High Schools Called Obsolete

U.S. high schools are called obsolete
It’s a moral issue, governors advised

BY PAUL BARTON ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

WASHINGTON — Governors on Saturday declared U.S. high schools to be "in crisis," still poorly equipping too many students for work and college despite nearly two decades of education overhauls.

Microsoft Chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates went further, telling the winter meeting of the National Governors Association that the nation’s high schools are "obsolete" and that redesigning them is a "moral" imperative.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the association, defended progress in Arkansas high schools but acknowledged the state has more work to do.

Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat and chairman of the governors’ group, set the theme of the two-day session, billed as a "National Education Summit on High Schools." Governors portrayed it as another in the series of national education summits stretching back to 1989, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was co-chairman of the first one at Charlottesville, Va.

This year’s conference acknowledged that those previous meetings have left America’s schools far from fixed.

Gates spared no words in saying high schools need an overhaul.

"By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points," Gates said. "By obsolete I mean that our high schools, even when they’re working exactly as designed, cannot teach our kids what they need to know today."

Too many low-income students, he said, are "tracked" into courses that will never prepare them for college.

"This isn’t an accident or flaw in the system; it’s part of the design of the system," Gates said. "In district after district, wealthy white kids are taught algebra II while low-income minority kids are taught to balance a checkbook."

Gates added, "But there is also a moral argument for better high schools. We’d better do something about these kids not getting an education because it’s hurting them."

The challenge, he said, is clear: "We designed these high schools; we can redesign them."

Gates, who heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, went on to propose a new "three R’s" — rigorous curriculum, relevance of courses to life goals, and relationships. He said "kids [must] have a number of adults who know them, look out for them and push them to achieve."

At a press conference, Huckabee also emphasized the importance of a rigorous high school curriculum, saying exposure to one makes students more likely to finish college. Huckabee said that introducing a tougher high school curriculum is going well in Arkansas.

"There has really been less push-back than I anticipated," he said.

While high schools need improvement, a high school education by itself never will be good enough, the Arkansas governor said.

"The next big issue is how do we prepare them adequately for what is critical — that is something beyond high school," Huckabee said. "This is about the starting line, not the finish line."

When questioned afterward, Huckabee defended Arkansas high schools, pointing out that the test scores of 11 th-graders have improved for six years in a row.

"I think we’ve done a remarkable job," he said. "We’re seeing record numbers of kids going into college."

Yet, he said, "There is always room to go; there is always room to improve."

Meanwhile, Warner listed a series of nationwide statistics about American high schools: Three out of 10 students who enter don’t graduate.

Four out of 10 who graduate lack skills to go on to college or succeed in the work force.
High school dropouts earn 70 percent less than high school graduates.

The United States is 16th among industrialized nations in students graduating from high school.

"In the past there were jobs in our society where the strength of your back was more important than the strength of your mind," Warner said, adding that those jobs have almost disappeared.

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, said radically changing high schools may be hard in part because Americans are so nostalgic about them.

"We look back at our classes and homecoming and Friday night football," Taft said. "It’s hard to imagine a high school being anything other than what we remember. There is no doubt that changing the high school education experience will be difficult."

But, he said, the onset of a global, information-based economy demands it. "It’s here. It’s changing our world with blinding speed, and we’re playing catch-up when it comes to our education system, especially our high schools."

This story was published Sunday, February 27, 2005
________________________________________
Copyright © 2005, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.
This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.

Message from Morna Murray at the Children's Defense Fund

The gangs bill that Senator Feinstein has introduced, S. 155, has
juvenile provisions that would make it easier to transfer juveniles to
adult status in the federal system. The Children's Defense Fund opposes
those provisions and I would urge all of you to read this bill
carefully. There is more funding for prosecution than there is for
prevention or intervention. It imposes the death penalty on states who
have abolished it. It does not, in our opinion, address the root causes
of gangs in this country.

Morna Murray
Director, Education and Youth Development
Children's Defense Fund
202-662-3577

LR Violent Crime Growth Leveling

LR violent crime growth seen leveling off
BY PHILLIP REESE AND MICHAEL FRAZIER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Reports of violent crime edged up in Little Rock and reported property crime dipped substantially during 2004, leading community leaders and a local criminologist to suggest that the city’s crime rate has leveled off.

Murders and rapes were down during 2004, but robberies remained steady, and aggravated assaults were up, causing an overall 5 percent increase in violent crime citywide from 2003 to 2004, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis of police data.

