Re: your March 28 article, "Of the 3R's writing is called the most neglected":

As an instructor of university writing and linguistics courses, I have witnessed the problem featured in this article -- the poor writing skills of high school graduates.

This is not only my experience, but is resoundingly echoed both locally and nationally. Barely half of the freshmen enrolled at California State University, Channel Islands, met English proficiency standards.

The SAT will next year require all test-takers to write an essay, a change instituted in response to nationwide complaints by colleges that their incoming students cannot write at an appropriate level. If local high school teachers refuse to take the time to assign and grade essays, this picture can only worsen.

There are several solutions.

First, the deification of technology has to be re-examined. Where universities recommend that high schools adopt a "writing across the curriculum" approach, Ventura high schools seem to have adopted a "Power Point across the curriculum."

Foothill Technology High School's ninth-grade project does not require students to write individual research papers, but instead requires a Power Point presentation. Power Point encourages communication through seven-word bullets, not fully formed paragraphs.

It is no wonder, then, that Foothill stands last in SAT scores among the three local high schools and barely above the national average.

This emphasis on technology has other deleterious effects. Almost half of Foothill students taking the Advanced Placement tests failed them (49.2 percent). This failure rate is much higher than the other two Ventura high schools (Buena 30.2 percent, Ventura 39.4 percent). These statistics are available at the California Department of Education Web page http://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest.

The second solution would require our high schools to adopt a "writing across the curriculum" approach.

Necessarily, teachers would have to spend more time grading papers. As to teacher complaints that this would take too much time, I would recommend they follow the example of the minority of teachers today who do make the time.

Our schools must be accountable for the unacceptable writing skills of graduates.

-- Pamela Price Klebaum is a resident of Ventura