Noah Nelson says the American Dream is dead (Daily Barometer Feb. 11). 

Tell that to the thousands of Central Americans who are trying to get into our country. Their dream is not necessarily to get rich, just to provide a decent living for their families, so your statistics make no sense. You have done what we call “making vast conclusions from half-vast data”. Noah says our education system is “massively flawed”, but gives no data to support this extreme conclusion. Sure improvement can be made, like getting rid of tenure, but our education system is the envy of the world.

I agree with Prof. Kaplan that “education can be a road to lifelong possibilities”, it certainly was for me, but it is not the only road. I do not agree that teachers are “wildly underpaid and over worked” as Kaplan states and that throwing more money into the education system will solve anything. That is what the teacher’s unions would have us believe. Studies have shown that there is no correlation between student success and class size or teacher pay.

I also think that Kaplan’s objections to private schools are so much nonsense and liberal wishful thinking.

Jay Burreson

OSU Class of 1964