The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; an update on the charge U.S. bombs killed some 40 Afghan civilians; Betty Ann Bowser's second report on how to reduce destruction from the wildfires in the West; a look at the changes in the college entrance exams known as the SAT's; and a conversation with award-winning novelist Ann Patchett.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The President of Afghanistan today demanded the United States take "all necessary measures" to avoid civilian casualties. The call from Hamid Karzai followed the deaths of 40 civilians yesterday, southwest of Kabul. Villagers there blamed U.S. warplanes. But at the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said it was still too soon to know what happened. We'll have more on this story in a moment. A Russian airliner collided in midair with a cargo plane over Germany last night. More than 70 people, including 52 children, were presumed killed. It happened in a rural area of southwest Germany, near the border with Switzerland. We have a report from Julian Rush of Independent Television News.

JULIAN RUSH: It seems incredible: Burning wreckage falling from empty skies. A clear night, good visibility, and yet two planes collide in midair. Neither advanced air traffic control nor sophisticated technology prevented it. The wreckage burned on; on the ground: Bodies, luggage, and debris scattered over a huge area. In the morning light, the investigation began. The crash site is in rolling farmland. Debris landed in fields, on roads, and in gardens. Both planes' flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders in the DHL cargo jet have now been found. Extraordinarily, no one on the ground was killed, though there were several lucky escapes. By mid-afternoon, 26 bodies had been recovered. In Moscow, relatives waited anxiously for news. Their children's holiday in Spain had been a reward for excelling at school. The airline there blamed the Swiss for the crash.

NICKOLAI ODEGOV, Bashkirian Airlines ( Translated ): My version is that it's the fault of the Swiss ground control that caused the two planes to come together.

JULIAN RUSH: Tonight, the Swiss admitted they'd ordered the Tupolev to descend under the DHL Plane with just 50 seconds to avoid disaster, but the Russian pilot didn't respond immediately, until called again by air traffic control. He got so close, he triggered the collision alarm in the Boeing. The computer ordered the DHL pilot to dive. He did so, right into the path of the other plane.

JIM LEHRER: The parents of the Russian children are to fly to Germany tomorrow. Two U.S. airline pilots were out on bond in Miami today, after being charged with trying to fly an airliner while drunk. Pilot Thomas Cloyd and co-pilot Christopher Hughes were arrested yesterday moments before their America West Miami-to-Phoenix flight was to take off. Officials ordered it back to the gate when screeners reported the two men had smelled of alcohol. Police said breath tests showed both were legally intoxicated. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident. America West suspended the pilots with pay, pending that investigation. American Steve Fossett today became the first person to fly around the world alone in a balloon. The wealthy adventurer from Chicago crossed the finish line off the coast of western Australia, 13 days and some 19,000 miles after liftoff. This was his sixth attempt to circle the globe. The CEO of WorldCom said today he was sorry for "past transgressions" at the firm. John Sidgmore spoke at a Washington news conference. He promised to cooperate with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has brought civil fraud charges against WorldCom for not counting nearly $4 billion in expenses. Sidgmore said despite the bad publicity WorldCom has not lost any big customers and he said he hoped it could avoid bankruptcy.

JOHN SIDGMORE, President and CEO, WorldCom: This is not a situation like many others where people will imminently run out of money -- at least we don't think so. We have over $2 billion in the bank day. We are working with banks even as we speak here, talking about various proposals to restructure our financing and, you know, we are somewhat optimistic that we will get a proposal, if not two proposals in hand this week to accomplish that. That doesn't mean that those proposals will be acceptable or that they'll eventually work out.

JIM LEHRER: Sidgmore said more layoffs were possible, although he would not say how many. Last week, the company let go 17,000 workers. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to more death in Afghanistan, protecting homes from wildfires, changing the SAT's, and novelist Ann Patchett.

UPDATE DEADLY INCIDENT

JIM LEHRER: The accidental U.S. attack on Afghan civilians, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: A joint U.S.-Afghan team set off today to investigate yesterday's attack on civilians in central Afghanistan. Confusion surrounds the most basic questions: How many died, how they died, and where they died, in one or several villages in a mountainous province about 175 miles southwest of the capital Kabul. The story from some survivors, who were taken to a hospital in Kandahar, was that U.S. military planes attacked a wedding party in the village of Kakarak, killing scores of people and injuring many others, including women and children. One villager said the U.S. planes may have attacked in response to villagers who fired weapons in the air during the wedding celebration. Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah said today he'd been told four villages were attacked, and he demanded that the U.S. take "all necessary measures" to avoid civilian casualties.

ABDULLAH, Foreign Minister, Afghanistan: It will not be acceptable for the people of Afghanistan if that becomes a pattern. Civilians are civilians, and we have the responsibility to protect them, while the coalition forces, which are supportive of our efforts, which are helping us, they should also take strong measures in order to make sure that civilians are not harmed.

