Sun-Sentinel Editorial: Accountability Long Overdue

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Accountability Long Overdue

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

December 22, 2004

The alternative school concept seems reasonable enough: Educate students with

chronic behavioral problems in a non-traditional environment that teaches them

discipline and inspires them to learn.

Unfortunately, it's more concept than reality.

The sad truth is that many of South Florida's alternative schools are failing

the children they struggle to teach and, in effect, failing society at large.

In an illuminating series, South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Malernee

reveals that Broward County's disciplinary schools are, in the words of one

candid teacher, " a dumping ground " for unruly students on whom the system has

all but given up.

Most facilities are substandard. The curriculum lacks inspiration and much

vocational programming. Many teachers, defeated and demoralized by abusive

students, are little more than babysitters.

No one knows -- or maybe even cares -- how effective, or ineffective, the

behavioral centers are. The schools operate with little oversight. The state

does not require them to show what, if anything, they are teaching their

students. The school district doesn't even track the graduation or dropout

rates of these largely abandoned kids.

Similar schools in Palm Beach County aren't much better.

Juvenile Judge Alvarez has for years complained that the county's

alternative programs merely corral the most troubled students in a setting of

little hope or inspiration, preparing them more for a life of crime than

responsibility. It is a class, he says, that rotates in and out of his

courtroom regularly.

That's the most pervasive danger to allowing the status quo to persist. It's

outrageous enough to essentially give up on students who need the most help.

But when doing so gives them little choice but to continue their downward

spiral, it's society that picks up the tab. South Florida's school districts

must demand more of these rudderless students, and even more of themselves.

Next year -- finally -- the state will, requiring the same accountability of

alternative programs that it demands of mainstream schools.

Palm Beach County seems to be getting the message. In August, it handed over

Roosevelt Full Service Center, one of the main targets of Alvarez's criticism,

to a private company with a corporate-style incentive system that is already

showing results. And it's forming an advisory committee to recommend wholesale

reforms to the alternative program.

With the right follow-through, the coming changes could mean new hope for

students who have lacked it for so long, and for a society that pays dearly for

their failures.

Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel