In 2001 Education Week told this story about the Bush Administration’s decision to be hard core in its enforcement of one part of the Higher Education Act.

When police found a small amount of marijuana residue in her car the day before her 19th birthday, Marisa Garcia was handed a ticket and sent on her way. After she was convicted of drug possession and paid a $415 fine, Ms. Garcia thought the incident could be put behind her.

But the California State University-Fullerton student later discovered that her minor scrape with the law had cost her much more: Ms. Garcia ended up losing her eligibility for federal student financial aid because of a change three years ago in the Higher Education Act.

“It was the first time I had ever been in trouble with the law,” said Ms. Garcia, who worked extra hours in a flower shop and turned to her family to help pay her tuition and expenses. “When I found out that if I was a murderer or child molester I would still be eligible, I really got mad.”

Hard to blame her. With cases like Garcia’s in mind, college students, financial-aid associations, and civil rights groups have been working since then to challenge or overturn the provision—with no luck. (335 organizations from American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers to the United Church of Christ favor overturning it.)

According to Ed Week, even Republican Congressman Mark Souder, the guy who introduced the 1998 legislation, has indicated that the law was never intended to “reach back” and affect students with past drug convictions. It was meant, said Souder’s office, to derail applications if kids were convicted of drug crimes while they were applying for aid. (An explanation that has its own illogic, but whatever.)

Yesterday one of the constitutional challenges to the law finally had its day in court, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected it. A new Ed Week blog post has the details (and here’s the ruling itself).

Constitutionality aside, why in the world would we want to punish a kid for some past transgression—particularly a kid who is trying to go to college?

Remember that the average high school graduation rate in America’s largest cities is at 50 percent, with cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit graduating even fewer. It would seem that if a kid does graduate and wants to go to college, we should be moving heaven and earth to help.

But instead we’ve got this idiotic provision that since 2001 has reportedly denied aid to approximately 200,000 students.

These are the days when I start to think some of our lawmakers really don’t like our nation’s children very well.

PS: And how has the media covered the story? Other than Ed Week and the wonkiest law blogs—I’ve found nothing. (Obviously, there are more important topics to explore.)

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At his 2006 State of the City address, Antonio Villaraigosa officially announced that he was going to attempt to assume oversight of Los Angeles Schools—a bid that crashed and burned when the local Superior Court declared the mayor’s plan counter to the state constitution, an opinion that was affirmed by the State Court of Appeals.

In 2007, the SOC speech focused on gang violence with a plan that featured such PR ploys as the 10 most wanted gang members list and the 11 Worst gangs list. Yet, despite much talk about millions for gang prevention and intervention programs, little new money few new programs actually materialized.

At 5 pm today at Parker Center Villaraigosa will give one more State of the City address to announce, among other things, his new new gang prevention/intervention and suppression strategy.

This morning’s LA Times editorial has some appropriate tips and cautionary notes for the mayor as he lays out his plan to address this and other issues that will face the city during the final year of his term.

The mayor is on the spot as never before. He has taken direct control of gang programs previously scattered across the city organizational chart. The total cost comes in at about $19 million — a tiny fraction of the investment that’s needed, and a mere sliver of the city’s budget — but those programs now become a test case for mayoral leadership, not simply for decreasing the scourge of gang violence but for demonstrating that he can make City Hall work. Villaraigosa must, once and for all, publicly set criteria and a timeline for evaluating each of those programs. That runs against his nature: He champions many initiatives but rarely offers benchmarks for judging their success.

This time, the mayor should be prepared, in six months at most, to demonstrate which programs work and eliminate those that do not. He cannot simply present one more report expressing exasperation at the lack of accountability. He cannot, as he did after his State of the City speech a year ago when announcing the “10 most wanted,” resort to gimmickry. He must demonstrate that City Hall can be effective not just with programs within his own office, or in the LAPD, but in every city department. And he must do this while articulating clearly for wary residents where he intends to take Los Angeles development, transportation and education. As he begins the final year of his first term, Villaraigosa must demonstrate that he can deliver.

Yep.

UPDATE: For those who’d like to watch Antonio talk but don’t plan to show up at Parker Center at 5 PM, you can catch the mayor’s speech live via the web here. Or if you’re within LA City, you can watch it live on LA Cityview 35 (check your local cable carrier to find out what channel that is in your area).

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There’s a lot in the weekend’s papers and around the blogs that should not be missed.

*The LA Times has an important editorial about the necessity to define and standardize just what we mean when we say “drop out,” so that school districts (LAUSD a notable example) can no longer play Hide the Dropout. The Times rightly gives credit to US Education Secretary Margaret Spelling for calling for the standardization.