MARGARET WARNER: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began today's Pentagon briefing by expressing regret for the casualties.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Let me say that anytime there is the loss of an innocent life, for whatever reason, it is a tragedy. And certainly, the commander on the ground has expressed regret for any innocent loss of life.

MARGARET WARNER: Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman General Peter Pace said they didn't yet know what had happened, but did say that there were two U.S. operations going on at the time of the attacks.

GEN. PETER PACE, Vice-Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: What we do know right now, at least the first reports, which may change, are that there was a B-52 that was flying a mission about that time. It did drop seven precision-guided munitions. They were being spotted and controlled by a forward air controller on the ground, who saw the impacts of the seven weapons. There was also an AC-130 flying missions in that area. It had been responding also to a forward air controller on the ground, who had been directing fires against anti-aircraft weapons that had been firing up at the AC-130. Those are the facts that we know right now.

MARGARET WARNER: General Pace was asked what safeguards U.S. forces taking fire were supposed to observe to avoid killing civilians.

GEN. PETER PACE: If a U.S. military unit is taking fire, they may... they have the absolute right of inherent self-defense to return fire. And I do not know which of these is true: If the ground observer observed fire going toward the airplane and reported that to the airplane, and then the airplane returned fire; or if the airplane saw that it was being fired on and returned fire. Either one of those would be consistent with established procedures.

REPORTER: Was the aircraft hit, sir? The A.C.-130? Was it hit?

GEN. PETER PACE: It was not.

MARGARET WARNER: Rumsfeld repeatedly cautioned that the Pentagon didn't yet have the full picture.

DONALD RUMSFELD: What General Pace is telling you is what he knows from talking to people who've been in touch with the people on the ground and in the air. What we do not know is the information that will be gained by talking to non-U.S. forces who were on the ground.

MARGARET WARNER: Rumsfeld said the on- the-ground investigation could take another day or two.

MARGARET WARNER: To help us unravel what went wrong yesterday, we turn to the "Washington Post" Pentagon reporter Thomas Ricks; and from Kabul, Carlotta Gall, who has been covering Afghanistan for the "New York Times." Welcome to you both. Tom Ricks, beginning with you, flesh out a little more for us what the various military sources you're talking to think happened yesterday.

THOMAS RICKS, The Washington Post: They really don't know. The basic facts are very few. You had a B-52 in the area; you had an AC-130 special operations gun ship in the area. The B-52 was dropping bombs on caves. The AC-130 was there to provide air cover for a ground operation of U.S. and Afghan troops. The Pentagon said today about 300 to 400 troops were involved in that operation.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, tell us about that second operation, this reconnaissance operation. What is it about this area of Afghanistan that they had two different operations going on at the same time?

THOMAS RICKS: This is really the Taliban heartland. It's the mountains just north of Kandahar, about 70 to 100 miles north of Kandahar, in Oruzgan Province. It's where Mullah Mohammed Omar, the proposed Taliban leader, comes from originally. The two villages that they were focusing on were one village that he had grown up in for a while, and another that he lived in later. The oddity here is that, yesterday, the Pentagon was indicating it was probably a B-52 bomb, a 2,000-pound bomb that missed. Today they're indicating, no, it was more likely that it was somehow the AC-130 gunship. They're saying that they observed, the troops on the ground observed the bomb hit and thought it hit in an uninhabited area. But they're not really saying the AC-130 hit all the villagers, but they're indicated that most likely.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, now, how would the AC-130 actually get engaged? There seemed to be a couple of different threads at today's briefing, either that someone on the ground was directing it, or that... anyway, you explain it for us.

THOMAS RICKS: Yesterday we were being told that the AC-130 was orbiting overhead, as would be typical, to provide support if necessary. The ground troops came under fire and so called on the AC-130 for support. Today the Pentagon account was somewhat different. They were saying, no, what happened was that the ground troops were involved, the AC-130 thought it was coming under fire, they came under anti- aircraft fire, which implies heavy caliber weaponry not just small arms like AK-47 machine guns, and that the AC-130 then fired back. The Pentagon also said that the AC-130 fired over an area of several square miles, hitting four separate locations. One of those locations might have been where the wedding occurred. This is my supposition. The other ones may have been where actually fire was coming from. They might have hit all of them simultaneously.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, I was going to ask you that, do the military officials think the wedding firing scenario is plausible as the cause of fire that they considered hostile?

THOMAS RICKS: It's certainly possible in the moment of confusion to have somebody saying, "we're taking anti-aircraft fire from one or two locations. You know, hit those locations." And for somebody to say, "oh, there's a third one, let's hit that one, too." But the muzzle flashes from AK-47, light machine guns, would look very different even at night, I think, than anti- aircraft fire from much heavier caliber weaponry.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, Carlotta Gall, I wonder... I know you're in Kabul. Have you been able to reach anybody by phone down near the area? What are they telling you?

