9th January 2004, 9:16 AM
First, it's a year and a half old. Other than that... yes, inner city schools are in very bad shape in many places, and just giving them money doesn't seem to help. They probably do need some standards they have to meet. Of course then they could do like the Houston school district and just lie and cheat to get their scores high enough... so there needs to be close watch on it. But just tests aren't enough. You need a real plan to improve the schools. And taking out the best students and sending them to private schools is not the best way to do that long term. It will benefit the ones who leave, but for the ones who can't afford to go their schools will just get worse as funding drops because of people leaving and government punishments... that is not the way to fix a school district! You need to work on ways to get them to make a real effort to improve... and then fund them to a level where the attempts have a actual chance of success. Bush is doing neither.