The success of schools is all the more amazing when we consider that more students with disabilities are being educated in regular classrooms. Thirty years ago 90 percent of developmentally disabled children were housed in state institutions 1,000,000 children with disabilities were shut out of school altogether. Today, students with disabilities are educated in regular classrooms, and students with the most profound disabilities attend public schools. We don t hear it from the spinmeisters, but student achievement trends, as reflected in standardized test scores, are up across the board, at all grade levels. Contrary to media spin, school crime is, in fact, declining.
Children are safer in schools than in the community or at home.
Less than one percent of the 2,500 or more child homicides and suicides that take place in a six-month period occur at school or on the way to and from school. The most dangerous place for youngsters to be, if facts are to be believed, is home. Finally, more students are going on to higher education. More are completing four-year college degrees, and more women are completing graduate and professional degrees. None of the critics of our business have addressed the work of schools as arbiters of progress and change, purveyors of compassion and dignity, or the school s role as surrogate parent and family.