CAROLOTTA GALL, The New York Times: Yeah, we spoke this evening to a district chief from a neighboring... in the same province, Oruzgan Province. He said that he'd actually been to the site today. And I spoke to him this evening about 6:00 local time. And he said he just, like an hour before... well, he had been there an hour before and they were still pulling bodies from the rubble. He was saying it's a very big deal; a lot of casualties. He puts the figure at 200 casualties. Other people we've talked to, including the prime minister here in Kabul, said there were 140 40 dead and 100 wounded. So, it's a sizable amount. And the foreign minister also said that four villages were hit in what he called a "bombardment." And the worst casualties were in one village where the wedding party was going on, and that's where most of the people were killed, including, he said, a whole family, every single member of a 25-member family; every single member was killed.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, tell us more about how the government is reacting to this. We did just run a quote from the Foreign Minister Abdullah being quite critical. How is the government handling this?

CAROLOTTA GALL: This is very interesting because they came out today with a very strong statement. They said that President Karzai had called the General, McNeil, the commander of the coalition forces here in Afghanistan, to his office for an explanation. And he asked him to take much more care in ensuring that there were not so many civilian casualties and he advised them to check their intelligence more carefully. So it's a very strong reaction from President Karzai and his government. Up until now, they've always accepted the casualties as part of the war and as a necessity to continue attacking al-Qaida and Taliban remnants. So, this is the first time they've ever made a statement, and certainly the first time I've ever heard such strong statements coming out of the government.

MARGARET WARNER: And why do you think that is? Why do you think they've reacted that way this time?

CAROLOTTA GALL: I think... I think that it's a shocking occurrence. There are a lot of children wounded. We're seeing pictures of them already in the hospital. We know that one man brought four children, under five, to U.S. forces, who then flew them to their own hospital in Kandahar. So, I think it's a shocking moment. And I know that it's going to turn the population very angry. We've already heard of an attack in Kandahar on a U.S. military convoy in the town in the South. I think he's acting against what he thinks will be popular anger of this news.

MARGARET WARNER: The foreign minister also was quoted as saying that he thought an incident like this would be used to gin up opposition to their government. Is there a danger of that, or do they really feel their situation is that precarious?

CAROLOTTA GALL: I think in the South, I've been down a lot in the South and there have been a lot of these raids and there's been a fair amount of civilian casualties, and there's definitely the enemies of the current government, and they still remain porters of the Taliban, and fundamentalists. They, of course, use it. They say, "Look, Mr. Karzai brought in the American troops and now they're killing us and they're killing our people." So, of course there are a lot of uneducated people in the villages who see this and will be turned by people against the government. So it's not a problem yet, but I think the potential is very much there.

MARGARET WARNER: Final quick question to you, Tom Ricks. Do you sense at the Pentagon today any thought that they may have to reexamine the, sort of, operating procedures in response to President Karzai?

THOMAS RICKS: I think publicly they won't say anything about that. I think privately yes, there will be a reexamination of not only the speed with which they reacted, but the intensity and the scope with which they reacted. I think they will probably go back and look at it and say, "sure, you have a right to self- defense, but did you have to respond so overwhelmingly and perhaps even disproportionately?"

MARGARET WARNER: Tom Ricks, Carlotta Gall, thank you both.

THOMAS RICKS: Thank you.

FOCUS FIRE FIGHT

JIM LEHRER: The huge forest fires in the West this year have triggered a debate over how to keep them from being so terrible, so catastrophic. Here is the second of two reports by Betty Ann Bowser.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: When you've seen the horrific pictures, it's hard to believe, but one-third of all the people in Colorado live in an area at high risk for wild fire.

By the year 2030, another two million are expected to have moved into what's called the wild land urban inter-face or the red zone. And between now and then, officials say the wild fires could get bigger, more destructive and deadly.

FRANK BEEBE, Genesee Fire Chief: People are moving into the urban wild land interface and they haven't got a clue of what's about to happen around them.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: All over the West, fire officials are trying to educate people about the dangers of what may be coming their way.

BILL EASTERLING, Genesse Fire Marshal: The primary goal, the primary concern on any fire is human lives. We're going to preserve human life. That's our number-one, primary goal always. You can always replace a house. You can grow another tree. You can't replace a human life.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The wealthy mountain community of Genesee, 20 miles near Denver, is getting ready. The residents know the possibility of a wild fire is high. But fire was the last thing on their minds when they moved here. Most came because they loved the remoteness, the pristine beauty, and the trees. Andrew Stirrat is president of the Genesee Homeowners' Association.

ANDREW STIRRAT: Every day I wake up and I just think this is just absolutely a miracle of creation that I can look out at the mountains, at the trees, at the birds and have this right at my fingertips. I found no other place that I have ever been that gives me such a sense of peace and sense of calmness.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Stirrat's peace and calm have been dashed. This summer instead of looking at the mountains, he and other Genesee residents have been seeing smoke from the big Hayman Fire south of Denver. Karen Barker is another Genesee homeowner.