Forty murders were recorded in the city during 2004, down from 50 in 2003. Reports of aggravated assaults rose from 1,799 during 2003 to 2,025 in 2004. Around 900 robberies were reported last year, similar to the year before. Reported rapes dropped from 152 to 136.

The rise in violent crime during 2004 pales in comparison to the 53 percent increase in the violent crime rate that occurred in the city between 2001 and 2003. In 2001, about 1,900 violent crimes were reported in the city, compared with about 2,900 in 2003.

"We’ve probably topped out," said Jeff Walker, a criminologist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "I think you are seeing a plateau."

Reports of property crimes fell or remained steady in almost all areas of the city, leading to an overall 10 percent drop, the newspaper’s analysis showed.

Increased community participation in crime watch programs were behind the drop in property crime and the smaller increase in violent crime, law enforcement officials, community leaders and others said.

In southwest Little Rock, one community group started the "nosy neighbor system" to battle property crime in its area. The effort began after back-to-back break-ins at homes on Meadowcliff and Glendale drives in 2003.

"We’ve tried to strengthen our neighborhood by people watching out," said Herb Dicker, president of the Meadowcliff Neighborhood Association. "We are a tight group and watch over each other’s property."

The Police Department also effectively targeted some highcrime areas such as the south midtown neighborhood near University and Asher avenues, officials and neighborhood leaders said.

"The Little Rock Police Department has really been successful in its use of neighborhood watches, alert centers and community policing — all contributing to a reduction in crime," said James Golden, an associate professor of criminal justice at UALR.

"But the police can’t do it by themselves. The citizens have done a good job of stepping up to help."

Other cities in the region posted similar numbers. Shreveport reported a 6 percent increase in violent crime and a 2 percent decrease in property crime, officials there said. Violent crime rose 9 percent in Tulsa through November, while property crime decreased 2 percent. Memphis reported a 7 percent decrease in murders, but no other crime statistics were available.

The results of the newspaper’s analysis are not official.

Figures were pulled from a database obtained from the Police Department listing all criminal incidents reported during 2003 and 2004. A few of the reported crimes in the database later turned out to be false — that’s especially true of rapes.

While the department plans to issue preliminary numbers this week, the FBI will not release its official numbers until later this year.

In similar breakdowns performed by the newspaper in the past, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s crime figures have closely matched totals reported to the FBI.

A big part of the Police Department’s crime-fighting efforts is ComStat, a crime abatement initiative — short for Computer Comparison Statistics — in which police map high-crime areas as immediate targets.

"It lets us look at the numbers and make the adjustments, 24 hours a day," said Little Rock Police Capt. Hayward Finks, patrol commander for downtown and south midtown. "We look at the big picture and see how we can connect the dots and solve the problem."

ComStat works especially well when it is used to combat property crime, Finks said. It’s a big reason property crime fell across the city. "We can usually see the pattern" with property crime, Finks said, adding that with violent crime, "it’s random. It happens a lot in private residences and it is hard to police that."

The department also relied heavily on residents to report trouble in their neighborhoods.

"People in general have just realized that if we are going to be safe, it’s going to take all of us," said Little Rock police spokesman Sgt. Terry Hastings.

Each of the city’s 14 alert centers was initially staffed with three community police officers but that number has been reduced to one at each because of a staffing shortfall.

The bottom line, Walker said, is that police must remain vigilant and the city must give the department the resources it needs to combat crime. Only then, he said, will violent crime drop citywide, instead of edging higher.

"What will happen next year, if the Police Department says, "We’ve won the war and back to business as usual," then you will see [crime] bump up again," Walker said. "If they keep working on it, you will probably see it going down." Information for this report was contributed by Brandon Tubbs of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This story was published Monday, February 14, 2005
Copyright © 2005, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bush Anti-Gang Plan in Budget, Impact Questioned

Bush Anti-Gang Plan in Budget, Impact Questioned
(2005-02-09)

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A project to spend $150 million over the next three years to combat youth gangs was a rare new initiative in President Bush's budget this week but some experts are skeptical it can have much impact.

In last week's State of the Union address, Bush put his wife Laura in charge of the effort he said would "help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence."

The money would go to community and religious groups that mentor children, provide youth activities and work with former prisoners and drug addicts. At the same time, Bush's proposed 2006 budget, submitted to the U.S. Congress on Monday, slashed spending for several existing anti-poverty programs among more than 150 that would be eliminated or sharply curtailed.

