The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Just to create new teachers, it all follows our summary of the news this Thursday. Major funding for the new's hour with Jim Lehrer has been provided by. Imagine a world where no child bakes for food, how some will look on that as a dream, others will look long and hard and get to work. The idea, the nature of what's to go. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. The House voted today to give religious charities a larger role in social programs. It passed a scaled back version of President Bush's faith-based initiative, 233 to 198.

It would let religious groups compete for federal funds, and housing, hunger relief, and other efforts. It also provided new tax breaks for charitable giving, but much less than the President wanted. There were new warnings today about Social Security. A draft report for a presidential commission said the program cannot avoid benefit cuts or tax hikes unless workers are allowed to invest in stocks. The Associated Press said the commission would consider the findings next week. The group is co-chair by former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Richard Parsons, an AOL-time Warner executive. Democrats charged with proposing investment options for Social Security. Final recommendations are due this fall. President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair played down U.S. European differences today. They spoke at a joint news conference outside London. Blair acknowledged disputes over global warming and missile defense,

but he said more issues unite us than divide us. It's optimistic about a meeting of industrialized nations starting tomorrow in Genoa, Italy. I think people will find out that I'm plenty capable of conducting foreign policy for the United States in a way that reflects positively on my nation. I'm glad to be back in Europe. I look forward to a frank discussion in Genoa, and I'm confident that we'll find areas to work together on. I would disagree with this on a respectful way. Earlier, the President rejected criticism that he was isolating the United States. The charge came from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Dashow. In an interview, published in USA Today, the White House complained it was unseemly to attack the President while he's abroad. Dashow had this response. In question and answer forums, I try to be as open and honest as I can. Being open and honest yesterday about my feelings.

And had I given some thought to the fact that the President was departing, I probably would have chosen a different time to make those comments. But having said them, I certainly will not back away from my comments. And in those published remarks, Dashow said the Bush administration was straining relations with Russia and China and was not doing enough to foster peace in the Middle East. Bridgestone Firestone will not voluntarily recall more tires. A company's spokeswoman said that today. She confirmed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had pressed for such action. Last August, Bridgestone Firestone did recall six and a half million tires. They've been linked to more than 200 deaths, 700 injuries. A broader recall could involve millions more. But the spokeswoman said there's millions more tires. But the spokeswoman said there's no evidence they're unsafe. The U.S. Navy has begun the effort to recover bodies from a sunken Japanese fishing vessel. A spokesman for the Pacific Fleet confirmed it late Wednesday.

A U.S. submarine ran the Japanese ship last February off Hawaii. It went down, killing nine Japanese men and boys. Since the weekend, a robot vehicle has surveyed the wreck in 2,000 feet of water. The Navy hopes to move it to a more shallow spot so divers can search for the victims. The federal government today suspended funding for research on human subjects at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. In June, a healthy volunteer died there during an experiment for treating asthma. Hopkins said the funding decision could devastate ongoing clinical trials. The school leads the nation and federal research money, having received $300 million just last year. That's it for the new summary tonight. Now it's on to the faith-based debate in the House, proposals for improving elections, and a major look at how best to make teachers. On the home and reports, that house debate. President Bush has called his faith-based initiative the cornerstone of his agenda of compassionate conservatism.

The president's idea is to encourage contributions to religious organizations, and at the same time encourage those groups to take on a wider range of social services using funding from the federal government. These soldiers and the armies of compassion deserve our support. They often need our support. And by taking their side, we act in the best interests and tradition of our country. May we have order? This morning, Republican leaders brought the president's faith-based initiative to the floor of the House of Representatives. Ohio Republican Deborah Price. This is common-sense legislation that encourages charitable giving and enlist the strongest of our allies in our effort to provide desperately needed social services. Ohio Democrat Tony Hall signed on as a bill co-sponsor. Problems in our country are real, and many are getting worse, and none of them are going away without some response. In a faith-based group can respond effectively.

