GROUPS TO WATCH

          In the New York Times Magazine, Sara Mosle, a contributing writer, describes Brooklyn's Science Skills Center and its controversial principal, Michael Johnson. Science Skills, a high school whose students come from some of New York's most impoverished neighborhoods, was started by Johnson with the help of New Visions for Public Schools, a Manhattan-based organization that works with the Board of Education and the private sector to promote school reform. Johnson, a 45-year-old African American, graduated from Empire State College with a degree in science education. Like many educators involved in the effort to reform New York's public schools, he believes that poor children are being shortchanged by the system. Unlike most "progressive" educators, however, Johnson is convinced that the way to help poor minority students is not by loosening standards, but by tightening them.

          As a result, Science Skills Center is focused on preparing students to do well on standardized tests, including the New York State Regents exams and the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. At a time when only 20 percent of New York's public-school students receive a Regents diploma, all of Johnson's students -- even those designated as special-education students -- take, and pass, the Regents exam.

          Not surprisingly, this has made Science Skills Center extremely popular with New York's parents, many of whose children have to be turned away simply because the school does not have enough space for all the applicants. But "progressive" educators are horrified by Johnson's emphasis on tests, his autocratic style, and his rigorous, back-to-basics curriculum. They think that schools should prepare students for the world as it already exists. "Parents at my school have some very fundamental questions," he observes. "Can my kid read? Can my kid add the grocery bill? Can my kid go to college? Some of my colleagues want to duck those questions and say, 'They're not important.' But we can't just say that we don't believe in measuring our kids against kids in other parts of the city or state, because colleges are making decisions based on those comparisons. . . . Harvard it still looking at scores, so that's what I'm going with."

* "Scores Count" by Sara Mosle, New York Times Magazine, September 8, 1996.

A Classical Curriculum

          Gene Edward Veith, dean of arts and sciences at Concordia University, in Wisconsin, writes that too many proposals to reform America's schools focus on means -- vouchers, technology, teacher certification -- rather than on ends. Although he does not disparage these means, what American education most urgently requires, Veith contends, is a new philosophy of education -- a return to the classical conception of education as the knowledge a person requires to be truly free, and to the classical "trivium" of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. "To be educated in any discipline," he writes, "one must know its basic facts (grammar); be able to think deeply about the subject (logic); and be able to act on that knowledge in a personal, original and independent way (rhetoric)."

          Veith cites three examples of how the classical approach to education is being used in primary and secondary schools. The Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS), which currently has 26 member schools, was founded in 1993 by the Reverend Douglas Wilson, a Protestant minister from Idaho, to promote the idea of a Christian education organized around the trivium. In the prototype ACCS school, the Logos School (founded by Wilson in 1980), the primary grades are devoted to acquiring basic knowledge -- reading, arithmetic, patriotic and biblical stories. Middle school and junior high are devoted to "the questioning and probing of reality that is logic."

          Finally, the high-school years, ages 15 to 18, are devoted to self-expression, and beginning rhetoric classes use textbooks by Aristotle and Cicero. According to Veith, "The level of discourse, the depth of thinking, and what can only be described as a richness of character set the Logos seniors apart. Such are the benefits of a classical education."

          Other attempts to construct an educational philosophy around the classical trivium are the Paideia Project -- used today in some 30 school districts nationwide -- and the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago. These schools help broaden the horizons of thousands of children, including poor children often written off as ineducable.

         The classical approach to education is valuable, Veith contends, because it offers a "comprehensive, universal paradigm for learning." In his view, the classical education movement holds the key not only to educational reform but to an educational renaissance in America.

          Although the cost of educating a child in New York City's public-school system comes to $8,000 per year, that figure, argues Kay S. Hymowitz in her profile of New York City's "special-ed" schools, is actually quite misleading. A full-time special-ed student costs the city $23,598 per year. A part-time special-ed student costs $10,207 per year. But an ordinary student receives only $5,148 in educational services per year. New York's "regular education system," Hymowitz argues, "resembles a parking lot full of 1968 cars, while special ed is like a handful of shiny new Cadillacs."

