The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, we have the news of the day; the details of today's Supreme Court rulings; that threw out an anti- homosexual law in Texas and dismissed a commercial free speech challenge. And the latest on the growing conflict in the African nation of Liberia.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on sex between homosexuals today. By six to three, it said a Texas sodomy law violates the right to privacy. The ruling reversed a decision 17 years ago that upheld such bans. A lawyer for the two men in the Texas case said today's outcome was "a giant leap forward":

RUTH HARLOW, Lambda Legal Defense Fund: What the court did today is recognize the basic humanity of gay people and their equal entitlement to liberty and say that gay people and straight people have the right to make their own choices about what they do in their bedrooms with the people that they love.

JIM LEHRER: A lawyer for the state of Texas deplored the ruling. He said people should have the right to set "moral standards of governance" for their states. Conservative religious groups also condemned the decision, including one that filed a brief in the case.

REV. ROB SCHENCK, President, National Clergy Council: What the court has said today is that right and wrong, morality versus immorality, no longer matters in the law. That is wrong. And it undermines our concept of justice and it demoralizes our culture.

JIM LEHRER: In all, 13 states still have anti-sodomy laws. In today's other major action, the Justices put off deciding whether corporate ads and statements are protected as free speech. Instead, they allowed a lawsuit to continue against Nike, the giant athletic shoe company. The decisions brought the court's current term to a close. We'll have more on the sodomy and the Nike cases in a moment. A day of attacks in Iraq left two U.S. soldiers dead and 14 wounded. A Special Forces trooper was killed southwest of Baghdad. Another American died when a bomb exploded on the road to the Baghdad Airport. And wire service reports said two soldiers were missing, north of the city. Also today, a grenade attack killed two Iraqis in a convoy in Baghdad. And a U.S. Marine died in a vehicle accident yesterday, responding to an ambush. In all, 196 Americans have died since the beginning of the war in March. On the banned weapons story today, the CIA defended findings that the two trailers found in Iraq were bio-weapons labs. The New York Times reported the State Department disagrees with that interpretation. And a White House spokesman confirmed there's new information on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. A former Iraqi scientist said parts and documents were buried in his garden more than 12 years ago. The U.N. nuclear agency said that shows the program was deactivated. Angry crowds in Liberia's capital demanded the United States intervene today to stop the fighting there. They gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia. The Liberian government said a new rebel offensive has killed up to 300 civilians and wounded 1,000. The rebels are trying to topple President Charles Taylor. In Washington today, President Bush said it's time for Taylor to go:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The United States strongly supports the cease-fire signed earlier this month. President Taylor needs to step down so that his country can be spared further bloodshed. All the parties in Liberia must pursue a comprehensive peace agreement.

JIM LEHRER: Initially, it appeared Taylor would step down as part of the cease-fire, but later, he said he would not leave. We'll have more on this story later in the program. The suspect is allegedly a top al-Qaida figure in Saudi Arabia. The may 12 bombing killed at least 34 people including nine Americans. It could take more time to finalize a cease-fire by Palestinian militants. Initially today, the Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, said a formal signing was just hours away. But later, the Associated Press reported it might be the weekend. Still, the violence continued. Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians carrying explosives. And, a Palestinian killed an Israeli civilian near the West Bank. Some major Internet companies of the 1990s have tentatively agreed to pay investors at least $1 billion. That would settle claims that initial stock offerings were rigged, to benefit special customers. More than 300 firms are involved, including Global Crossing, Ask Jeeves and Red Hat. They also agreed to cooperate in a probe of 55 brokerage firms. The U.S. economy grew less than first believed at the start of the year. The Commerce Department reported that today. It said the Gross Domestic Product increased at an annual rate of 1.4 percent from January through march. The original estimate was 1.9 percent. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones IndustrialAverage gained more than 67 points to close at 9079. The NASDAQ rose 31 points, nearly 2 percent, to close at 1634. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to: The Supreme Court's sodomy; and Nike cases rulings; the Philadelphia schools; the Liberia story.

FOCUS - EXPANDING PRIVACY

JIM LEHRER: The sodomy ruling, we begin with Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Court reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Again, Jan, welcome.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: > Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Again quickly, the facts in this case.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Sure. This case came about when Houston police officers entered the apartment of a man to discover him having sex with another man. They arrested both men, took them to jail. The men spent the night in jail, were released the next morning -- ultimately convicted of violating a Texas law that makes homosexual sex a crime, even when it's between consenting adults. The men ended up paying a fine.

JIM LEHRER: A misdemeanor -- $200 fine.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: $200 fine and I think $141 in court costs. They challenged the law and their convictions arguing that it violated their constitutional rights to privacy and their right to be treated equally.

JIM LEHRER: How did it get to the Supreme Court?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: They lost in the Texas courts. The Texas courts said that it was bound by a 1986 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court in that case upheld a similar law in Georgia that made homosexual sex a crime.

JIM LEHRER: All right. So it had to go back to the Supreme Court one way or another.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Right.

