To the Editor:
As an education expert, I have been carefully following all the national education issues, both political and with the U.S. Department of Education. As a former teacher and school principal now working as a consultant, advocate, and author, I am saddened and frightened about the direction public education is taking. It appears we are totally leaving the students out of the equation in debating about unions and turning entire schools and their staffs over, not to mention how the politicians, with basically no understanding of how children learn, are making dangerous lifelong funding and negotiations decisions.
When all is said and done, and all the dust settles, the real problems will still be there. Those problems center on how students learn, looking at each child as an individual and understanding brain-based learning. The real casualties will be our children.
P.J. Nickels
Monte Vista, Colo.