          All this might not be so bad if special-ed classes were actually helping their students. But two-thirds of special-ed students exiting the system in 1995, Hymowitz writes, dropped out instead of graduating. Of the remaining third, only half received a diploma that was worth anything.

          New York's special-ed system is a monument to good intentions gone awry. In 1975, Congress passed the All Handicapped Children Act, later called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Initially, the law called on the federal government to pay 40 percent of the cost of the vast program it had called into being. In fact, today Washington funds a mere 7 percent of the program, leaving New York taxpayers to pay the rest.

          The law was based on several assumptions: First, that if a team of experts examined a child, it could evaluate his or her problem with scientific precision; second, that this team of experts, drawing on the latest scientific advances, could devise an effective program to treat the problem; and third, that educators could then successfully implement such a program, no matter what the cost. In fact, Hymowitz points out, the initial assumption was completely wrong: Different teams of experts, evaluating the same child, have issued sharply different diagnoses. And if assumption one is flawed, it follows that the others are unworkable.

          Today, more than 60 percent of the children assigned to special-ed programs are classified as "learning disabled," a term so vague and expansive, writes Hymowitz, "that it is a standing invitation to any poorly performing child." Hymowitz believes that a substantial number of "learning disabled" children come from chaotic, problem-ridden families; their deprivation is cultural, not neurological. Yet the law governing special ed specifies that the category "learning disabled" should "not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of . . . environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage." In other words, many of the students enrolled in expensive special-ed programs have no right to be there.

          But there are powerful political forces blocking reform. Special-ed schools have provided jobs for thousands of psychologists, social workers, and evaluators. As a result, the unions are quite satisfied with the status quo. Parents of handicapped children also seem pleased with New York's special-ed program, and politicians, fearful of being accused of a lack of compassion, are unwilling to antagonize these parents. As a result, a special-education system that costs a great deal, accomplishes very little, and starves regular public schools of badly needed funds appears impervious to reform.

* "Special Ed: Kids Go In, But They Don't Come Out" by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal, Summer 1996.

          The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is a nonprofit educational institute that explores the moral dimensions of a free society. Last year the institute established its Samaritan Awards to honor and encourage the moral and practical advantages of private charity. From nearly 700 applicants, Acton recently honored 10 leading models of effective private charity, both secular and religiously based. Each winner received a $1,000 grant; three finalists will soon be chosen by a national panel of judges and awarded cash grants of $10,000 each. The 10 model programs for 1996 are:

Best Friends Foundation (Washington, D.C.) -- Offers adolescent girls mentoring and character-building activities and encourages them to abstain from sex, drugs, and alcohol.

Cumberland College Mountain Outreach Program (Williamsburg, Ky.) -- Provides opportunities for students to volunteer building houses, drilling wells, and doing repairs for needy Appalachian families.

Enterprise Mentors International (St. Louis, Mo.) -- Trains and provides loans to would-be entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Francis House (Syracuse, N.Y.) -- Provides a home to terminally ill patients.

Fresh Start Surgical Gifts (Encinitas, Calif.) -- Supplies reconstructive surgery to needy children with serious deformities.

Gates Community Chapel / D.B.A. Freedom Village U.S.A. (Lakemont, N.Y.) -- Offers troubled teens character-building activities at a working farm and Christian home.

Interfaith Housing Coalition (Dallas, Tex.) -- Alleviates homelessness with transitional housing, job placement, and living skills.

Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE) (Milwaukee, Wisc.) -- Liberates low-income families from limited educational options through scholarships.

Teen Challenge in South Texas (San Antonio, Tex.) -- Tackles drug and alcohol addiction with a 12-month, faith-based counseling program.

Victory Fellowship of Texas (San Antonio, Tex.) -- Mentors and rehabilitates gang members, prostitutes, and addicts by encouraging spiritual change.