KAREN BARKER: I guess I look at the smoke that I see out here as a blessing, because it's giving me time to act now. I have no excuse if a fire burns down my property; I can't sit here and say, well, I didn't know. I have done nothing. So this weekend I'm taking my heirlooms out, I'm packing all of my records, I'm getting my photographs, getting them prepared, moving them down into the city. If I didn't see and smell the smoke, maybe I'd still feel like I was in a Never Never Land.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Barker and her neighbors are not naive about the risks of living in the red zone, but recently they've heard U.S. Forest Service officials say this is a new breed of wild fire that could catch them by surprise.

ANDREW STIRRAT: We have two major roads out of this community. They have 900 homes. And for us, we recognize that this area was potentially a threat in terms of being, one, able to let people leave but also to be able to bring in emergency vehicles to fight fires here.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Forest Service has a ten-year strategy called the National Fire Plan to reduce the risk of fire in the red zone. The plan includes thinning because officials say a thinner forest provides a good chance of slowing down a catastrophic wild fire. So next week, the Genesee Homeowners Association will start thinning trees along the evacuation route. Rebecca Price is furious with this decision. The trees around her home act as a barrier to traffic noise from nearby Interstate 70. When they are thinned out, she will have less privacy. And she's not convinced cutting down trees will help people get out faster in the event of a fire.

REBECCA PRICE: I do actually think that's people's right out in the forest. If they want to say, you know, I don't want to do it and if I burn, I burn, well then that's their business. We don't want to burn here. I don't think anybody wants to burn. But to take our trees out and to lose our environment, to lose our privacy, to possibly damage water run-off, wildlife, we don't think the benefits of the thinning as proposed are worth it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Frank Daviess is on the board of the homeowners association, which is paying for the thinning without any government assistance.

FRANK DAVIESS: You can't expect other people in Jefferson County to spend their money to defend you because you chose to live in a heavily forested habitat with hazards. It's no different than building your house on a barrier island and expecting the federal government to bail you out after hurricanes. You're putting yourself in danger by living in wilderness or on the edge in the urban interface.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Not only do the experts recommend thinning trees along evacuation routes in the red zone, they also talk about the importance of creating something called defensible space around houses, to make them more resistant to fire. That means moving wood piles and other highly flammable objects away from dwellings, cleaning out underbrush and pine needles. It also means cutting down trees. When Barker created more defensible space around her house two years ago, it was painful.

KAREN BARKER: As brave as I'd like to think that I... as humbling as it is-- because I complained and I cried and I just was so ripped up, my husband and I, as we tore down all these trees and now feel like we're acted responsibly, the bottom line is I know if we have anything as bad and as terrible as what's just 20 miles to the south of us, this house is going to go. So it comes down to, can I live with this house burned, having done all of the right things? The answer is yes, at least I know I've done something.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Very few local governments have done anything to restrict where they allow people to live. Instead, many now require fire resistant building materials, adobe walls and metal or tile roofs and some have set standards for thinning trees around dwellings. And the insurance industry is starting to play a role. Many homeowners are now required to create defensible space around their houses to get homeowners insurance in high-risk areas and to renew policies. But rates are only slightly higher for those who live in the red zone. That's because the industry has seen only a small number of claims from wild fires in Colorado in the past. But spokesman Carole Walker says that will change.

CAROLE WALKER, Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association: Right now in the state of Colorado, we have more insurance losses due to hail, far more losses. Our most expensive hailstorm back on July 11, 1990, a 45- minute hailstorm cost $625 million worth of damage. Recently we had a hailstorm in Colorado Springs that cost $24 million in damage. We are not seeing those kinds of price tags on wild fire yet. As we continue to see these kinds of seasons, as this threat grows and there's a trend that happens with wild fire and insurance, you will start to see it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Several major insurance carriers said today that they expect losses from the Colorado fires so far this year to total at least $50 million. U.S. Forest Service ecologist Merrill Kaufmann says homeowners need to do much more to fireproof their homes but even then it might not be enough to stop a powerful wild fire.

MERRILL KAUFMANN, U.S. Forest Service: We're dealing with the situation now that even in places where people might have done the mitigation work around their houses, such a fire storm is generated by the condition of the forests in that back country that we might ignore for treatment that that fire would steam roller everything in its path. There's no way in the world that the amount of defensive work you might do around your house or your subdivision is going to give you enough of a guarantee that your place is going to be safe.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But that danger doesn't stop building in the red zone. New home construction is expected to increase 40% in the next 28 years. And it doesn't stop Frank Daviess from living there.