"I'm very skeptical about this latest initiative. At best, it's a partial Band-Aid," said Greg Scott, a sociologist at Chicago's DePaul University who has studied gangs.
Scott said such initiatives have dated back to the 1960s with a record that is "spotty at best."

Michael Kharfen of "Fight Crime, Invest in Kids," a national anti-crime organization, said he also was dubious.

"It looks on the surface that the administration is taking money from existing programs already working on gangs and kids in trouble to fund this new initiative and that won't help communities," he said.

Kharfen said Bush's budget included a $56 million cut for the Juvenile Justice Accountability block grant that funded several such programs.

First lady Laura Bush has already begun traveling around the country to tout the initiative. On Tuesday, she was at George Washington Elementary School in Baltimore.
"Children who are overly aggressive in the first grade are more at risk later in life. Boys especially are a greater risk than girls for violence, learning disabilities and juvenile arrest," she said.

The Department of Justice estimates gang membership nationwide at around 750,000. Although crime rates have been falling for more than 10 years, gang violence is increasing as a proportion of overall violent crime.

Some gang experts applauded the White House initiative as a promising start.

But Steve Nawojczyk, a gang researcher and educator from North Little Rock, Arkansas, said, "We need much more. We need after school programs, community policing, more parental involvement, more in-school programs, more one-on-one mentoring and more neighborhood involvement."

Jared Lewis of "Know Gangs," a group that organizes education sessions about gangs for law enforcement officials and social service workers, said too much focus in the past has been on identifying gang members and sending them to prison. Ninety percent then return to their communities and many resume their activities. Some 650,000 will be released from prison this year.

"We've seen a tremendous amount of money invested in locking up gang members but very little for rehabilitation and follow up care," Lewis said. "Any sort of resources from the government is a benefit but we see to see much more money going into that."

© Copyright 2005, Reuters

Sherman Park Program Receives Grant

From the North Little Rock Times- February 10, 2005

An HBO movie revisiting central Arkansas' gang culture, and featuring a former gangster now working with at-risk youth in North Little Rock (AR), attracted the attention of an Atlanta-based group that has given $5,000.00 toward the Sherman Park Our Club to help continue its efforts.

Vince Insalaco, vice chairman of the board of Butterfly Community Ministries, said the Turner Foundation, established by cable TV mogul Ted Turner, made the donation to the Sherman Park Community Development Corporation, co-sponsor of Our Club.

"What happened was they saw 'Back in the 'Hood' and were so taken by it, they called and wanted to make a contribution," Insalaco said.

The film, a sequel to "Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock" of 10 years ago, features former gang leader and drug dealer Leifel Jackson, who turned his life around after a stint in prison and now mentors at-risk youth as head of the Sherman Park Our Club.
Jackson has also been named Juvenile Justice Worker of the Year by the Arkansas Coalition for Juvenile Justice and received the Josetta Wilkins Courage Award from the state Martin Luther King Commission.

Under the conditions of the grant, Insalaco said, the money will be used for food, clothing, books and medical care.

He added that the response to the "Gang War" sequel, premiered in North LIttle Rock last year, was so strong, a second Our Club program was opened in the Siver City Courts public housing develpment two months ago. Both programs depend on grants and donations for a large part of their operations, Insalaco said.

One American Child Dies Every 3 hours From GSW-

One American Child or Teen Killed by Gunfire Nearly Every 3 Hours
2/4/2005

Press Release
Children's Defense Fund
25 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-628-8787
www.childrensdefense.org

Contact:
Avram Goldstein
Phone: 202-662-3615

Ron Eckstein
Phone: 202-662-3609

New Data Show National Death Toll Reached 2,867 in 2002

The horrific death toll from gunfire in the United States included 2,867 children and teens in 2002 -- nearly eight deaths a day and 55 a week, according to a report released today by the Children's Defense Fund. Firearms are the second leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year olds, second only to motor vehicle accidents. There were 71 victims under 5 years old. From 1979 through 2002, a total of 95,761 children and teens were killed by firearms in America.

CDF published the latest figures today in "Protect Children, Not Guns," an annual report that analyzes data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report covers 2002, the most recent year for which national figures are available. CDF analysts broke down the data by state, race, age and manner of death. All the figures are available on the CDF website at www.childrensdefense.org.

CDF President Marian Wright Edelman called for an end to the killing and urged political leaders to take action. "Why are we as a nation so silent in the face of this slaughter of children?" she asked. "At this critical time when the President and our elected leaders in Congress are making budget and legislative decisions, it is more important than ever for parents, faith leaders and citizens to raise a moral voice in favor of choices that protect children."

