Support our schools.

• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

Thanks to Luis J. Rodríguez for his article on dysfunctional schools ("The Spirit of Learning," February issue).

I volunteer in classrooms and am a member of a reviewing council in my small town elementary-middle school. "No Child Left Behind" has robbed our schools of teaching staff and aides in the classroom. Instead, diminishing budgets are used to hire ever more administrators to supervise testing and data compilation.

Recess, art, health classes, poetry, drama, choral groups, and life skill courses have been abandoned or restricted. Classes in the elementary grades I observe set young children to grueling lessons dictated not by their needs or their energy levels that day, but by what a test-oriented book decrees will be done that hour. Our best, most inspiring teachers are...