FRANK DAVIESS: You choose where you live based on all these different factors. This is, to me, the most appealing. So if you don't want to live in a denser, more urban type environment, you're putting yourself potentially in the face of these hazards. So I guess that's the answer to it -- I don't want to live in an urban center.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: All eight of the wild fires burning today in Colorado at one time threatened to overrun a community in the red zone. Thousands of people were forced out of their homes for days. And the wild fire season in the West normally doesn't even start until August.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an SAT makeover, and the author of "Bel Canto."

FOCUS EXAM QUESTIONS

JIM LEHRER: Revamping the SAT's and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Last week, the trustees of the College Board voted to overhaul the SAT. It's the second major revision, in the last ten years, of the college entrance exam taken yearly by over a million high school students. The changes include adding a handwritten essay, higher-level math questions, and dropping the analogy section from the verbal test. We begin with Gaston Caperton, President of the College Board, the former Governor of West Virginia.

The last redesign, Governor, came in 1994. Why did the College Board think it needed a redesign yet again?

GASTON CAPTERON, President, College Board: Well, the College Board has always looked to make this test the best test for admissions in the country. And it was clear that some of the things that were recommended in the study that was done in 1990 and put into effect in 1994 had not been carried through with. Also, the University of California made a real challenge to us about a year and a half ago, and that created a lot of opportunity for change and a lot of conversation. So I think it is a combination of what we didn't get done in 1994 that we knew was important, like writing. The impetus that was given by the challenge of California, who is an important member of the College Board, and the research that we have been doing on an ongoing basis.

RAY SUAREZ: What was the crux of the critique given by the University of California system -- one of the biggest state college systems in the country, somebody you'd want to keep happy, I guess?

GASTON CAPTERON: Well, I don't think it's so much just trying to keep them happy, though you certainly would be arrogant and foolish not to listen to one of the most important institutions in this country, but I think that there were a couple of things. They, like we... like the College Board blue ribbon commission in 1990, said they thought writing should be added to the SAT. I very strongly believe in writing being added to the test for two very specific reasons: One, it improves its predictability; even more important, as I look at it, is that writing is not done well in this country. And it is one of the college success skills people really need. And so the... putting writing on the SAT really will encourage schools across the country to begin to emphasize reading, which is so important not only to college success, but success after college.

RAY SUAREZ: Does it make it a tougher test to score?

GASTON CAPTERON: Yes. Doing... we give about three million SAT's in the year. And so to score that many individual essays is quite challenging... for us. But thanks to technology, particularly the Internet, we feel comfortable that we will easily be able to do that, not easily, but be able to do that effectively and very carefully in March of 19... I mean, 2005, when the program becomes effective.

RAY SUAREZ: So as a result, is this going to be a harder test that we're asking high schoolers to sit for?

GASTON CAPTERON: I think a better test; not an easier test or a harder test, but a better test. A better test because it's going to have writing which is, as I say, along with math and reading, writing added are the real three critical college success skills one needs, along with being able to think and to reason. So I think that's a very important part of what's being done.

RAY SUAREZ: So, after the redesign is completed with the new math questions as well, when you talk to an admissions officer, what will you tell him about the usefulness of this exam as a tool for understanding the strengths of a college-bound high schooler?

GASTON CAPTERON: Well, I think that, first of all, they're going to know that Algebra II is included in it, a math course that all kids going... or students going to college should have. So they know the math is a stronger component. Number two, they'll know that the analogies have been taken out of this test, which makes it less prone to being able to prepare for, or need to prepare for, through test prep. They'll know it's more closely aligned to the curriculum and what kids are learning in school every day. It will have writing, which they've not had the privilege of having in the past. So those are the reasons... those are the things that will really strengthen the test.

RAY SUAREZ: Gaston Caperton of the College Board, thanks for being with us.

GASTON CAPTERON: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: Now some reactions to the changes. We get it from Freeman Hrabowski, President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, which requires the SAT for admission; and Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a not-for-profit watchdog group for standardized testing, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, President Hrabowski, you find the SAT to be a worthwhile tool already. Is this the kind of improvement that you would have been looking for in the test?

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI, University of Maryland, Baltimore County: I think so. My colleagues and I have talked about it. The idea of including more Algebra II is important because we expect students to have a strong pre-Calculus background when they come. Actually, most people would agree that it's great that they are not going to be using the analogies anymore, because that form of testing, of questioning students, can require a lot of practice on the wrong issues many would say. I would suggest to you that what's really exciting about this is that emphasis willbe on actually associating the test much more so with the curriculum. Algebra II, reading skills, writing, and these are the kinds of things that high schoolers should be working on anyway, it seems to me.

RAY SUAREZ: Bob Schaeffer, your organization has been a long- time critic of the SAT. Do these proposed changes in the test, coming on stream in 2005, address some of the criticisms you've had in past?

BOB SCHAEFFER, FairTest: The changes in the SAT announced by the College Board are largely cosmetic. They fail to address the major criticisms of the tests by groups like FairTest, and those include severe inaccuracy. It's not as good a predictor as someone's high school grades are. It biases the tilt of the playing filed against minorities, against older students and women, and its coachability. In fact, these changes are probably going to make the bias and coachability even worse.