JIM LEHRER: All right now it was a 6-3 majority that struck it down today. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. What did he say?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The opinion was extraordinarily, I think, sweeping in scope and stirring in tone. He flatly rejected the court's 1986 decision in that case which was called Bowers versus Hardwick. He said that decision was incorrect when it was decided and it is incorrect today. He said the court in 1986 had failed to grasp the significance of the liberty interests that gays and lesbians had at stake with these kinds of laws and that the ruling had demeaned the interest of gays and lesbians and it failed to grasp the far- reaching consequences that these law often carried forth. I mean, these laws are not enforced that often. I mean this is quite an extraordinary prosecution to begin with. But that misses the point, Justice Kennedy suggested, because these laws have been used as the foundation for discrimination against gay men and lesbians and countless other areas of society from housing, employment, adoption, and on, the list goes on.

JIM LEHRER: How much did he hang it on the right of privacy?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That was the key to Justice Kennedy's opinion. He said that gays and lesbians have a liberty right which encompasses this privacy right in the constitution's 14th Amendment, which says, of course, that states can't deprive you of life, liberty or property without due process of law. And he grounded the opinion on a string of earlier decisions including Roe versus Wade that recognized that people have a very strong right in their intimate decisions in the choices they make, whether it's the right to get married or buy contraceptive devices, and today he said that people also, gays and lesbians also have that same kind of liberty interest and privacy right in making these very intimate choices about their own behavior in the privacy of their own homes and elsewhere.

JIM LEHRER: All right. The three dissenters were the Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas. What was their point?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Justice Scalia wrote quite a pointed dissent in which he accused the court of taking sides in the culture wars and adopting the so-called homosexual agenda. He said the Supreme Court had forgotten that the mainstream America, that people who are outside the so-called position that the court was embracing don't share these views. Justice Scalia said many people don't want to employ homosexuals or have them teach their children or lead their children's scout troops and that the court had just brushed those concerns aside and brushed aside the state's concerns in making these moral justifications in passing these kinds of laws. Justice Thomas called the law itself in his dissent uncommonly silly, and he said.

JIM LEHRER: In other words the Texas law.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Right. He certainly didn't defend the law. He said if you were a member of the Texas legislature, he surely would vote to repeal it. But as a judge, he could not find a right to privacy in the Constitution.

JIM LEHRER: What did Justice Scalia say about the right to privacy?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, Justice Scalia said that this was certainly nowhere in the Constitution, and that this law certainly was constitutional in his view. Now, he also addressed Justice O'Connor's opinion. She wrote separately. She didn't join Justice Kennedy's opinion, and she didn't think the court needed to overrule Bowers versus Hardwick. She looked at this case along an equal protection analysis along the lines that gays and lesbians should be treated equally. Just as if... just as heterosexuals should be treated and said that because the law singled them out for discrimination that in her view that was unconstitutional so Scalia rejected that thinking as well.

JIM LEHRER: It's a technical thing. She was one of the six but she was not with Kennedy in the overall....

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: She agreed that the law needed to be struck down, she just didn't agree on the reasoning.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Jan, don't go away.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner now has more on the impact of this decision.

MARGARET WARNER: And with me to discuss that, the practical effect of today's ruling, we turn to Pamela Karlan, a professor of law at Stanford University Law School; she filed a friend of the court brief against the Texas law on behalf of 18 constitutional law professors; and Michael Carvin, former deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Reagan administration's Justice Department. He is now in private practice here in Washington. Welcome to you both.

Pam Karlan, beginning with you, what is the likely impact of today's ruling for homosexuals in this country?

PAM KARLAN: Well, first I think it sends a powerful signal that the Supreme Court recognizes that gay people and straight people are equally people under the Constitution. Second, by sweeping these laws off the books, it takes away the ability of states to discriminate in a whole variety of areas against gay people on the grounds that being gay is the same thing as being a criminal. The Supreme Court has made it clear that that's not true. And I think those are the two biggest immediate impacts of the decision.

MARGARET WARNER: Mike Carvin.

MICHAEL CARVIN: That's a fair summary of what they said. They said that you can't base laws on morality or moral beliefs. Whether or not they follow the logic of this opinion to outlaw gay marriage or take into consideration of this issue in custody or adoption fights is an open question. The court doesn't seem to follow the logic of its own opinions often and therefore they act more like politicians and probably won't follow the policy to its logical conclusion. At least that was Justice Scalia's prediction in dissent.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Karlan, if you take what you just said that it would have an effect on child custody, housing, adoption, issues like that, tell me how the reasoning in Justice Kennedy's opinion would lead to changes or to giving homosexuals more legal standing to challenge decisions in these other areas? I mean this case was talking about private sexual behavior. These other things have to do with legal status in various ways.

PAMELA KARLAN: Right. But, for example, the Dallas Police Department said we won't hire anyone who is gay to be a police officer because by definition if you're gay, you're a criminal. You're violating the sodomy statute. State Supreme Courts often say we don't think apparent sexual orientation is relevant but apparent a parent as a criminal shouldn't get custody of his or her children. So by taking these laws off the books the Supreme Court is making clear that being gay is not being a criminal. Therefore, you can't deny somebody employment or housing or custody of a child on the grounds that he or she is a criminal simply because he or she is a gay person.

