"Persistently Dangerous" swept under the rug

This Washington Post article explores a NCLB problem that has been apparent for anyone who's been paying attention: 'No Child' Data on Violence Skewed

A little-publicized provision of the No Child Left Behind Act requiring states to identify "persistently dangerous schools" is hampered by widespread underreporting of violent incidents and by major differences among the states in defining unsafe campuses, several audits say. Out of about 94,000 schools in the United States, only 46 were designated as persistently dangerous in the past school year.

Sure enough, the way NCLB was written there is no reason to expect anyone to willingly have their school designated "persistently dangerous". So everyone plays along with rules designed to make sure no school suffers this death sentence. And why should they? There is no upside. Nothing is there to help the schools deal with school safety problems.

Safe Schools was a common theme for all participants in the Student Enrollment Recruitment and Retention Initiative (SERR) process. School safety is obviously very important to families. Anything that can be done to help focus attention on improving safety should be done — including shining a light on safety issues to focus policy attention on identifying and addressing these problems. The scarlet letter approach of NCLB obviously failed. Time to rethink the goals and approaches and come up with a better way to identify and address campus safety problems.