RAY SUAREZ: You heard Governor Caperton mention that the adding of the writing section will actually make it less coachable, that the taking away of the analogies will make it less coachable. How do you respond to that?

BOB SCHAEFFER: Two weeks ago, they said the analogy section wasn't coachable. Now they say they've taken it off because it is coachable. The truth is, that high-priced coaching companies will teach kids how to write formulaic five- or six-paragraph essays. It's not the same as real writing, and the tilt in the playing field for kids whose first language isn't English, when they have to produce a high-quality essay in 25 minutes, instead of in the real world of college where you can stay up all night to compensate for the language deficits and the need to translate back and forth, the measure that the essay provides is not real. There are better ways for colleges to get the same kind of information, such as requiring students to submit graded essays from their high school courses. They're longer and they're more real world.

RAY SUAREZ: President, how do you respond?

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI: We know that schools around this country vary significantly in the level of resources they receive and the quality of education students get. We need some way of determining whether or not a student can read critically and write well and compute, through Algebra II. The SAT allows us to do just that. It gives us a way of comparing students across high schools, which is very important. What seems to me to be the most important point here, though, is that we need to have a high bar, to set a high bar for all students. We should not assume that minorities or others can't come up to that bar. What we have to do is to give them the support through the communities, through the schools, through families, to reach that bar. And that means more emphasis on reading skills and reading-- the more you read, the better you do. As a math teacher, I can tell you the more math problems you do, the better you'll become. So, we need to be talking about test preparation in conjunction with what goes on in the schools. And most important, families need to know what's expected of students if they're to do well. They need to understand the kind of reading they have to do. Actually, the passages will be shorter on the new SAT, but they will still focus on critical reading skills. We'll talk about Algebra II problems and writing. It seems to me that the test is perfectly reasonable and that the nation needs to focus its attention on ways of getting families and schools in all neighborhoods the support they need to focus on these matters, to make sure that young people, thatAmericans of all types can read well.

RAY SUAREZ: But you heard Bob Schaeffer say that the kind of writing test this will be-- short, needed to be responded to quickly-- will result in formulaic writing, not good writing.

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI: We want students to be literate -- to be able to read well and write well. And students in their freshman will have to write papers, some of which -- and essays and paragraphs -- some of which will require their writing right there on the spot. It's not unreasonable to think that somebody can write several paragraphs. We have to make sure that we truly believe that all children can learn and do well. And we have to give schools the support they need and teachers the support to make sure that happens. Why am I saying that? It seems to me perfectly reasonable that we would expect a high school graduate to be able to write several paragraphs in a coherent fashion, as a way of determining that that student is actually literate. I think it's perfectly reasonable.

RAY SUAREZ: Bob Schaeffer?

BOB SCHAEFFER: Well, President Hrabowski is certainly correct that there's huge differences in what goes on in our high schools. That's why it makes it all the more important that the College Boards' own data show that high school grades or high school class ranks are better predictors than its tests. The test is wildly inaccurate. And because of its flaws and biases, when colleges use it heavily in the admissions process, they end up skewing the results. The issue isn't the old SAT versus the new SAT or even the alternative, the ACT. The real question is why any college needs to use a test. And there are already 391 colleges and universities in this country that don't require test scores to admit substantial numbers of their applicants, some of the most competitive schools in our country. They believe every child can learn, and they believe that every child can show it in real academic work, not largely filling in bubbles and writing one formulaic essay in three hours a Saturday morning. The high school record is much, much richer. It includes lots of tests, lots of essays, and all kinds of other information.

RAY SUAREZ: Does the test give you enough to go on?

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI: The test, in conjunction with grades and other factors, can be very helpful to us and it is very helpful to us. The fact is, as an educator who looks at transcripts and talks with teachers and counselors and parents and young people every day, I can tell you that an "A" in one school does not mean an "A" in another school. I can also tell you that sometimes young people don't know what is really required to do well this college. When teachers and families understand more about the content required for success in college, about the level of reading skills required, the level of Algebra II skills required, they can work even harder towards those goals. We have to make sure that we don't assume that people know what's required. The SAT gives us information that can be very helpful to colleges, but also when people look at the content there, they can see how well that content relates to and correlates with the curriculum and the level of expectations in those schools. It's unfortunate, but it is a fact, that our schools differ significantly in level of education given to our students.

RAY SUAREZ: Bob Schaeffer said that the transcript is predictive more than the test is.

