Prometheus 6

Some things I would comment on if I didn't have several other things on my mind.

Trying to Disarm the Dangerous World That Students Live In
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Jeffrey was the third Carol City student shot to death during the 2005-6 academic year. By the first semester of this year, two more had been killed in gun violence. It was then that Mr. Moore decided to do something more than deliver eulogies, visit weeping parents and initiate class discussions about all the senseless death.

He drafted a petition, expressing his righteous anger. (“Anger” indeed was the word, for it derives from the Norse “angr,” which means grief at the wrongness in the world.) The petition appealed to the newly elected governor, Charlie Crist, to “make Florida’s schools and the communities around them ‘measurably’ safer” and it concluded, “You are accountable to us for it!”

In the past month, several thousand people have signed the petition. It is not being forwarded, in the modern way, on the Internet. Instead, volunteers take paper versions into classes, churches, offices; a copy even turned up among some teachers in Chicago. Mr. Moore’s words have reached to the heart of something.

“I see these kids as the canary in the coal mine,” said Mr. Moore, 53. “They’re the first to go. But ultimately all our lives are in danger. I know there are personal failures here, but you have to give children a chance to live long enough to make moral choices. The Preamble of the Constitution says the government must guarantee the general welfare. They’ve failed. They’ve failed. These children shouldn’t be dying.” 

Health Care Costs Drive Up School Budgets
By FORD FESSENDEN

SCHOOL boards in Westchester and on Long Island face big jumps in health care costs this year that will help force tax increases well above the rate of inflation, according to early numbers from budgets in the region.

In White Plains, for example, the bill for health insurance will grow 11 percent in 2007-8, according to the superintendent’s budget.

“We purchase health services in the marketplace just like the private sector, and everyone is paying 10 to 13 percent more,” said Linda S. Purvis, the assistant superintendent for business for the Scarsdale Public Schools.

Son of No Child Left Behind
The education law -- up for reauthorization this year -- sets standards without looking at what's realistically achievable.

It's stated goal is to bring every child to academic "proficiency" by 2014, and it sets yearly guidelines for getting there. At the same time, it allows the states, not the federal government, to define "proficiency." Some states (though not California) have set the standard laughably low, making a mockery of the law.

In states where proficiency actually means something, on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily help the students who most need help. Teachers often work most with the children who are just below proficient, getting them above the bar so they'll count as successes. Children at the bottom, who need the help even more, receive too little attention. Gifted students, meanwhile, are left out of the equation, prompting many schools to cut their programs for gifted children.

The law should be rewritten to require yearly improvement for each student — a realistic goal that teachers can meet whatever their students' scores were at the beginning of the year. This would encourage more good teachers to work at the schools that need them most, and would relieve schools from being blamed for the low scores of a new student whose poor performance is no fault of theirs. To close the achievement gap between minority children and white, and between poor and middle class, more growth should be expected from the lowest-scoring groups.