore be that there exist none of the above for the purpose of teaching English to students with limited English proficiency. Or are educators complaining about something other than teaching English? I didn't see anything else in Proposition 227.

The educators have admitted all along they had absolutely no plan to teach English to students with limited English proficiency. Was this deficiency caused by laziness, incompetence or a conspiracy to keep immigrants ``in their place''?

Van Snyder

La Crescenta

Pipe dreams

This is a response to ``Pipe buyers savor doctor's report - and a good smoke'' by Art Vinsel:

I can detect the soothing aroma of a good Cavendish at 100 paces. It is indelibly marked in my olfactory memory as some girls have of their first perfume. The comforting vision of my father, reclining in his favorite chair, reaching over to his end table to tap his pipe against the brass ashtray in preparation for restocking the bowl is among my fondest memories. I often wondered why he loved his pipes so much. Once he broke his silence on the subject and revealed what I think was only a shred of the mystique. A pipe is a pause, a moment of reflection, a lubricant for the friction of everyday life.

It is unrecorded how many business deals my father closed, how many negotiations went his way and how many times the other guys blinked in the stare-downs of life because my father's pipe defeated those overanxious, hurried, pressured whippersnappers who hadn't yet understood the Ivalue of considered timing.

Possibly it's time for this tried and true method to be passed on to another generation of ardent businessmen. But somehow, I doubt any of them would believe that calm and reflection in the heat of battle would pay the dividends it does.

Pipe smoking is a dying art. More is the pity, because we all are a little worse for that.

Linda Johnston

Van Nuys

Guns and safety

Ira Horn, writing in the June 30 Public Forum, tells us that he wants ``the freedom to walk around my neighborhood, my mall, my park without fear that some idiot is carrying a gun and if I look cockeyed I may be shot.''

That is precisely the freedom Horn lacks today because our state lacks a concealed (weapon) carry law. It is today a virtual certainty that anyone Horn encounters on his strolls who is armed is bent on no good. I'm sure he'd rather meet, for example, me, carrying a legal concealed weapon for my own protection.

Alas, Horn is denied that happy possibility by the very forces he seems to favor: the anti-gun fanatics who oppose the National Rifle Association and Charlton Heston.

James F. Glass

Chatsworth

The very right that Horn wants to abolish, the right to bear arms, is the only constitutional provision for the rights that he wants - to be free from fear of being shot by some idiot.

Abolish this right and there will be no protection from the idiots: There will only be the right to have the police arrive after it's already too late.

Ed Stone

Simi Valley 

Safire rebutted

Regularly I am offered, on your Op-Ed page, a column by William Safire. Safire is, if nothing else, predictable. Safire is opposed. Whatever the position of our elected president, Safire is opposed.

I believe Safire still smarts from the exposure of the president he so strongly supported, Richard Nixon, as a crook and a traitor to the Constitution. Safire still struggles as the prime defender of the only president in our history to resign from the office.

GIet over it, Mr. Safire. You're a nattering nabob of negativism. That's someone else's phrase, but I do believe it fits Safire more than any public figure in my memory.

In my words, Safire is a predictable purveyor of prosaic pedantry.

Sandy M. Walkes

Encino

American justice

The police challenge an innocent, ``decent, industrious young man'' with an alibi to find a killer to save himself from a false accusation, and the Daily News (``Hope floats; divine intervention spares wrong man from murder prosecution,'' Editorials, June 29) thinks that the American justice system works?

Aramazd Stepanian

Glendale

Speeding tickets

In his response to ``Valley speed trap: Tickets on rise in effort to save lives'' (Daily News, June 21), Sidney Gold (Public Forum, June 26) seems to think the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley traffic officers are misused and should be doing something other than enforcing traffic laws.

Catching speeders is their job. Speed is the largest cause of traffic accidents in the Valley. The efforts of the LAPD have made a tremendous impact in reducing crashes caused by drivers who think they can shave two minutes off their morning and afternoon drive trying to beat the next light.

Traffic signals on many primary roadways in the Valley are timed at between 35 and 40 mph. By maintaining the posted speed, it's possible to make the trip from Balboa Boulevard to DeSoto Avenue in under 15 minutes and not have to stop for more than two or three lights. This can save money on gas and brakes and helps reduce pollution by avoiding unnecessary idling at the lights.

Of course, that's rarely possible since most of the blockhead drivers who race past you at 45 to 50 mph are all bunched up at the next light when you arrive.

Alan Stone

Member

Van Nuys Community-Police

Advisory Board