In September, President Bush and Congress allowed the federal Assault Weapons Ban to expire after 10 years, making it legal for Americans to buy rapid-fire military-style firearms that are engineered to kill large numbers of people in seconds. In the decade preceding the ban's passage in 1994, the number of children and teens who died from gunfire increased each year. During the ban, the number of deaths of children and teens decreased steadily. In 2002, the annual toll in those age groups was 50 percent lower than in 1994.

"Since 1979, nearly 96,000 children and teenagers have died on the killing fields of America -- more than twice the American battle deaths in Vietnam," Edelman said. "But where are the demonstrations protesting the senseless loss of these children? Why did the President and Congress let the Assault Weapons Ban expire when these deadly firearms are designed only to kill human beings, not to hunt? Why is the NRA able to block the collective will of more than two-thirds of Americans, who favor common-sense gun safety laws?"

The report calls on all Americans to take concrete steps to keep children safe, including advocating for more sensible gun control measures. "Every day in this country we lose almost eight children to the epidemic of gun violence," said Edelman. "The rate of gun deaths in this country is higher than any other industrialized nation, and there is a reason for that. It is time to stop promoting the gun industry and start protecting our children."

Date of Release: January 31, 2005

Bravo to the President

Now we need to focus on giving young people, especially young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail. Tonight I propose a three-year initiative to help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence. (Applause.)



Taking on gang life will be one part of a broader outreach to at-risk youth which involves parents and pastors, coaches and community leaders, in programs ranging from literacy to sports. And I am proud that the leader of this nationwide effort will be our First Lady, Laura Bush. (Cheers, applause.)

Bravo to President Bush for moving on this urgent and important issue. Whether you are from a Red or Blue state, you can't argue the need for an agressive stance on this matter.

Highly Recommended Training and Assemblies

Available- Please send me an email for more information- GangWarSteve@comcast.net

Tookie gonna fry?

Split Court Clears Way to Execute L.A. Gang Founder
Wed Feb 2, 2005 03:54 PM ET

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A divided U.S. appeals court declined on Wednesday to reconsider a death penalty verdict against the founder of a notorious street gang turned peace advocate, making possible his execution later this year after a quarter-century delay.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the black founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles, was convicted in the 1979 murders of a convenience store clerk in a $120 robbery and of a woman and her parents in a motel robbery in which he stole $50.

An all-white jury convicted him on four counts of first- degree murder and two counts of robbery in 1981 and imposed the death penalty.

Since then Williams has filed a long series of legal challenges as well as written a series of books urging youth not to get involved with gangs. The Cannes Film Festival last year screened a drama about his life starring Jamie Foxx.

On Wednesday, a majority of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to allow a 11-judge en banc group to reconsider an earlier ruling from a 9th Circuit three-judge panel. The decision produced a relatively rare dissent, with 10 judges in favor of rehearing the case en banc.

"In this a case, a prosecutor, publicly castigated by the Supreme Court of California for his pattern of racially motivated peremptory jury challenges, removed all blacks from Williams' jury," Judge Johnnie Rawlinson wrote in his dissent.

"In declining to take this case en banc, our court bestows an implicit imprimatur upon the trial court's denial of a constitutionally mandated jury selection process."

"The very legitimacy of our system of justice depends upon continued vigilance against such practices," wrote Rawlinson, who was joined in his dissent by nine other judges.

The court majority, whose numbers were not specified, did not provide any reasoning for their decision to decline to rehear the case, as is customary in such orders.

The 9th Circuit order means that Williams could be executed as early as this summer, said Dane Gillette, California's senior assistant attorney general who oversees death penalty cases. The last hurdle would be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.

California executed its first prisoner in three years last month. Long legal reviews typically result in two-decade-long delays before executions take place at San Quentin prison north of San Francisco.

Williams has renounced his gang past, has appeared on national television programs, and has an Web site promoting his books. "I pray that one day my apology will be accepted," he writes on Tookie.com. "I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions."

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Updates on Violence and School Assemblies

For those of you who might be interested in having a training session for teachers, parents or other adult groups, as well as, a very powerful assembly for middle school students and older, we have put together an all new program.

Our school assemblies are especially powerful and always motivate young people to become involved in solutions--

For more info, click on the "info on Steve's school assembly" link on the front page of www.GangWar.com or email Steve at GangWarSteve@comcast.net.