I think we should encourage them to do so. The Republican leadership's faith-based bill would allow taxpayers who don't itemize to deduct up to $25 in charitable donations annually. Rising to $100 in 10 years. The expected cost to the Treasury would be more than $13 billion over 10 years. Texas Republicans, Sam Johnson. When this bill becomes law, $100 a YMCA contribution will be $100 contribution, not $85, because the IRS is not going to take their chunk out. Charities do remarkable things for our country. They change the lives and hearts of so many for the better. They feed the hungry, closes the homeless, and assist the needy. Now's the time to help Charities care for those most in need, less help the Charities keep more of their well-deserved dollars. It's the right thing to do. However, Charles Wrangle, the top Democrat on the tax-writing ways and means committee, ridiculed the size of the benefits taxpayers would get.

Now listen to this, because if you're a charity, you're in trouble. They cap on the amount of money that a tax pay who doesn't itemize can give is $25. Of course, if it's a married couple, it increases dramatically to $50. And if you're in the $15,000, right, 15% bracket, you will be able to get a return up to $3.75. So much for a realistic incentive. The debate and vote on this bill were scheduled for yesterday, but the broad support it had started to slip, forcing Republican leaders to postpone floor action. Democrats and some Republican moderates were concerned the bill would allow participating religious organizations to evade state and local laws that prohibit hiring discrimination. Those concerns carried over into today's debate, California Democrat Barbara Lee. For example, it would allow organizations to refuse to hire Jews or Catholics or African-American Baptists,

dependent on their religious policies and practices of their denomination. And it would use taxpayer funds to fund that discrimination. Florida Democrat Peter Deutsch. The person serving the soup, literally with the ladle, would be allowed to be only of a certain faith. Whatever that faith may be, with federal funds. And that is a very scary concept, I think, for many Americans. But Ohio Republican Rob Portman argued that opponents were misreading the bill. You've heard opponents say this bill discriminates an employment, not true. This legislation strictly protects the exemption for religious organizations. First established in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This exemption allows religious organizations to maintain their character and mission by hiring staff that share their beliefs. That's all. That exemption continues. Organizations still must comply with every single federal law regarding discrimination. Still, in an effort to reassure wavering moderates from his own party, Oklahoma's GC Watts,

the bill's Republican co-sponsor, agreed to clarify the language on employment discrimination when the bill is brought to a conference with the Senate. As a sponsor of the bill, Mr. Hall and I, and willing to make a commitment that we will more clearly address this issue in conference and with the gentleman as we as the process moves along. But what scripted assurance did not persuade Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank? It's funny when I heard that this was the faith-based bill. I thought they were talking about faith in God, not faith in the Senate. And other Democrats, Washington's Jim McDermott among them, argued the new rules for faith-based groups aren't needed. Any religious organization can accept money in the present situation. You don't need this bill. Catholic charities get 62% that equates to $1.4 billion a year from the federal government. The Salvation Army gets $400 million a year.

United Jewish communities, their nursing homes get 76% of their money from the federal government. Lutheran services gets 30% of their $6.9 billion from the federal government. That's $2.6 billion. Now you tell me that faith-based organizations need this bill to get this money. That's clearly not what we're doing here. We want to give the ability of religious organizations to break laws that are there today and mix church and state. But Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan claimed the purpose of the bill is to make federal funds available to a new range of charitable groups. You hear this comment repeated over and over. Catholic social services, Lutheran social services, getting all this government money. You know, that's true. The large, high financed, well-established churches do get federal funding. They can afford the attorneys, they can afford the accountants, they can afford the largest to afford these complicated tax structures to get this money.