MARGARET WARNER: So then Michael Carvin then, if states wanted to, say, still give an advantage to heterosexual couples in adoption, they'd have to find other reasons?

MICHAEL CARVIN: I don't think so, because let's look at it this way. Justice O'Connor was the only Justice that reached equal protection issue, the issue that Pam is talking about, about whether or not people need to be treated equally. Five Justices, most notably Justice Kennedy, didn't want to go anywhere near that. And so, for example, he did not want to put in play issues like excluding the gays from the military. He put in a sentence that said we're not dealing with legal status issues such as marriage. So I don't think if you have to predict that Justice Kennedy is going to go there, I think Justice O'Connor also reserved issues like marriage from her opinion, and those are, of course, the two swing votes I think on this question. Whether or not the logic of the opinion would lead you there and some lower courts might follow it, you know, that is certainly a plausible scenario.

MARGARET WARNER: Staying with you for a minute, there were many sentences in Justice Kennedy's opinion they kept talking about; that it happened in the home, in the privacy of his own home. I think the first line is liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. How much of this ruling rested on the fact that this was really private behavior?

MICHAEL CARVIN: Well, that's the argument, right? Because everybody sees a common sense distinction between the government coming into your home affirmatively and depriving of liberty and making a decision on whether or not you'd get a benefit such as employment or welfare or government dollars. That latter category of things is dealt with under the equal protection clause, equal treatment -- the first kind of thing is dealt with under the right of privacy or right of liberty to do what you want in your own house. I don't think Justice Kennedy is going to say whatever I say you can do in your own house means that that's something that the government can't attach any significance to in any context.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree, Pam Karlan, that that limits perhaps the applicability of this ruling for these other areas?

PAMELA KARLAN: I don't agree exactly that it limits it. It's unclear how far the case extends -- what the case's legs are. But I think it's clear that a state can't now say about gay people, the reason why we're discriminating against you is because you're a criminal when the Supreme Court has made it clear that you can't make it a crime for gay people to engage in the same kind of intimate activities and decision-making that everyone else has always assumed they had the right to do.

MARGARET WARNER: So let's take Justice Scalia's prediction that this could lead to same-sex marriages or make it difficult to not have same-sex marriages. Do you think... is that your prediction?

PAMELA KARLAN: Well, at some point down the road I think that issue will come back before the Supreme Court. And certainly the logic of this case suggests that the Supreme Court will be much more receptive to those claims than the Bowers against Hardwick Court was 17 years ago.

MARGARET WARNER: But you don't think there's a difference, as Mike Carvin sort of said, between saying, okay, the government cannot interfere in purely private conduct and saying a state government must grant the formal recognition that comes from the institution of marriage which is a... you know, is a civil institution created by state law?

PAMELA KARLAN: There's a difference for sure. The question is how much of a difference that distinction will make. It's impossible to tell at this point. I think that's several years down the road at least.

MARGARET WARNER: Mike Carvin, Justice Scalia wrote and Jim and Jan talked about this, he said the court... he wrote, the court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda. The court has taken sides in the culture war. Do you think that's true?

MICHAEL CARVIN: Justice Scalia and I believe that the court should stay out of the democratic process. He believes that people should be able to make decisions unless it conflicts with some provision of the Constitution. So he wasn't voicing an opinion one way or another who was right in that debate. He was saying that the court had affirmatively declared a winner in this very important cultural debate that, as our discussion illustrates, has a lot of ramifications in other areas. And he said the court had no warrant to do that and should have let local communities and states decide these important issues for themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your interpretation of that comment by Justice Scalia, Pam Karlan?

PAMELA KARLAN: Well, I think Justice Scalia has made it very clear which side he's on in the culture wars. And he thinks the court should stay out of the democratic process. A majority of the court thinks the courts and the legislators should stay out of adults' bedrooms. And I think that this is not the Supreme Court stepping in way ahead of popular views. I think at the oral argument one of the things that Paul Smith, who argued on behalf of Lawrence Said, remains quite true which is that the country has moved on. I think most people would have been extremely surprised to find out that the government could make it a crime for consenting adults to engage in sex in the privacy of their own home.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, Pam Karlan, are there broader implications beyond, for homosexuals and again I will quote Justice Scalia here he said all state laws against things like bigamy, adult incest, prostitution, all of these could be called into question or will be called into question by today's decision. Was the court majority saying that a state cannot enforce moral standards, period?

PAMELA KARLAN: No, I think what the court was saying was that when a state says it's enforcing moral standards, a court needs to look at the interest of the state in enforcing moral standards and then look at the important interests of the individuals involved, so that I don't think this case takes us any closer to the legalization of incest or bigamy or pornography or any of the things that either Justice Scalia or Senator Santorum are afraid of. I think what this case confirms is that gay people and straight people are equal under the law.

