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Editorial: No child left behind is a worthy goal The Oregonian The new report that every one of Portland's 10 high schools is "failing" under the No Child Left Behind Act is unsettling and confusing. It is also welcome. Finally, students left behind in the public schools in this city and nation are coming into sharper focus. You cannot find their names and faces in the thicket of numbers in the federal report released today, but you get a glimpse of the color of their skin, the income barriers they face, the disabilities they have and the languages they speak. This critical information comes in a new federal system of accountability that remains imperfect, unwieldy and underfunded, especially at a time when Oregon schools have suffered unprecedented cuts in the school year. Yet it still is better than what this nation had before - a public school system that easily hid its failures to properly educate the members of many ethnic groups, the poor, the disabled and those who speak English as a second language. The temptation, especially for those who teach in or administer public schools, will be to attack the many weaknesses and uncertainties in the new federal standards. There are obviously problems in the assessments. On the surface, No Child Left Behind seems to have the opposite problem of Oregon's state report cards, which routinely find that nearly all the schools, like the children of Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon, are above average. The new federal report suggests that nearly every high school in this state - and most of them around the country - is below average. The one-third of Oregon schools that did not meet the federal standards are not "failing" schools in the common definition of a shattered school utterly failing to prepare students. Instead, these schools are still troubled by a stubborn achievement gap between rich and poor children, and between whites and ethnic minority students. In years past, Portland school officials almost certainly would have greeted this federal report with criticism of the data or excuses about funding shortfalls. Not this time. Superintendent Jim Scherzinger and school board co-chairman Lolenzo Poe vow to bring a new emphasis to high school reform and to even more aggressively attack the achievement gap in the city's schools. "There are lost students, and it is time to reclaim them," said Patricia Pickles, the Portland district's chief academic officer. "Even if every high school in the country is failing, that is not an excuse for us." That's the right attitude. No one is sure whether the nation's schools really can reach the ambitious goal of the No Child Left Behind Act that all students be proficient in reading, math and other skills by 2014. Yet this much is certain: It is absolutely the proper goal. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -