Well, it didn't take long for experts to link the most recent school shooting and the rise of standardized testing:
In the five years since the Columbine High School tragedy, American students have grown accustomed to security officers and lockdown drills. But on Monday, the extra security failed to stop another shooting at a school, providing a reminder that the solution is not more metal detectors but closer relationships between students and educators, experts said...The number of violent deaths in and around schools rose last year to 49 after dropping for three years in a row, according to data collected by Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, an independent consulting firm. A total of 28 such deaths have occurred this academic year, including the Red Lake killings. The Education Department disputes the methodology used by Trump but has yet to come up with its own figures for the past two years.
Trump attributed the rise in violence to a variety of factors, including cuts in school safety funding and the overriding emphasis placed by many school districts on improving standardized test scores. He said that school safety issues have ended up "on the back burner in too many schools," with administrators feeling that "their jobs are on the line if their test scores don't improve."
As well they should be on the line, as far as I'm concerned. And it's hard to see how a focus on basic skills education and testing necessarily leads to a decrease in focus on school safety. I don't believe any principal out there thinks that kids can learn, and test, well in a war zone.
Weise sounds like one mixed-up kid:
...Weise was different and seemed to delight in the fact."He wore black a lot and painted his face," said Ashley Morrison, a 17-year-old student who escaped from Monday's shooting rampage at the school that left eight dead, including Weise. "... Every time I'd seen him in school he wore a trench coat."
Another student, Parston Graves Jr., 16, said Weise drew a strange and perhaps foreshadowing sketch a month ago. It was a guitar-strumming skeleton with a caption that read, "March to the death song 'til your boots fill with blood."
Should the school have done something? Would it have been possible for them to do anything drastic if Weise had not committed any crimes? Assuming the school had been focusing more lately on raising standardized test scores, does it really make sense to assume that that must be why Weise was somehow overlooked? Or is a culture in which teachers and administrators are afraid to make individual judgments about disturbed children (hence the zero-tolerance rules) more likely the culprit?
Posted by kswygert at March 23, 2005 11:26 AM