Behalf Of S. E. Anderson

HURRICANE KATRINA's Impact On Education: Separate but Equal? Schooling Of
Evacuees Provokes Debate
By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

September 14, 2005; Page B1

The 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Hurricane Katrina are stirring an old
debate about whether separate education can really be equal.

A number of states, including Utah and Texas, want to teach some of the
dispersed Gulf Coast students in shelters instead of in local public schools, a
stance supported by the Bush administration and some private education
providers. But advocates for homeless families and civil rights oppose that
approach.

At the center of the dispute is whether the McKinney-Vento Act, a landmark
federal law banning educational segregation of homeless children, should apply
to the evacuees. In addition, because many of the stranded students are black,
holding classes for them at military bases, convention centers or other
emergency housing sites could run afoul of racial desegregation plans still
operating in some school districts.

Separate education for the evacuees is "unconscionable," says Barbara Duffield,
policy director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless
Children and Youth. "Many states have worked extremely hard to comply with the
law and give these kids a regular school experience. The federal Department of
Education is seeking to undermine the law at a time when it is most needed."

But officials of some states contend that separate classes would be less
disruptive to both school districts and displaced families. U.S. Secretary of
Education Margaret Spellings is expected to ask Congress soon for authority to
waive McKinney-Vento and other key education legislation, such as the 2001 No
Child Left Behind law, which holds districts and schools accountable for test
scores of students in each racial group. Without a waiver, the penalty for
violating McKinney-Vento is to deny states the funding they receive under the
act for homeless education. Although the act was enacted in 1987, the
desegregation requirement was adopted in 1994 and strengthened in 2001.

Susan Aspey, an Education Department spokeswoman, said that "we still don't
know" how broad a waiver the secretary will seek and that the secretary plans
to be "prudent" in exercising the waiver authority. She also said the
department doesn't know how many children have re-enrolled in public schools,
how many are being educated separately and how many are awaiting placement.
Since it's unclear how long the children will be displaced, she added, the
secretary won't be granting waivers "in perpetuity."

Businesses from charter schools to distance-education providers are already
pressing for permission to teach the homeless in shelters and other makeshift
housing, hoping to gain broader acceptance for their approaches to education.
Mark Thimmig, chief executive of White Hat Ventures LLC, which educates nearly
5,000 students in Pennsylvania and Ohio via the Internet, said last week that
his company would be eager to educate displaced students in the Astrodome.

After nearly 600 evacuees landed at Camp Williams, a National Guard training
center in Utah, officials at the neighboring Jordan school district were ready
to bus the children to school. The district, which is 1% black, has more than
75,000 students, including 1,800 homeless pupils.

But Pamela Atkinson, a special consultant to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., had
other ideas. The displaced families had experienced "so much trauma, anxiety
and separation" that the parents "wanted their children close by," said Ms.
Atkinson. "Since we had classrooms at Camp Williams, it made more sense to keep
them there."

She contacted Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, who then asked Secretary
Spellings to seek to waive McKinney-Vento. "These displaced and homeless
children are not the typical homeless children," Sen. Hatch wrote. "Nearly all
of them are with their families. It is important to keep families together as
the Katrina victims receive aid and support." The secretary had already made a
verbal commitment to Sen. Hatch that she would not enforce McKinney-Vento,
according to the letter.

Now, while many families have moved off Camp Williams, about 20 displaced
children in kindergarten through 12th grade are studying art, reading and other
subjects in classrooms on the base. The state brought in two black educators to
advise district teachers on "cultural sensitivity," Ms. Atkinson said. "As long
as there's one child at Camp Williams, we will continue to hold that school."

Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, noting that 25,000 evacuees are
housed at a closed Air Force base in San Antonio, asked the federal Education
Department last week for "flexibility" to serve students "at facilities where
they are housed, or otherwise separate from Texas residents during the
2005-2006 school year." U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican,
introduced legislation Monday that would grant Secretary Spellings authority to
waive McKinney-Vento.

Such proposals are arousing consternation among advocates for the homeless, who
fear that nearly two decades of gains in public-school enrollment for homeless
children will be wiped out. They note that the act, which also requires school
systems to enroll homeless children even without documentation such as health
and residency records and to employ liaisons to the homeless, was vital to the
swift, open-armed response of school districts to the student influx in the
hurricane's aftermath. Also, they say, thousands of storm-battered children
have already enrolled in public schools across the country without ill effects.

Gary Orfield, director of a Harvard University project that monitors school
integration, said that segregating a predominantly black group of evacuees
could raise "constitutional questions of racial discrimination." He also said
that because many of them may be traumatized, have learning deficits, or come
from failing schools, it would be "terrifically difficult" to teach a separate
class of the displaced students, and that placing them in middle-class schools
and communities would benefit them educationally.

William L. Taylor, chairman of the Citizen's Commission on Civil Rights, said
the administration's plans to ease McKinney-Vento and No Child Left Behind
could leave the displaced students warehoused and forgotten. "We need some
focus on the needs of the children, and not go around waiving a lot of
regulations without deciding whether there's a need," Mr. Taylor said.

Not all states are seeking waivers. Mississippi officials turned down a
proposal from a Navy base to hold classes there. Nikisha Ware, a Mississippi
Department of Education official, said the law had helped evacuees to enroll in
schools without red tape. "If there were no McKinney-Vento," she said, the
hurricane "would have created it."

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Write to Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com




















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