LEAVING THE CHILDREN BEHIND
NY POST Editorial

July 25, 2004 -- If Schools Chancellor Joel Klein gets his way, thousands of New York City children will be denied their rights under federal law to be transferred out of failing schools and into more successful schools.
At issue is the school-choice provision of President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law.

The law states that the parents of students in schools designated as "failing" must be offered the opportunity to transfer their children to a better school. But federal enforcement has been lax.

Now Klein wants to limit the number of transfers the city will grant for the next school year to fewer than 1,000.

Let's put that number in perspective.

New York City has more than 400 public schools designated as failing - and they fail to educate roughly 300,000 students.

Last year - after the Department of Education made a highly suspect effort to "educate" parents about their rights in the quietest way possible - the parents of a meager 7,000 or so students requested, and were granted, transfers.

Even this small cohort, however, managed to upset the better-off communities where schools had to take in transfers, leading to some crowding.

So now Klein's solution is to slash by 6,000 the number of transfers that the city will grant this year.

The flimsy excuse, offered up by Klein's senior counselor for education policy, Michele Cahill, is that "health and safety concerns" prevent the city from offering more transfers.

We're sure the city isn't just trying to shoehorn its political calculations into the only opening the law gives school districts to refuse transfers.

But whatever Klein's motives, the outcome is unacceptable.

Cahill offers the lame line that the city is focusing on "strengthening all of our schools." But hasn't that always been the excuse?

The whole point of the No Child Left Behind law is to offer kids better options before that magical day arrives when all public schools gleam - and all children attending them learn.

Until then, Klein has to do better. He's already undertaken the admirable project of opening 50 new charter schools. But he could be opening more.

Or he could be pushing to convert failing public schools into charter schools and bringing in new teams to manage them.

Or he could be agitating for vouchers payable to successful private schools - and successful and inexpensive parochial schools.

Since Klein doesn't seem inclined to do so, however, it's time for Bush's education secretary, Rod Paige, to notice that the nation's largest city is thumbing its nose at his boss's law.

Paige has a powerful tool at his disposal: the ability to withhold millions in federal funds.

That would get the attention of New York's educrats, who have long lived by their own motto: Leave No Dollar Behind.


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