*On Saturday, Glenn Greenwald at Salon notes the frequency with which the media mentions Barack Obama’s bowling score and the fact that the Clintons are rich, but how comparatively rarely our media managed to comment on the declassification of John Woo’s torture memo that makes clear that the Bush administration “…declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to ‘domestic military operations’ within the U.S.

*The LA Times also has a smart and thoughtful Op Ed by novelist Rabih Alameddine about the dangerous and prejudicial way we use the words “God” and “Allah” in this country.

*But for me the weekend’s most upsetting and essential read is the report in the New York Times that Army leaders are worried about the mental health of our troops when they are subjected to repeat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are some relevant clips:

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Yesterday, another horrifying report came out about urban graduation rates. This particular report, put out by a Washington DC-based nonprofit named America’s Promise Alliance, looks at the graduation rates for the main school districts in America’s 50 largest cities and finds that only half of our kids are managing to get diplomas.

As bad as that 50 percent figure is, it is the average—-meaning that, for a lot of urban school districts, the graduation rate is much, much lower.

For instance, LAUSD comes in 9th from the bottom out of the 50 with a graduation rate of 45.3 percent, according to the study. (Here’s the LA Times take.)

And for all those about to scream that our nation’s schools are going to hell in a hand-basket because of illegal immigration, don’t bother. Out of the 50 cities, the top of the heap in terms of graduation rates is Mesa, Arizona, a city with immigration issues up the wazoo. Nonetheless, Mesa’s biggest urban district is graduating 77.1 percent of its kids, as compared with Detroit, which graduates…..(honestly, it’s hard to believe I’m reading this right)….24.9 percent. In other words, three-quarters of Detroit’s kids drop out of school between 9th grade and graduation.

Good lord.

The bottom ten are, in descending order:

Oakland - 45.6
Los Angeles - 45.3
New York 45.2
Dallas -44.4
Minneapolis - 43.7
Columbus - 40.9
Baltimore - 34.6
Cleveland - 34.1
Indianapolis - 30.5
Detroit - 24.9

In all the cities mentioned, suburban school districts in the same area seems to do almost twice as well as their urban counterparts.

America’s Promise Alliance is an interesting organization. Its Board of Directors is led by, among other people, Colin Powell and his wife Alma Powell.

The stated purpose of the AP Alliance is to focus attention on what they call the Five Promises that kids need if they are to be successful in life. They are:

Caring Adults, Safe Places, A Healthy Start, Effective Education, Opportunities to Help Others (A good, balanced list, I thought.)

The APA folks go on to cite figures showing how many American children and adolescents do not have these five needs met.

For instance, according to the APA:

Between one-fourth and one-third of all young people “never” or only “sometimes” feel safe at school and in their communities.

More than 40% of young people ages 8-21 say they want more adults in their lives to whom they can turn for help.

Interestingly, 94 percent of young people want to help make the world a better place, but only 50 percent see a way to do so.

There’s more and it’s worth checking out. We simply can’t talk about these issues too much.

PS: Yesterday, NPR had a worthwhile discussion (about the graduation study and the No Child Left Behind policy) that featured my favorite education blogger, Andy Rotherdam of eduwonk.

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Two thousand students, administrators and education advocates gathered at Cal State Long Beach on Wednesday afternoon to send a message to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that the proposed $313 million dollar cut out of the California State University system will not only do harm to students, but it will have an adverse affect on the economy.

Among other things, say CSU officials, the cuts are set to feature a ten percent student fee increase, and could reduce planned CSU enrollment by up to 10,000 students.

The University of California system is targeted for a similar hit.

Republican lawmakers don’t want to raise taxes, said one speaker, but students are “are swimming in taxes, which we call fees.”

Other CSUs like San Diego State and Sacramento State have also held rallies.

In Sacramento, 900 Sacramento State administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni packed the University Theater and several additional rooms to listen to speakers.

California Faculty Association President Lila Jacobs led a chant of “Stop the cuts,” and then outlined the stakes. “We graduate teachers, nurses, engineers, police, state workers; we graduate the infrastructure,” she said. “When we can’t do our job, the whole state is negatively impacted.”

California State University Employees Union President Pat Gantt added that cuts to the CSU budget will harm all Californians. “CSU is part of the American dream because without a prepared workforce, California cannot move forward,” he said.

Arnold and both Dem and Repub state lawmakers would be wise to listen.

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Now that California’s education budget is sliding toward the abyss, a local activist asks WWFDRD? What would FDR do?
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According to Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle, 10,000 California teachers expect to get pink slips in their mail boxes in the next couple of days warning of layoffs due to the governor’s pending budget cuts that include 10 percent whacked off the state’s education budget.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell painted an even darker picture on Friday by saying that when librarians and other educational support staff are added in, the layoff warnings sent this past Saturday total 20,000.

(Yep. You read right: twenty thousand.)

