Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

The news that Lynne V. Cheney will create "an independent panel to critique proposed voluntary national education standards" is, indeed, good news (related story ). Another article in the same issue, "E.D. Scraps Funds for New English Standards Project," makes the need for this panel clear.

The latter article informs us that, after losing their federal funding, the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English are effectively back in sole charge of setting standards for their field, as a result of thousands of letters that urged the U.S. Education Department not to finance a new project. The article also notes the $500,000 investment by each of the two organizations for completing the project, and the fact that the department had earlier given nearly $1 million to the I.R.A., the N.C.T.M., and the reading center at the University of Illinois to...