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking or referring of course to Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum who had made a similar prediction a couple months ago. There was a big controversy about this. Mike Carvin, what's your view on that about whether this opens the door to striking down all other kinds of state laws that deal in this area?

MICHAEL CARVIN: Incest, prostitution are two consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes making a decision about sex. There's no principled distinction between those laws and the sodomy laws. There's a lot of policy distinctions between the two. And since the court is acting largely as a super legislature that makes political decisions, I don't think they'll follow their own logic. The logic of the principle they articulated today means the laws involving bigamy, incest and prostitution are unconstitutional. I doubt seriously they'll follow that logic because they are politicians.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you think and then I'll get back to Pam Karlan on that, do you think they are saying that a state has no right to enforce anything that deals with moral standards?

MICHAEL CARVIN: They said that the state had no legitimate interest simply because a majority of the state held a particular moral viewpoint. Well, it's hard to think what other rationale you have for, say, bigamy laws or laws involving prostitution other than sort of moral disapproval by a majority of the American public. And if that's the case, then all of these laws have to be in play. It's quite clear that sodomy is sort of a silly law that's gone by the books but that's not much of a rationale for overturning it.

MARGARET WARNER: Pam Karlan.

PAMELA KARLAN: I think there's a principled distinction between laws that target one class of people for engaging in behavior that everyone else in the state is allowed to engage in and laws that prohibit things like prostitution or incest. Prostitution is not just two consenting adults in a room. It implicates all sorts of other issues ranging from crime to the quality of neighborhoods to the subjugation of women. And those are not an issue when you're talking about consenting adults alone in their own home engaged in non-commercial intimate association with the people they're close to. That's just very different. And it surprises me when people put homosexuality on the same side of the line as incest or prostitution rather than recognizing that it's intimate association between two people in the same way that other couples of opposite sexes engage in intimate association.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Pam Karlan and Mike Carvin, we have to leave it there. Thank you both.

PAMELA KARLAN: Thank you.

FOCUS - DECISIONS

JIM LEHRER: Now, back to Jan Crawford Greenburg, for the court's other major action of the day, it involved Nike and the issue of free commercial speech. Now again, set the facts for us here.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Sure. Nike was facing a tremendous amount of criticism in the mid 1990s about working conditions and wages in some of its shoe factories in Southeast Asia. So it took out a series of newspaper ads and issued some public statements, wrote letters to university administrators whose athletic departments are big buyers of Nike shoes to defend itself and assert that it was acting fairly and honorably. A California activist, Mark Kasky, sued Nike under a novel California law that allowed him to come in and almost act like a state attorney general, a private attorney general, and it said that... he said that Nike had made these false statements and they were therefore violating California's unfair competition and false advertising laws.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Now, take us the route....

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The legal route.

JIM LEHRER: The legal route to the Supreme Court.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Nike said, "Listen, we have got a First Amendment right to defend ourselves. This is a matter of public debate. We're defending ourselves. We're participating in this public debate. You must dismiss the lower courts, you must dismiss this case based on our First Amendment rights." The California Supreme Court declined to dismiss this lawsuit against Nike asserting that the case could proceed to develop some of the factual issues and ruling that Nike was speaking almost as an advertiser, that it's a speech that Nike engaged in was commercial in nature -- therefore, not entitled to the heightened protection that other forms of speech might get, like political speech, speech that individuals would make.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And then....

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: And it made it to the Supreme Court. Nike took it to the Supreme Court.

JIM LEHRER: Nike took it to the Supreme Court. The court didn't really rule on it today. Tell us what they did.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Well, this was a very closely watched case because this is an issue of tremendous importance not only to corporations but even media organizations that weighed in and said the court should rule for Nike because a ruling against Nike might make companies less likely to even talk to the press for fear they could get sued. So this was very closely watched, and today the court disappointed everyone because it didn't rule on the case. It said we shouldn't have taken this case. It's too early. The California Supreme Court and the lower courts need to think about some of these issues a little more, develop some of the factual issues at stake, perhaps explore some of the arguments about whether or not a citizen like Mark Kasky who admits he's never bought a Nike shoe, whether he can come in and make this kind of lawsuit. So the court just sent it back to the California courts and put off that extraordinarily important issue of whether or not this speech is commercial.

JIM LEHRER: In doing so, they did issue a statement. The court did issue a statement, did it not?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Sure. Several justices, in fact, Justice John Paul Stevens joined by two other Justices issued a statement explaining why he thought that this case was not properly before the court at this time and explaining that it was these extraordinarily important novel issues and the court was taking it too soon, Justice Breyer and two other Justices also wrote separately saying the court should have taken the case, but those Justices taken altogether seemed to indicate that at least a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court do see some constitutional problems here. And so they did in some ways signal to the California courts that now must look back into this issue that Nike may have a... an interesting argument that this speech was not completely commercial in nature and that Nike was entitled to some protection to engage in this ongoing debate.