In Los Angeles, LAUSD’s Sup of Ed, Admiral David Brewer, has promised not to layoff certificated teachers if at all possible, but has sent out layoff notices to 3,000 administrative staff members. (Yeah, we’ve got a bloated administration at Los Angeles Unified but what do you want to bet that it wasn’t the upper level, highly paid folks getting the old heave ho, that it was instead the school psychologists and the college counselors.)

Special ed, music, arts, athletics, library, AP classes, tech classes….and anything else considered an “extra” is likely to take a hit said O’Connell on Friday.

Governor Arnold said that he hoped layoffs would be carried out only under a “worst-case scenario.” In other words, the 20,000 educators getting the layoff warnings, don’t know whether or not they’re really going to lose their jobs. Maybe, yes, maybe no.

Of course, unless the Republicans in the California State legislature agree to raise taxes, the worst case scenario is precisely what will occur this June.

Arnold made the “wost case” remark when he was in Santa Monica on Friday announcing the results of…..and I am not kidding about this….his Governor’s Committee on Educational Excellence Report, a study three years in the making that suggests ways to fix California’s troubled schools.

The report calls for, among other things, an additional $10 billion for education. Instead, our state’s schools have been handed a 4.4 billion dollar cut.

That’s a $14.4 billion discrepancy between what our schools actually need in order to gradually bring them out of the basement of the nation in terms of test scores and graduation rates—and what they’re going to get.

Local education activist, Scott Folsom (who puts out the newsletter and blog 4LAKids) has reacted to California’s latest education agonies and ironies by asking what Franklin Delano Roosevelt would do if faced with our budget shortfalls.

Folsom’s imagined answer is after the jump:

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Remember that Assistant principal who made news for his alleged kidnapping and rape of a 13-year-old student at Markham Middle School a week ago?

At first we’d heard that the AP, whose name is Steve Thomas Rooney, had been moved from his previous school administration gig at Fremon High School because he’d pulled a gun on parent.

(Gee, at most jobs I know, pointing a firearm at the client or the client’s parents gets you fired. But, hey, I guess LAUSD is a little more flexible.)

Turns out there was more to that story. When the cops investigated the gun charge, they uncovered evidence that Rooney had been having sexual relations with a 17-year-old student for a YEAR. It was the girl’s (understandably angry) step father who was the object of the alleged gun-waving incident.

Because the girl turned 18 during the investigation and declined to press charges, the whole thing went nowhere—-criminally that is. But Rooney went somewhere. He got transferred to another school. With younger kids.

The LA Times has more:

Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to comment Wednesday about how Rooney had been reassigned to Markham last fall, saying they are conducting an internal investigation and citing a policy barring them from speaking publicly about cases under those circumstances.

Yeah, I’ll bet they declined to comment.

LAUSD is notorious for their habit of rotating, not firing, their administrative lemons. (Although the Rooney case takes the proverbial cake). For instance, you may remember the issue with the principal at Santee High School whom I reported on here and at the LA Weekly last summer. (He has since been removed). That principal was bounced from school to school after complaints at each of his jobs postings. (And when word got around that I was writing about him, I got a flood of calls and emails from people who’d worked with the guy at other schools, and they told me some pretty damning stories.) But, knowing all this, the district continued to removed him from one school, and just send him to another until he landed at Santee and finally somebody complained to the press (that would be me).

One of Rooney’s colleagues at Fremont High School where he used to work made an interesting point:

“I can’t believe he was put in another school,” said Jenna Washington, Fremont’s magnet coordinator. “It was hard enough for us at Fremont. In South Los Angeles, the district knows a lot of parents are not going to complain. They wouldn’t have placed him in a West Los Angeles school or a Valley school. Or they’d have parents out there picketing.”

Inexcusable.

UPDATE: The ever-excellent Patt Morrison had this to say (among other pithy comments) on today’s Times Opinion blog:

Where have we heard this management technique before? Let me think … oh yes: from the Catholic Church. Priests accused of molesting young parishioners were often transferred from parish to parish, where all they did was … molest more parishioners.

This tactic has cost the Catholic Church hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, and incalculable damage to the church’s reputation.

Yeah, the LAUSD can sure afford to take those kinds of hits.

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Television has never seen a better dramatic series than “The Wire.” Period. The Sopranos gave us one of TV’s greatest characters. But if the Sopranos was grand drama, The Wire gave us great literature. I’m convinced that if Charles Dickens was alive today, he’d have been writing for the The Wire.

And he’d have been in good company. In addition to their own considerable gifts for storytelling, producers David Simon and Ed Burns were smart enough to hire a string of the best crime novelists in America to write for the show, and it showed. Richard Price and George Pelecanos are uniquely talented with inner city argot. Dennis Lehane (author of “Mystic River”) has been moving for years toward a form that combines the traditional detective novel with a kind of tragic sensibility.

