Fixing unsafe schools a noble goal – if it’s done right

Comparison is intrinsic to measurement – we measure weight by comparing mass to a… Comparison is intrinsic to measurement – we measure weight by comparing mass to a standardized unit, and academic performances with grading rubrics. Each of these systems is supposedly uniform, leading to fairness, equity and, perhaps, a Zone diet.

How, then, do we measure safety, particularly within schools? It’s simple, right? Safety is the absence of danger, and where safety is, danger cannot be. It may be definition through exclusion, but it was an okay working definition.

A provision of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act has muddied the waters, according to a Sept. 25 article in USA Today. In attempting to keep kids safe – a noble goal – the Act demanded that states keep track of what it terms “dangerous schools” and give any student who attends such a school the option of transferring to another in their school district.

Now for the fun part: each state, and Washington, D.C., created its own criteria for what constituted a dangerous school.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, schools are broken into three size-based categories. If the number of violent crimes at a school exceeds the threshold for its size-category, it is termed “dangerous.” A school above 1,000 students can host 20 such acts before being given the designation.

Now for the really fun part: the crime-rates are self-reported. Even given my elementary grasp of statistics, I know that self-reported statistics are rather unreliable in the same way Yugos were rather unreliable.

As one school official said in the Aug. 23 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “state officials won’t be able to check the veracity of the crime data reported by Pennsylvania’s 501 school districts.”

So, based on shoddy, un-standardized statistics, parents can transfer their kids out of dangerous schools. But here’s the problem: the plan leaves children’s academic destinies up to the parents.

Parents are responsible for their children – they probably made them, after all. But if it is the school, not the parent, who is at fault, why must it be up to the parents to fix it?

What’s more, only the concerned parents will transfer their children out of their neighborhood schools and into safer ones. That introduces a weird, lurking variable into this: parental concern, not the school district, will determine which children will profit from these designations.

Rather than leading to an overall rise in safety, this program will result in a greater disparity between schools – some will be safe and others will be dangerous, full of children with unconcerned parents. Was this the intended result of the parental-choice policy?

Perhaps the No Child Left Behind Act should be amended to the No Child Left Behind – except for those with parents who don’t care, who can’t afford to drive an extra half-hour or who have no better alternative than attending a crappy school – Act. Has a certain ring to it, no?

Pennsylvania has a special stake in this. It named more dangerous schools than any other state out of the six that reported any. Twenty-seven out of the 28 schools named are in the Philadelphia city school district, constituting the largest concentration of “dangerous schools” in the country.

I hope that, for Philadelphia’s sake, the state views these statistics as an honest cry for help and gives the district proper funding. But the Philadelphia issue raises the question: what do students in troubled districts do? If safety is not an issue only for individual schools, but rather, pervades the entire school system, what then?

Pennsylvania has an answer: wait a year. Next year’s report will be standardized, require action plans and other methods of coping, as Jerry Zahorchak, deputy secretary for elementary and secondary education, told the Post-Gazette.

Still, this comes only as a reaction to an absurd federal demand. And, rest assured, this one ray of sanity will not affect the other states or Washington, D.C.

If no child is to be left behind, why not set standards on a national level? The term “violent act” must be clearly defined – one Texas school listed rock throwing as a weapons violation – and a threshold must be set: how many violent acts make a school dangerous? On top of that, there needs to be federal guidance for “action plans.”

Imposing a national program, then making it onerous for states to implement, is the kind of foolishness that – at my high school – got your ass kicked.

Sydney Bergman went to school in Washington, D.C., where all the children are peaceable and above average. E-mail her at sbergman@pittnews.com.