JIM LEHRER: In a nutshell, this is going to come back probably but years from now? Is that a safe prediction?

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: The legal system, you know, the wheels turn slowly. Obviously he sued in 1998. What is it? 2003.

JIM LEHRER: He has yet to have a real trial on the merit.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: The court is saying do that and let's come back maybe.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: Let's see if the statements are false. That's never been determined by a lower court.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you very much, Jan.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG: You're welcome.

UPDATE - SCHOOL EXPERIMENT

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an update on school reform in Philadelphia, and the turmoil in Liberia. Betty Ann Bowser reports the Philadelphia story.

TEACHER: What word?

STUDENTS: Show.

TEACHER: Again.

STUDENTS: Show.

TEACHER: Come on, guys. Everybody, what word?

STUDENTS: Show.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Last fall, when we visited Regina Johnson's seventh-grade class, she had trouble keeping her students awake, never mind getting them excited about learning.

REGINA JOHNSON: So you have your geography books. I have some magazines.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But over the school year, she says, it's gotten better.

REGINA JOHNSON: And you're going to create your own travel brochure.

REGINA JOHNSON: I've seen a lot of growth in their reading, their participation in class. Their self-confidence has just changed tremendously.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Johnson teaches at Fitzsimons Middle School in Philadelphia. It's one of the worst schools in one of the worst school districts in the nation. Fitzsimons is now being run by a private for-profit company called Victory Schools. It's part of a massive public school reform effort that began last year when the state took over the entire system.

TEACHER: How many points?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In a bold experiment, it turned over the 48 lowest-performing schools to five private companies and two universities.

SPOKESMAN: They'll roughly get what they got last year.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: To further stir things up, the state also hired Paul Vallas, who had been at the helm of reforming the Chicago city schools. He brought with him his own ideas.

TEACHER: Take your time -- your own solution. What would your own solution be?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Vallas took the remaining 20 low-performing schools, gave them more money, new curriculum, teacher training, and mandatory after- school programs. He called them the restructured schools. Some educators thought it was a prescription for disaster, too many cooks making too many recipes. So for the past year, all eyes have been on the city of Philadelphia to see what would happen. The first indication came in mid-June, when district-wide test scores were released. Math scores were up significantly. Overall, the district scores went up 9.2 percent. Vallas's restructured schools were up 11.4 percent. And among the private company schools, Victory kids did the best, up 8.9 percent. Lynn Spampinato, who's in charge of the five victory schools, thinks intensive teacher training made a difference.

LYNN SPAMPINATO, Victory Schools: I think we've made some significant gains our first year, due to very much the focus on staff development. We've clocked in over 10,000hours of staff development for our teachers in the intensive coaching model. So in each of our buildings, our teachers are supported by in- building coaches who coach teachers in partnership, all day, every day, to raise the bar.

TEACHER: Good job. So...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Another thing Victory did was reduce class size in the lower elementary grades, from 27 down to 16 or 17 students per class. And it adopted a rigid new curriculum for reading and writing. At Fitzsimons Middle School, Victory also took the radical step of separating the boys from the girls.

AUDREA LACKWOOD, Student: I'm learning more. My behavior has improved, and I get good grades.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Without the boys around?

STUDENT: Yeah, I truly learned a lot.

STUDENT: I learned a lot.

JACKIE BROWN, Student: It do seem like I can concentrate more without boys rolling around, always looking at you and staring at you.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It makes you work harder?

SIERRA GRAY, Student: Yes, and make me push myself, that I know when I get to high school next year, I'm going to push myself, and I know I can do it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Gwen Watson is an academic coach for Victory, and the union representative at her school. She thinks things are better this year, with some exceptions.

GWEN WATSON: I think that there's too much emphasis on testing. It just makes everybody really nervous. I personally am not always a good tester, and to have more tests for me would make me more nervous, and I'm sure that children feel the same way. There's a constant barrage of tests.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Frequent testing is also one of the hallmarks at the 20 schools run by Edison. One of the best-known for-profit management companies, Edison has had a mixed record of success nationwide. When the state awarded so many schools to Edison, there was a storm of protest. Richard Barth manages Edison's Philadelphia schools. He says in just nine months, people have changed their minds about his company.

RICHARD BARTH, Edison Schools: You know, when we started on Sept. 5, there were a lot of people who I think... we had horns in our heads. People thought, you know, who are these... what is this Edison thing? There was so much, as you know, acrimonious buildup, and I think we end the year with positive feeling in these schools, and with people really feeling like next year, it's going to be a home-run year.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The major component of Edison's reform is the monthly testing of students called benchmarks. It allows teachers, administrators, parents, and students themselves to see exactly whether they are making improvements.

TEACHER: Good luck, and see me before you leave.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Aaron Starke is the principal of Edison's Kenderton Elementary. He loves the benchmark testing, and he says the kids do, too.

AARON STARKE, Edison Schools Principal: They know what benchmarks are. They know about competing to get higher scores on their benchmarks. They know about testing. They know that testing, and state testing, is important. Do test scores mean everything? No. I don't think the test scores mean everything. But I do believe that because that's what we're being measured by, then that's what we have to produce on.

