Here in Houston, we've been trying to integrate Katrina's kids into our classrooms. As far as I know, this has worked well, with the exception of one unfortunate incident. Many of these children, though, are going to be dispersed in the community before long, so any impact on a single school will likely be short-term. But what about areas where there will be a significant student population in a single location for a longer period of time. How should their education be handled? That issue is being looked in several locations around the country.

Consider the situation in San Antonio where 25,000 evacuees are living on a colsed military base. If only 20% are children, that means an influx of 5000 students into a districtt. In the "real world" of rnning a school district, you would have several years to "ramp-up " to such an influx of kids, but not in this case. If a subdivision or three were being built in a district, neighborhood schools would be built to accommodate them. But that did not -- and could not -- happen in the case of this calamity. When you have such a situation, you have to improvise a solution. It is, by definition, unforeseeable.

So what some officials are proposing is that evacuee children in such settings be educated in their shelter setting. That would require a waiver of the McKinney-Vento Act, which forbids segregating homeless children. In the case of evacuee children, many of whom are black, there are also racial segregation questions.

Let's look at the Texas situation I mentioned above.

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.

Now let me begin by noting that the concerns about racial segregation are somewhat overblown. Racial segregation in schools is legal if it is de facto and not de jure. Government action did not create this situation -- nature did. Therefore the constitutional issue is really a red herring. And having worked for Dr. Neeley for a number of years, I can tell you that race is not even a consideration in this request -- she came to her position from a district that is substantially non-white and overwhelmingly low-income, and which was the largest majority-minority district in Texas to obtain an Exemplary rating.

No, what is being sought here is the ability to educate an existing community of students and keeping them together -- essentially neighborhood schools. The bulk of these kids will likely be heading back to Louisiana by next year, and so a separate program where there is a substantial population of students in an evacuation center will allow them to be taught using the Louisiana curriculum standards. These separate schools could also employ Louisiana teachers displaced by the storm. It creates a situation in which everyone wins, as far as I see. Am I missing something?

And for those who are concerned about undermining the educational rights of homeless kids, I do not see how you can argue with the logic of Pamela Atkinson, an advisor to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., and Senator Orrin Hatch.

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."

This situation is different than the situation facing most homeless kids. Their needs are different. Let's not try to make them fit into a mold designed for kids in a different situation.

Now I will agree with those who oppose concept making the rounds.

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.

Absolutely not -- there should be no experimentation on these kids. It simply is not acceptable to use them to "try out" approaches that are not generally accepted. These kids need a normal school experience, whether they are integrated into local schools or are educated in their own special school. As for the Astrdome, those kids are scheduled to be out by Saturday, so that is a moot point.

The important thing is that these kids are educated, no matter where they are. If they are integrated into local schools, as is happening in my district, that is wonderful. But if logistics make a separate program the optimal solution for Katrina's kids, then regulations be damned.

Additional commentary from liberal bloggers at Think Progress, Huffington Post, Liquid Toast, Cory Holt. Hopefully conservative bloggers will pic this story up and contribute to the discussion.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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