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI: You have to take a number of factors together. As a person in statistics, you have to take test scores and grades and courses taken and level of rigor, a number of factors. Of course there's also the factor of just level of motivation. So admissions offices will look at all of those factors. But I can tell you on my own campus, where the average SAT is in the 1200s, that we've looked at the scores of large numbers of students from different kinds of backgrounds and test scores coupled with grades. And looking at the courses the student has taken, looking at the major the student is intending to pursue, can give us a lot of information in predicting whether or not that student will be successful. We have looked at those who have made it at certain levels, in terms of grades and test scores, and the SAT is a very helpful measure. In fact, 80% of colleges and universities in this country use the SAT, and as I talk to my colleagues around the country, they want to continue using it. In fact, what I say to parents all the time is, "who wants a doctor who can't pass the test?"

RAY SUAREZ: Bob Schaeffer.

BOB SCHAEFFER: Well, of course an "A" in one school isn't the same as an "A" in another school. But by the same reasoning, a 1200 on the SAT from a student whose parents have spent $1,000 or $5,000 or $15,000 for a high-priced coaching course is not the same as a 1200, or even a 1000, from a student who goes in and takes the test cold. The notion that somehow the SAT is a common yardstick or a level playing field has, in fact, been repudiated by the College Board itself. It's very susceptible to the ability of kids whose parents have wealth to buy them a huge leg up.

RAY SUAREZ: Is a poor kid at a relative disadvantage?

FREEMAN HRABOWSKI: Of course a poor kid is at a relative disadvantage, in terms of test performance and performance... even in high school in general. The fact is the more educated the parents, the more advantages the child will have. What I would suggest is that we work to give students supplementary education. Students need to have opportunities for after-school programs, for Saturday academies, for summer programs that will focus on reading and mathematics, so that those children can have some of the advantages that upper-middle class and rich kids have in our country. What we need to focus on is an emphasis on building reading and thinking skills through mathematics, through the humanities, through other areas. And that can only happen by having students do more work. We need to be giving students far more work than they have right now.

RAY SUAREZ: Freeman Hrabowski, Bob Schaeffer, thank you both very much.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation about a prize-winning book, and to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: The book is "Bel Canto," this year's Penn Faulkiner winner for fiction. The author, Ann Patchett, has set her novel in an unnamed South American country where guests at a lavish party have been taken hostage at the Vice President's mansion. The fiction closely echoes a real event. In 1996, terrorists took 400 people hostage at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru. Both stand-offs lasted for months, but in Patchett's retelling, the clash of language, culture, and fear behind the mansion's walls also becomes a story about the power of music and the power of redemption.

Ann Patchett, welcome and congratulations.

ANN PATCHETT, Author, "Bel Canto:" Thank you very much.

GWEN IFILL: What was it that happened in 1996, at this hostage taking in Peru, that suggested this novel to you?

ANN PATCHETT: Well, I definitely have a theme running through all my novels, which is people are thrown together by circumstance and somehow form a family, a society. They group themselves together. So as I'm watching this on the news, it was as if I was watching one of my own novels unfold. I was immediately attracted to the story.

GWEN IFILL: One of the critics-- and you got a lot of very good criticism about this book-- wrote, and it struck me, he described this as a novel about the power of music, also about the power of love which is not quite the same thing although related. What is the relationship between these two things as you tell it in this novel?

ANN PATCHETT: I think it's all about beauty. It's all about the call to some higher form of life and existence. All of these people... half the people, the terrorists are very poor, very young, coming from a life of terrible struggle. The other half, the hostages, are very wealthy, very driven, strong, powerful businessmen for the most part. But they are two groups of people that have never had a moment to slow down and reflect. During this period that they're held hostage for four months, they're taken outside of society totally, and they're left to sit and think and reflect. And the thing that they most reflect on is on is opera music.

GWEN IFILL: That is interesting to me. What about opera? What is it that placed itself in the setting? And how were you drawn to it?

ANN PATCHETT: When I was watching all of this unfold on the news-- and the book is about 98% fiction-- I thought this is so operatic what's happening in Lima. The only thing that's missing from this story is an opera star hung up with the rest of these people, which is the nice thing about being a novelist instead of a journalist. When you see a story that is crying out for an opera singer, you just stick an opera singer into the story.

GWEN IFILL: Were you an opera fan?

ANN PATCHETT: No, I didn't know anything at all about music, but I knew enough to know something was operatic when I saw it. So I buckled down and started doing my research and became an opera fanatic during the course of writing this book, and I'm still an opera fanatic.

GWEN IFILL: Really?

ANN PATCHETT: The people who grew up with it I think are more controlled and tasteful. The people who come to it in their middle 30s, it's like being a religious convert: You become frantic on the subject. I now corner people at cocktail parties and talk to people about opera.

GWEN IFILL: Just like the people in your novel.

ANN PATCHETT: Exactly.

GWEN IFILL: You talk about the protagonists, both sides end up being protagonists. Even the terrorists end up being protagonists. Could you read a passage for us about one of them -- Carmen, who becomes one of the central kind of sympathetic figures in the book.