TEACHER: You're finding the sale price of a watch. Kurt...

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In addition to testing, Edison put in new curricula for reading, science, social studies, and math, and then spent $2 million training teachers to use the new materials. Some parents who initially opposed Edison are now among its biggest supporters. Daniel Wideman seesa big change in his seven-year-old son.

DANIEL WIDEMAN: He's much more... he's a better student. He wants to do more. He wants to stay in school. He loves his teachers. He loves all his classmates, and he just loves to come to school. And that's what I love.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Edison had hoped it would see at least a 5 percent gain in its schools' reading scores. But they only went up 0.1 percent. In comparison, the Victory scores were up 2.3 percent, and restructured schools' scores went up 2.7 percent. Edison's Barth says less than 1 percent growth isn't good enough.

RICHARD BARTH: So what do you do? You have to double back and say, "what about this year worked, and what about this year didn't work? Or what about this year do we think didn't contribute?" And then you have to break it down. We've got to step back and figure this out, because this is not going to happen two years in a row. If we don't have growth, something... something has got to change in the plan for next year.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: CEO Vallas says he's just pleased the scores went up, and thinks it may be due to the competition that's been created.

PAUL VALLAS: The fact that there are different management approaches, there are management alternatives, has certainly created kind of a dynamic tension that I think is healthy. And I think, you know, we don't have... I'm not interested in ... you know, I'm not an ideologue on this whole issue of management approaches-- which is preferable than others. My preferred management approach is the one that works. You know, I think we're going to discover that there are going to be some privately managed schools that do very well, and other privately managed schools that don't.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Already, one private company has been jettisoned by Vallas for nonperformance. And he says he's not afraid to fire others if they don't improve. But he's not getting rid of anybody based on this first district-wide test.

PAUL VALLAS: It's far too early to be drawing any conclusions, other than the fact that clearly people seem to be focusing on standards in classroom instruction, and that's a good thing. Now the question will be whether or not we can sustain this long term. I'm very confident that we will be able to do that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And long-term improvement is what it's going to take. Even with these higher test scores, just over one-third of all Philadelphia public school children can today read on grade level.

FOCUS - TURMOIL

JIM LEHRER: President Bush steps into the civil war in the African nation of Liberia. Terence Smith has the story.

TERENCE SMITH: Liberia's civil war has been on for more than 20 years. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, in the West African nation of three million people that was founded by former American slaves. Today, as rebel forces approached the capital of Monrovia, President Bush called on the country's president, Charles Taylor, to step aside. Joining me now by telephone is journalist Sebastian Junger. He's on assignment in Liberia for Vanity Fair Magazine. Sebastian Junger, thanks so much for joining us.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: Tell us what the situation is there right now, what the situation is there today and as we speak.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, in every conceivable sense, the situation is terrible and getting worse. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the areas of fighting into Monrovia, and then fled parts of Monrovia itself, crowding into Mamba Point, which is deemed to be safe by them-- it's not at all. They're sitting out in the streets. They don't have water. They don't have food. Disease is spreading. There's a humanitarian crisis that's building, and ultimately, if not resolved, will kill many, many more people than the bullets. On the battlefront, the government had some success in pushing back the rebels. The rebels had gotten right to the edge of town two days ago. They had some success yesterday in pushing them back, but I just got this in a few minutes ago from a contact here: They've received reinforcements. They've fought their way all the way back to the edge of town. They're a few kilometers from where I'm sitting right now, and everyone is bracing for a fierce, fierce fight tonight or early tomorrow morning. There's an absolute possibility that the government forces will not be able to hold them back this time.

TERENCE SMITH: There were reports, wire reports, of another rocket attack in the capital today. Is that so?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, occasionally you hear explosions, artillery coming in. Today was certainly quieter than yesterday. Yesterday was a horrendous day. There may have been casualties today, but information is very confused and hard to come by. Rumors spread like wildfire. But it certainly was not yesterday. Yesterday two mortars or rockets landed in the compound right near me. I was a few hundred feet away at the U.S. Embassy, and initially reports had it that four were killed and scores wounded. I saw countless people taken by me in a wheelbarrow, bleeding and torn, to the Doctors without Borders compound, where they tried to treat them. But in fact, it's possible that as many as 19 or even as many as 25 people were killed. Apparently the locals are saying that there are still many, many bodies in the compound, but that a local security company working for the embassy will not let anyone into that compound, at least any westerners.

TERENCE SMITH: The wires are also reporting that a number of the bodies of those victims have been laid out in front of the embassy compound, in effect in protest and as an expression of anger. Have you been able to see any of that? I recognize that you're somewhat pinned down where you are.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, we did manage to slip out of the front gate and walk up to the embassy only a few hundred yards, but even that is a terrifying excursion: Militiamen driving around threatening people; thousands of people in the streets, yelling and begging and... it's really quite unspeakable. But at any rate, we did make it up there, and just a heartbreaking, heartbreaking scene; 11 bodies piled up on sheets of cardboard right in front of the main gate to the embassy. Two of the bodies... I'm sorry, three of the bodies were children, several women, all civilians. People just torn to people -- torn to pieces-- excuse me-- by shrapnel from the attack yesterday. And it was there that locals told us and tried to bring us into the compound where the other 19 bodies were, but we were turned back.

