Fast Report
GAO airs doubts on DARE program
• After reviewing six long-term evaluations of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, the U.S. General Accounting Office found "no significant differences in illicit drug use between students who received DARE in the fifth or sixth grade and students who did not."
DARE, the most popular substance abuse prevention program in the nation's schools, is used in 80 percent of school districts.
Five of the studies evaluated by the GAO also reported on students' attitudes about illicit drug use and found no significant differences between DARE and non-DARE students over the long term.
Consolidation proposed for Arkansas districts
• Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has proposed a far-reaching plan to consolidate the state's school districts and strip local school boards of much of their power.
The plan is a response to the Arkansas Supreme Court's Nov. 21 ruling that requires state officials to come up with a new education finance system by Jan. 1, 2004, that addresses the issue of adequacy of funding.
Huckabee's proposal would trim the state's 310 school districts to as few as 107 to reduce instructional and administrative costs. Many secondary schools, particularly those serving grades 9-12, would close.
About 76 school districts with 1,500 or more students would continue to exist as unified districts. All remaining districts would become "community school units" and would be assigned to one of 25 to 30 regional school districts. An exception would be made allowing a few isolated, rural districts to remain.
Each unified, regional, and isolated district will have an elected school board with taxing authority, but the state education department will hire and fire superintendents and set salary schedules. Each community school would be governed by a parent/business advisory council.
Arkansas School Boards Association (ASBA) Executive Director Dan Farley says the proposal "has really galvanized the public school community and will create a massive conversation." He says it's too early for ASBA to take a stand on it; legislation hasn't even been introduced yet.
NYC mayor expands control over schools
• New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg announced a plan Jan. 16 to centralize control over the city's 1,200 public schools.
The plan would replace the city's 40 district superintendents with 10 regional superintendents, who will have responsibility for instruction. Six new "support centers" will handle administrative functions, including budgeting and hiring.
The plan would require every low-performing school in the city to use a single uniform curriculum. More than 1,000 schools could be affected.
Last year, the state legislature approved Bloomburg's plan to abolish the citywide seven-member school board and the 32 community school boards and let the mayor set educational policy.
Bloomburg now proposes a new state law to create committees of parents to oversee local schools.
Other key elements in Bloomburg's plan include: reduced class sizes -- from 33 to 28 students -- in middle school, a parent coordinator in each school, and more time on reading and writing instruction in grades K-5.
Meanwhile New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein appointed former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to chair the advisory board of a new leadership academy to train principals.
Richard Parsons, CEO of AOL Time Warner, and Anthony Alvarado, former superintendent of Community School District 2 in New York City, will serve as vice chairs.
School resegregation continues to rise
As the nation celebrated the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 20, the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University released a new study showing U.S. schools are now more segregated than they've been in the past three decades.
In A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?, authors Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield report that the nation's public schools are becoming steadily more nonwhite.
Minority student enrollment is approaching 40 percent of all U.S. public school students, nearly twice the level it was during the 1960s.
Desegregation of black students, which increased continuously from the 1950s to the late 1980s, has now receded to levels not seen since the 1970s.
Black students are experiencing the most rapid resegregation in the South, triggered by Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s and have now lost all progress recorded since the 1960s.
According to the report, Latino students are the most segregated minority group. Latinos are segregated both by race and poverty, and a pattern of linguistic segregation is also developing.
White students are the most segregated and are in contact with few nonwhite students except in the South and Southwest.
"Martin Luther King's dream is being honored in theory and dishonored in the decisions and practices that are turning our schools back to segregation," Orfield says.