Nursing the cuts

While education conservatives continue to claim that talking about the need for adequate resources for public schools equals “making excuses” for low test scores, I’m blown away by this latest report on the lack of school nurses. It seems that 25% of the nation’s public schools now have no nurse on staff. Federal guidelines call for one school nurse for every 750 students but the national average is now 1 nurse for every 1,151 students. Teachers are more and more being forced to take on the role of care giver to ailing students. This comes at a time when 16% of students have a condition that requires regular attention from the school nurse.

Conservatives like Chester Finn turn this issue upside down. Here he is on his on Gadfly blog:

A quarter century after A Nation at Risk, a growing number of America's education leaders appear to be abandoning hope for schools that significantly boost student achievement and are instead coming to view schools as multi-service community centers that do everything but teach.

You see, to people like Finn, having nurses based in the school would be “doing everything but teaching.” Even his own Fordham Foundation mentee Mike Petrilli, seems to have broken with him on this one. Finn in turn, not only rebukes poor Mike, but even compares him with the devil herself—AFT prez Randi Weingarten.

I’m not sure how to deal with the “excuses” argument. I’ll try speaking their language. How about this—if you have thousands of ailing kids in schools with no immediate nursing care available and if you have thousands of untrained teachers patching up, rather than teaching these (often seriously) ailing kids reading and math, won’t this create downward pressure on TEST SCORES?

There, that ought to get a rise out of him.

Things that make you go, “hmmm”

Philly’s horrible record with privately-managed charter schools didn’t prevent them from handing out eight more charter school planning grants. And what are the schools they are considering? How about a grades 7-12 school for prepare students to work on construction jobs? Or how about a school specifically for Russian immigrants? Remember the storm in New York over the Arab language and culture school, the Kahlil Gibran International Academy, which forced principal Debbie Almontaser out of her job?. Or how about a high school for “at-risk” kids? (At risk being a code word for what?) I haven't heard too many kids lately, referring to themselves as "at risk." Have you? I think it's Philly's Reform Commission that's at risk here.

What is it with these guys?

The other day it was NBC’s Matt Lauer referring to Barack Obama as “Osama.” This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, it was Dan Rather praising Jesse Jackson as someone who set the stage for “Osama Bin Laden’s” candidacy. After each gaff, no corrections or apologies were made.