TERENCE SMITH: And this act of delivering those victims, those bodies right in front of the U.S. Embassy compound, what was the message in that?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, the sentiment here seems to be quite mixed in terms of the United States. You meet many, many people who, seeing that you're a westerner, come up to you and just beseech you to somehow communicate with the American government to please, please send troops, send peacekeepers and stop the suffering of Liberia. But increasingly, you are... I'm experiencing real aggression, people that are now angry at America, angry for not intervening, for ignoring the suffering of these people, and angry for allegedly supporting the Lurd rebels. They don't have proof that that's happening, but I think it gives an indication of just how desperate people are, that they turn to that kind of hypothesis.

TERENCE SMITH: That they believe that the U.S. is supporting the rebels and therefore the fighting?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes, exactly. They do believe that. But then the next person you talk to grabs you by the shoulders and says, "please help us. Please tell your government to send people." But absolutely those bodies were a message. There was a sign in front of the bodies, handwritten, that said, "America, what more do you need to see?" In other words, what more do you need to see before you send peacekeepers to stop this slaughter?

TERENCE SMITH: Has there been any reaction there, official or unofficial, to the call by President Bush today for President Taylor to step down?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Well, earlier, President Taylor referred to the U.S. influence in Liberia-- in other words, their support of the rebels-- as "the dark hand behind Liberia's suffering." Today, the word came from the United States, from President Bush quite late in the day, and if there has been an official reaction, none of the journalists here have heard it. And we don't know... I spoke with embassy officials today -- we don't know if the reaction by President Taylor will be one of belligerence or repeating what he has said before, which is, "America, you're our friends. We need your help. Please come help us."

TERENCE SMITH: Finally, what's the situation you and I know just a few other western journalists and westerners find themselves in, in the capital as we speak?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Yes. I'm the only American reporter, and a couple of other reporters just arrived. But until then, it's just been me and a French radio guy and a Financial Times reporter. That's it. We've been here all by ourselves, quite lonely actually. We are increasingly unable to work. The press has had its credentials withdrawn by the government. I've actually been expelled from the country, except that I can't leave. I came under some suspicion because I'm American and there's a lot of paranoia here about America. And essentially you cannot leave... you cannot leave the hotel. I tried to yesterday, and we came close to witnessing a gunfight between two factions of the government fighters. They were fighting over looting rights. They looted the embassies, veterinarians without borders, the convent. I mean, absolutely everything that can be looted has been looted.

TERENCE SMITH: Sebastian Junger, keep your head down and stay safe. Thank you very much.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: For more on Liberia and the U.S. Role there, we get two views. Richard Joseph is a professor of political science and director of the African studies program at Northwestern University. He has written extensively on democracy, development, and conflict resolution in Africa. Emira Woods is co-director of foreign policy and focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, an international affairs think tank in Washington. She was born in Liberia and came to the United States in the late 1970s. Welcome to you both.

Emira Woods, Sebastian Junger was saying the people there believe the U.S. is in fact supporting these rebel forces who are closing in on the government. Is it?

EMIRA WOODS: First, do allow me to take a commend to the NewsHour for finally turning the world's attention in helping to shed light on the conditions in Liberia and recommendations for a way forward. In terms of the rebel movement, there are many speculations about the U.S. Involvement, either direct or indirect, in channeling arms, in channeling support, political support and other material support to the rebel factions. What should be understood is that these rebel movements, both Lurd and Model, are not new to the political scene in Liberia. They are in many ways reincarnates of previous movements, some of whom participated in earlier conflicts with the very Charles Taylor. So these are not new actors necessarily, and the role of the U.S. has been speculated, the role of neighboring countries as well, particularly Guinea and Ivory Coast has been underscored by many both in the region and elsewhere.

TERENCE SMITH: Richard Joseph, do you see the hand of the United States behind these rebels, and if they do prevail, would that bring greater stability to Liberia?

