No excuses. (Scan).(education for the poor)(Brief Article)

Nobody admits it, but the real dispute in public education today is whether schools full of poor kids can be excellent. A few mold-breaking institutions prove they can, but it requires a departure from the liberal orthodoxies of today's public-school bureaucracies.

A recent Washington Post story reports that Ronald Ross, superintendent in Mount Vernon, New York, one of the state's poorest and worst-performing school districts, has dramatically improved fourth-graders' test scores in just three years. In 1999, only 35 percent of Mount Vernon's public-school fourth-graders met state test standards in English; in 2001, a whopping 74 percent passed, "a rate rivaling those of many of New York's wealthiest school districts." In math, the passing rate rocketed from 51 percent to 79 percent.

The simple changes Ross made in the city's elementary schools included:

* assigning each school an assistant principal and a nurse in order to free principals "to focus on instruction"

* giving free bicycles donated by local merchants to students who read 50 or more books a year

* giving teachers "more training and weekly planning sessions" with reading specialists and administrators

* giving fourth-graders "weekend homework modeled on the standardized tests."