Letters.

Carrot Sticks

Matthew Miller's account of the challenges facing Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Roy Romer ("The Super," June 2001) does a good job of shedding light on the complexities of school reform. And yet, Miller undercuts that analysis with simplistic solutions that are not supported by any facts within the story.

The teacher shortage in Los Angeles is one of the most severe in the nation. Miller's answer: dangle a carrot for a few people through merit pay. How does one contend with the social, political, and economic complexities of a district that serves 725,000 students? Miller's answer: throw a new bone of contention into the mix with private-school tuition vouchers.

Let's give Romer credit for his courage and experience in crafting imperfect solutions to real world situations. Simple solutions can only be implemented when the real world melts away.

BOB CHASE, PRESIDENT National Education Association Washington, D. C. Temper, Temper

While Matthew Miller ("The Super," June 2001) may suffer from a case of Roy Romer hero- worship, those of us who know what he did to the Denver public schools have long since recovered. Romer did not successfully mediate teacher talks in Denver. Instead, as governor, he invoked an ancient state law giving the executive the absolute right to intervene in labor disputes. Romer dictated a "site-based management" scheme into the Denver teachers contract and declared that this would improve student achievement. Not.

In the 10 years since, the school system has fragmented and the ability of the elected board and its superintendent to manage the schools has been limited by the decentralization created by Romer and embedded in the teachers' contract. How ironic that he now laments the power of the teacher unions; 10 years ago, he complained about the "central bureaucracy." I hope that L.A. schools can survive a Romer temper tantrum; I don't think Denver's did.

JOANNE MARIE ROLL Denver, Colo. Meg-alomania

Somebody finally said it, and leave it up to The Washington Monthly's Timothy Noah to do it: Whatever her other talents may have been, Meg Greenfield was a terrible writer. Among the many writing traps she often fell into, Greenfield wrote the longest sentences of any mid-20th-century journalist in my memory. By the time a reader got to the "period" in one of her sentences, you often had to go back to the beginning to remember what she was talking about in the first place. On reading her...