RICHARD JOSEPH: I'm afraid that's not really the real central issue of the moment. The real central issue really has to do with those bodies that were placed before the U.S. compound -- the U.S. responsibility for Liberia, which goes back a very long time, our refusal in 1990 to live up to those responsibilities. I think it was very good that President Bush today announced that Charles Taylor should step down to avert further bloodshed, but this is a man who has been responsible for a great deal of bloodshed in the country and in neighboring countries, and for that reason has been indicted by the special court in Sierra Leone. It's really important for the United States to heed the word of the British ambassador to the U.N., which is that the international community would welcome the United States leading an intervention into Liberia and bringing an end to this tragedy. It is time. We have shirked that responsibility. President Bush today said that the U.S. has always lived up to its responsibilities in Africa. I beg to differ, especially in the case of Liberia. So I think it's squarely before us. It's squarely in our camp. We have been very deeply involved in Liberia. This country has supported the United States in two world wars, provided tremendous security assets for communications. We were closely allied to Sergeant Doe during the 1980s. And then throughout the 1990s we preferred to play a very secondary supportive role. That is just not good enough. This has been the center of a cancer that's eating away at this region. The U.S. should step in. It should work with its allies in terms of the transitional government. It should proceed to see that Charles Taylor is apprehended and taken to face justice before the special court, and it should prepare the reconstruction of Liberia and introduce a security conference for the region so we could start rolling back this terrible situation that has now affected Sierra Leone, Guinea, the Ivory Coast. Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: Is that the answer: U.S. intervention on a significant scale?

EMIRA WOODS: Just to underscore, the world is at an opportune moment now-- post-Iraq conflict, where the U.S. went in a unilateral way with a solution that was really not sustainable, that actually made the world more unsafe. Liberia should be seen as a test case for multilateral action. The U.S. should join its allies, should join the international community, to come up with the financial support, to come up with the troops and the necessary material support needed to create a stabilizing force that will be able to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis. The U.S. should not go this alone. That should be clearly made and clearly understood.

TERENCE SMITH: But is a force of some kind required at this point to bring order to what sounds like chaos?

EMIRA WOODS: Given the....

RICHARD JOSEPH: Sorry. We do need....

TERENCE SMITH: Go ahead.

RICHARD JOSEPH: I was not calling for unilateral American intervention. What I am saying is that the United States should participate in a multilateral force, but it should provide the leadership the way the British have provided the leadership in Sierra Leone, the way the French have been prepared to step in to Ivory Coast and have been called upon to do so in Eastern Congo. We should not step back and say, "let others do it."

TERENCE SMITH: That point is made, but I think the question really is, how can that be done, given the chaotic situation, Emira Woods, that was described by Sebastian Junger earlier?

EMIRA WOODS: It's quite clear that the situation is dire on the ground. Many have already noted that the marines are not very far off the shores of Liberia.

TERENCE SMITH: That there is a marine expeditionary force on a ship just off....

EMIRA WOODS: On a ship just off the coast of Liberia. The U.S. should work with its international actors on the bequest of the U.N. with this fact-finding mission that is going now to West Africa to come back and to lead the international community in a multilateral response to the situation in Liberia. So, yes, there should be forces sent onto the ground to stabilize the situation, to end the spiraling downward cycle, but that force must be multilateral in nature. It cannot be U.S. cowboy responses.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Richard Joseph, is it crucial to remove Charles Taylor? You spoke of bringing him to justice because he has been tried but in terms of Liberia, is that essential?

RICHARD JOSEPH: It is absolutely essential. I mean, this man has been behind a great deal of suffering in that region. He was quoted as saying that the U.S. is "the dark hand behind all the terrible things in Liberia." I beg to differ. It is Charles Taylor. He has to step down. There is no solution with Charles Taylor. And, furthermore, the man is now an indicted person who is supposed to be apprehended and brought to face justice. So how that is brought around and brought about in terms of the local forces and so on is something to be arranged. But he has really had the time. He was elected in 1997. Here we are, you know, six years later, and the country is still, you know, where it was when he started. I don't see any way in which Charles Taylor is going to be able to carry this country forward. He needs to move aside, and the country needs to be able to be put back together again. That's going to take a tremendous amount of effort.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Emira Woods, you mentioned before the neighboring countries that are playing a role in all of this. What sort of role, and to what end, constructive or otherwise?

EMIRA WOODS: Once again, the crisis in Liberia is not a Liberian crisis alone. It is a West African regional instability that has cut across the porous borders of that sub- region. So if you look at the crisis in Ivory Coast, if you look at the crisis in Sierra Leone, if you look at the troubles in Guinea, all the result of the flows of arms, the flow of elicit diamonds across the porous borders... the international community must really stand behind the Sierra Leonean criminal court to underscore the fact that no one is above the law, that it's not Charles Taylor or any heads of state or any of their lower-level ranks that should be held below the law. Thereshould be international norms that are respected. This must happen. What needs to happen now is an expansion of the jurisdiction of that international tribunal so that it's not just looking at Sierra Leone and crimes within Sierra Leone, but it's looking at truly the sub-region, looking also at the conditions in Liberia now and the enormous atrocities that are happening very much described by the journalists today. There needs to be an international response to this that will curb the flow of arms throughout the sub-region, that will end the flow of illicit diamonds throughout the sub- region, that will work towards a regional both peace and reconciliation, and also a regional war crimes tribunal.

TERENCE SMITH: Emira Woods, Richard Joseph, thank you both very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on sex between homosexuals, and a day of attacks in Iraq left two U.S. soldiers dead and 14 wounded, two more are missing. We'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening, with a look at the Supreme Court session that just ended, as well as Mark Shields and David Brooks. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.