That's not what this bill is about. This bill is about the little guy. This bill is about the people who have those small faith-based organizations in our inner cities, in our rural areas, who know the names, who know the faces of those who are in need. An overwhelming number of Republicans agreed with Paul Ryan on the need for more faith-based social services. Most Democrats maintained their concerns about separation of church and state, and so the bill passed on a largely party line vote. The bill is passed without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. The president's faith-based initiative now faces a tougher challenge in the Senate, where majority leader Tom Dashl has yet to commit to bringing it to a vote. Now, fixing our way of elections and to Margaret Warner. The nation's voting systems came under sharp scrutiny after last year's election debacle in Florida.

Now, several new studies have concluded that the problems weren't confined to that state. One report released this week found that while 103 million votes were recorded, another four to six million Americans who wanted to vote were unable to or had their votes discarded. The report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology blamed these lost votes on faulty equipment, missmarked ballots, polling place confusion, and foul-ups with registration or absentee voting. For more on the problems and what can be done to fix them, we hear from the authors of two recent nonpartisan reports. Stephen and Sola Beheri is a professor of political science at MIT who was involved in the MIT Caltech Study. And Norton Garfinkle is chairman of the Institute for Community and Policy Studies at George Washington University. The Institute finished its election procedure study last month. Welcome, gentlemen, professor and Sola Beheri.

First to you, give us your study that came up with the four to six million lost votes figure. Tell us a little more about the biggest problems. The biggest problems lie in the area of registration. According to the census, which conducts those current population survey, about seven and a half percent of the 40 million registered people who didn't vote cited registration problems as their main reason. And those are people who are already registered. So these are people who went to the polls, tried to vote, but couldn't. Fixing these problems seems to us to be paramount. There were another that translates into about three million lost votes. There are another million and a half presidential votes that were lost because of faulty equipment. Confusion on the part of voters of how to use the equipment. The failures of the equipment to actually capture the votes and tally the votes properly. In addition, there are many more lost votes down the ballot due to equipment in Senate and Governor elections. And then there are problems dealing with polling place locations, hours and operations that lost roughly another million votes. People who tried to vote, but couldn't because of polling place problem.

Tell us a little bit more about the machine problems. Which machines did you find had the highest error rates versus the lowest? We studied equipment over the last 12 years. The equipment's used at the county level and purchased at that level in almost every state. And so there's a lot of variation across the country and over time, in which counties are using which kinds of equipment. Surprisingly to us, one of the more reliable systems is hand-counted paper ballots, which is the oldest technology used around the country right now. Another very reliable technology that appears is what's called optical scanning. That's where the voter is given a paper ballot, they mark the paper ballot, and then that paper ballot is counted through an optical reader, like maybe a barcode reader at a grocery store. There are other kinds of equipment. Punch cards proved to be pretty unreliable. Most of the viewers have probably seen punch cards on the news in the wake of the Florida difficult. About 10% of the voters used electronic equipment. Some of the electronic equipment doesn't seem to be performing up to the standards that we'd expected of it. That was another surprise in our study.

And just a minute. By electronic, you mean the computerized screens, the touch screens? There's a variety of electronic machines being used. The most common variety is a big panel that has a set of push buttons corresponding to all offices. It's called a full-faced touch panel DRE. The newer DREs are touch screen computers that are not unlike an ATM machine. And then there are actually newer models that are coming on the market right now that are pretty much untested. Lever machines did pretty well on the presidential vote. They did the worst in the Senate and Governor elections where about seven and a half percent of the votes of the last election cycles have been lost. Professor Garfinkel, what would you add to that catalog of the problems and where the worst problems lie? Well, I think it's clear that the worst problems lie with the punch card systems which became so notorious in the Florida recount area. It is true that the lever systems are quite accurate, but they're obsolete.

It's hard to buy new lever machines and therefore they don't afford a really good option. The standard paper ballot systems are used only in 2% of the country and they don't afford a real reliable option. And as my colleague at MIT has said, the ATM type system really doesn't work very well. And that leaves us with a relatively modern paper ballot filling the dot optical scan system that is already deployed in 10% to 20% of the country and seems to be the clear winner among the available alternatives. It also turns out to be a very affordable system. And it has really three particular benefits. It's easier for the voter to use. The voter sends the ballot through the scanner. The scanner tells the voter instantly if he or she made a mistake by voting for more than one candidate.