ANN PATCHETT: Sure. Of course in my book there is a terrorist named Carmen. "There was one other person there who understood the music, but she was not a guest. Standing in the hallway, looking around the corner to the living room was Carmen, and Carmen, though she did not have the words for it, understood everything perfectly. This was the happiest time of her life and it was all because of the music. When she was a child dreaming on her palette at night, she never dreamed of pleasures like these. None of her family left behind on the mountains could have understood that there was a house made of bricks and sealed glass windows that was never too hot or too cold. She could not have believed that somewhere in the world there was a vast expanse of carpet embroidered to look like a meadow of flowers or that ceilings came tipped in gold or that there could be pale marble women who stood on either side of a fireplace and balanced the mantelpiece on their heads. And that would have been enough. The music and the paintings and the garden, which she patrolled with her rifle, but in addition, there was food that came every day, so much food that there was always some wasted no matter how hard they tried to eat it all. There were deep white bathtubs and an endless supply of hot water pouring out of curved silver spigots. There were stacks of soft white towels and pillows and blankets trimmed in satin and so much space inside that you could wander off and no one would know where you had gone. Yes, the generals wanted something better for the people but weren't they the people? Would it be the worst thing in the world if nothing happened at all? If they all stayed together in this generous house? Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest, in hopes that it would give her request extra credibility. And what she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone."

GWEN IFILL: That is how the terrorists were seduced into their setting and ended up staying there for months and months. But also, the hostages were also seduced in a way into the comfort of this creation that you've written for them, this place, this comfortable place where they didn't have to worry about their lives. How did you avoid kind of the clich s of just writing about Stockholm Syndrome?

ANN PATCHETT: I read a lot about Stockholm Syndrome. Patty Hearst was a huge childhood fascination of mine. I've always followed her story. I think that the differences, with the Stockholm Syndrome people are somehow fooled into thinking that they identify with their captors. In this book, they actually do. I don't think that it is a syndrome. I think that they have so much compassion for these people, who are mostly children who take them hostage, and they spend so much time together, they play chess together, they play soccer together. They enjoy the music together. They really do find their common humanity.

GWEN IFILL: Even though this book begins-- and I don't think I'm giving anything away-- it begins and ends with kind of a burst of violence, none of your heroes seem particularly heroic and none of your villains seem particularly mean.

ANN PATCHETT: One of my great shortcomings as a novelist is that I have no talent for villains whatsoever. Any time I have someone who I think, "a-ha, this is my villain," once I've written about them for three pages I fall in love with them. I think that whenever you get close enough to see who someone really is, you can find out the soft spots, the tender spots in their character. So I do... I fall for them all.

GWEN IFILL: One of your main characters is the translator, the one person in the room who can speak these tower of Babel of languages which have been assembled for this big party.

ANN PATCHETT: Gen, yes.

GWEN IFILL: I wonder if this isn't the story about the power of language as well as of music and of love.

ANN PATCHETT: Well, it's about the power of language originally; how much everyone wants to be able to communicate through their own language and the traditional means they've always communicated before. But I think that it's also about going beyond language. And they come to realize finally they can communicate through their love of music, they can communicate through romantic love. They find ways to rise above language. So Gen is incredibly necessary at the beginning of the book, but in a way he falls off towards the end.

GWEN IFILL: Was there any peril for you in trying to fictionalize, even though you say it was 98% fiction in the end, fictionalize something that had its roots in a real terrorist incident?

ANN PATCHETT: It didn't seem a problem to me. And what was interesting was when I sent this book around to different editors-- of course it didn't come with a piece of paper from me saying, this is the based on the takeover of the Japanese embassy-- no one knew. Not one person recognized the real events of the story. I think that since the book has been out and it is in the publicity materials so it turns up in the reviews of the book, everyone knows. But it's the reason that I call the country "The Host Country" instead of Peru, because I thought by the time this book comes out no one is going to remember this. Tragedy, in my experience, is always replaced by tragedy. We hold one crisis close to our heart until the next crisis comes along and it obliterates the one before. So we tend not to remember things that happened six years ago in South America.

GWEN IFILL: Were you surprised to win this award?

ANN PATCHETT: I was so beyond being surprised. I was... just to be nominated was incredible. And I knew about the nomination probably a month before I found out that I had won. And then I won. It's so wonderful and I'm so inarticulate in the face of it. I keep thinking if my career goes bust next week and I never do anything, I'll always have this and I'll always be so proud of it.

GWEN IFILL: It hardly seems likely, Ann Patchett. Thank you very much for joining us.

ANN PATCHETT: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day. The President of Afghanistan demanded the U.S. take all necessary measures to avoid further civilian casualties. A Russian airliner collided in midair with a cargo plane over Germany last night. More than 70 people were presumed killed. And two U.S. airline pilots were out on bond, in Miami, after being charged with trying to fly an America West airliner while drunk. We'll see you online and again here we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.