Reformers emphasize that teachers are the most important in-school factor in learning. Up to a point, that view is accurate. But it doesn't tell the whole story by a long shot.

In a frank essay, Will Fitzhugh criticized reformers who let students off the hook ("It's the Students, Stupid," The Concord Review, Mar. 16). "Their inability to control themselves and behave with courtesy and respect for their teacher and their fellow students frequently degrades and can even disintegrate the academic integrity of the class, which damages not only their own chance to learn, but prevents all their classmates from learning as well." I can't think of a better way of understanding what happens far too often.

Where did this obsessive focus on teachers alone come from? Colleges of education are partly to blame. When I was working on my teaching credential at the UCLA Graduate School of Education in the 1960s, we were taught that if students are not learning, it's because of the pedagogy used. We were told that all students are educable if they have teachers who know how to teach. But what happens if students don't want to be in school in the first place? What magic do teachers possess to make them want to learn? Before Evan Hunter, author of "The Blackboard Jungle," became famous, he taught in a vocational high school in New York City. He summed up his failure in the classroom this way: "I was trying, but they weren't buying."

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