Most Hollywood-produced cop shows, no matter how large their stable of “consultants,” usually end up with dialog that sounds like….well…..Hollywood. In contrast, The Wire” was consistently able to capture, not only the sound of street language, but its poetry.

Yet, the great dialog wasn’t the reason we watched. (And are still watching. I’ve just started over with Season One)

We tuned in because David Simon and company gave us weekly commentary on modern urban life with a nuanced authenticity rarely seen elsewhere—all packaged in form that was wildly engaging. And Simon did it using a nearly symphonic pattern of narrative layers and interweaves. We saw the wasteful futility of the war on drugs interwoven with the impossible pressures placed on the cops who are asked to somehow eradicate the drug mess…Into those themes was threaded the hypocrisy and compromise that informs American politics….the absurd and tragic state of the nation’s inner city schools….and finally, the profit-driven shredding of the soul of our country’s newspapers.

Stunning. And all presented through the relentlessly human medium of the show’s remarkable cast of indelible characters.

To me it was season four, about the Baltimore school system and the catastrophic affects of No Child Left Behind, that was the best—and the most emotionally devastating.

But this season was brilliant too.

As a new round of buyouts is announced at the LA Times and the ongoing turf battles at City Hall over gang policy manage to fail all concerned….it’s been somehow steadying to know that we’re not unique with our messes. The Wire got there first.

But what about you? Are you a Wire fan? If so, why does it matter to you?

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I’ve got a crazy day, but here are a few short takes to chew on:

*The ACLU just released this video on the Crack/Powder sentencing issue:

*The Nebraska supreme court is hearing a case this week about whether a State Trooper should be allowed to keep his job despite membership in the Klu Klux Klan. Here’s the Omaha Herald story.

*You think good teachers should be paid a six figure salary? This proposed Washington Heights charter school plans to do just that. (Chapeau tip to Eduwonk.)

*And, according to the Washington Post, this Boston area charter high school guru has a radical idea about how to cure the drop out rate—with a sort of drop out savings account. (Just read it.)

AND LAST….AND PROBABLY BEST:

*A new, worthwhile-sounding documentary: Troop 1500: Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Here’s some of the info:

Their mothers may be convicted thieves, murderers and drug dealers, but the girls of Troop 1500 want to be doctors, social workers and marine biologists. With meetings once a month at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, this innovative Girl Scout program brings daughters together with their inmate mothers, offering them a chance to rebuild their broken relationships….

An estimated 1.5 million children have incarcerated parents and 90 percent of female inmates are single parents. Their daughters are six times more likely to land in the juvenile justice system. TROOP 1500 poignantly reveals how an inspired yet controversial effort by the more than 90-year old Girl Scouts organization is working to help these at-risk young girls deal with their unique circumstances and break the cycle of crime within families.

Troop 1500 is part of a group of films about women, criminal justice and prison—all of which can be purchased by those looking for a night at the movies that features more in the way of content than say, Jumper.

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Today the much-talked about new book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author, Harvard professor, Linda Bilmes, is hitting the book stores. It’s called The Three Trillion Dollar War and it explains how the Iraq war, a war that was originally billed as a conflict that would all but “pay for itself,” has already has cost the U.S. Treasury $845 billion out of pocket but, according to Stiglitz, will cost at minimum three trillion dollars in real costs, says Reuters in its article on the Stiglitz book.

What we could have bought with that money.

Contrast those numbers with the last segment on Sunday’s 60 Minutes broadcast, a story about what happened when an non-profit medical relief organization brought its huge, portable medical clinic to Knoxville, Tennessee, for a weekend, and offered free medical check-ups, mammograms, dental and eye care to anybody who showed up.

In the past, the organization, called Remote Area Medical, or RAM, used to airlift medical relief to isolated regions of the Amazon. Now RAM is doing 60 percent of its work in rural America because, says the organization’s founder, the need here is just so great.

In the weekend that 60 Minutes covered, RAM treated 920 visibly stressed and desperate people who waited for hours in 27 degree weather in the hope of getting in, some driving over 200 miles to seek care. Most were working poor, people who had done what America had asked of them yet were unable to afford basic medical care for themselves and their families. Many who came had insurance, but couldn’t pay the deductible their insurance required. When the weekend was over, and the RAM docs finished speeding as many patients as humanly possible through medical, dental and ophthalmological treatments, at least 400 additional people were turned away.

If you watch the 60 Minutes video, as I suggest you do (it’s a painful but, in its own way, heroic story), or if you watch the night’s first segment on the Ohio primary where Ohioans talk about the pain of lost jobs due to plant shutdowns and a sinking economy, just remember….

…three trillion bucks.

And for what?

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