Competition will improve failing public schools

Re: “Time for McCain to stand in the schoolhouse door,” Editorial, May 1

I agree with your editorial regarding public school failures, most notably in D.C. and other inner cities. The only way to improve all education in this country is to privatize the schools.

Parents in Akron, Ohio, Milwaukee and other cities in the Midwest were given $5,000 vouchers to use at any school in the area, public or private, where the cost of education is currently $7,500 per student. After a year, students who had attended public schools and were now in private schools tested a bit better. But those in the public schools did noticeably better, due to the fact that the public schools now had to compete for students.

Jack Murphy

Woodbridge

Management at fault for hiring unlicensed security

Re: “Gun bust at day care center scares kids and teachers,” April 28

Having read, and reread, Scott McCabe’s article about the arrest of security officers at a day care center in Northeast Washington, I am baffled by the criticism heaped on the Metropolitan Police Department for an “overzealous” response to what was obviously a dangerous and illegal security operation.

To review the facts, the CDI Head Start center apparently hired unlicensed security officers with illegal weapons, and assigned them to patrol a day care center. Despite those facts, CDI has the audacity to blame the police department for arresting individuals who were clearly violating several D.C. laws.

What due diligence did CDI perform on Falken Industries? If anyone deserves criticism, it is CDI management for putting children, and the MPD, in such a ridiculous, avoidable predicament. Is it too much to ask that CDI comply with the law?

Carl Rowan Jr.

Washington

Costly enforcement measures won’t fix broken system

Re: “Study questions cost of illegal worker crackdown,” April 24

If even the business-minded, conservative-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce is speaking out against the government’s proposed Social Security “no-match” program, something must be terribly wrong.

As the chamber points out, a crackdown on undocumented workers would actually cost employers more than $1 billion a year. And most people don’t know that undocumented immigrants contribute some $7 billion to Social Security a year, even though they are hardly likely to ever recoup that benefit.

Divisive and costly enforcement measures and raids don’t help fix our broken immigration system, and they certainly don’t help businesses or our struggling economy. They just appease ideologues with an anti-immigrant social agenda and foment racial and ethnic tension. Just this past week, Prince William County learned this lesson and abruptly ended its own crackdown program after just six disruptive months.

The chamber knows what too many of us have failed to realize: Undocumented immigrants are already an integral part of our communities. They clean our workplaces, take care of our sick and  elderly, and do many of the jobs most Americans are unwilling to do. We need to change our attitude toward these valuable members of our community, and we should start by putting an immediate end to any further assaults on their well-being.

Matt Nerzig

Spokesman, Local 32BJ

Service Employees

International Union

Tax increase will hit at worst possible time

Fairfax County’s most recent tax increases will drain more than $120 million a year out of the county’s economy — the opposite of what local businesses and residents need at the onset of what promises to be a significant recession. Board Chairman Gerry Connolly apparently learned about economics at the same place that instructed him on parliamentarian forms of government.

Unfortunately, the Virginia Supreme Court won’t be able to protect county citizens from his fiscal irresponsibility this time as it did with the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. Virginians would be better off if “His Arrogance” retired from public life.

Bud Miller

Alexandria

Easy way to keep Metro doors from opening too soon

Re: “Metro operators jumping the gun on opening doors,” May 1

There is a very simple solution to this problem. Train operators should be trained to stop on the platform exactly where they would stop if they were operating an eight-car train at each and every station. No more stopping at the six-car stopping point.

If they’re always thinking eight cars, not six, they would easily avoid leaving the back two railcars in the tunnel.

Charles S. Morgan

Fairfax