And if that's the case, the voter can ask for another ballot to correct the mistake. The bottom line is this system helps the voter cast a ballot that will be counted accurately. Second, if an election is contested because of a close vote, the fill in the dot system gives us a paper trail. So we can verify ballots easily and finally the fill in the dot system is cost effective. So it's clear that there is one winner that can be deployed easily and readily, surprisingly easily, surprisingly readily and cost effectively throughout the country. The professor and Salabahari, I know your report also recommended the use of this. That is, when you fill in a little box and then feed it into the machine yourself. Is that right? That's right. Now, what did you recommend with the registration problems? People who found they weren't registered or somehow couldn't vote even though they showed up. How do you fix that? Well, there's one simple solution that could be deployed more widely and that's called provisional balloting. About 19 states use it now.

And that's where if you walk into the wrong polling place where there's a question about your registration, you're allowed to vote on some elections and then that ballot's stored and your registrations checked afterward. In Los Angeles County, for example, where this system is used, about two-thirds, less than two-thirds of all provisional ballots cast turned out to be valid votes. And so a large part of the registration problems could probably be fixed quite simply with the adoption of provisional ballots. Did you also found though that voters said, you know, if they showed up at the polls and there's this laborious process of trying to check against the voter registration roles and so on, how do you fix that? Well, registration creates some of the problem of lines because if there's a question with your registration in most places, a precinct poll worker has to get on the phone and call the central office and that takes that poll worker. And that takes that poll worker away from doing other tasks and that only it links and lengthens the lines. So some of the line problems could probably be fixed by fixing some of the registration problems.

So Professor Garfinkel, how do you, given that there are, most of these elections are run at the county level and I think there's something like 3,000 counties in the country, how do you go, how does the government go about fixing this, who pays for it, how do you manage it? Well, in our calculations, we found that the total cost of installing the new equipment throughout the country would be 1.2 billion and that's less than 1-10th of 1% of one year's annual budget, federal budget of 2 trillion. Now, the easiest way to do this, the most straightforward way to do this, the thing that could accomplish the task within the next three months is if the Congress simply allocated a $600 million matching grant program to enable the states then to match the amount of money and then acquire the new equipment that's needed. It really surprised us that the problem is so easily manageable. This is one of those problems that essentially is now highly visible but small enough to solve.

And Professor and Salabahari, would you agree that it's easily manageable and that it can be done at about that cost? Those numbers are about right, that's about we calculate. More interesting are some, as the experience of Rhode Island, which actually leased its equipment and came in with a total lease cost that was less than what they were paying to pay for their lever machines. So it's even possible within state budgets to pay for the upgrading. And finally, you found, talk to us or explain to us what you found about two other things that voters seem to like more absentee voting and also this been a lot of excitement about internet voting. For related problems with internet and electronic voting, internet voting suffers from problems of disruptions of service, if your computer crashes, if some kid somewhere hacks into the system and brings it down, that could disrupt an election. So it's separate concern than the problem that internet voting shares with absentee voting, which is that internet voting from home, or what's called remote voting, could be subject to coercion or fraud people could buy your votes.

And absentee voting on demand might also suffer from the same problem. The most sensational court cases involving voter fraud recently have come in the area of absentee voting, and absentee voting over the last 20 years has grown from 5% of ballots cast to 15% of ballots cast. And we're not talking about absentee voting for cause, which is if you're disabled or out of the country. We're talking about absentee voting on demand or for convenience. And it's possible to reduce that by adopting systems such as early voting, where voting machines are set up so that people can vote before election day. Professor Carfigel, do you agree with that? Yes, the biggest problem with absentee voting is that it is the one system that's most subject to fraud, the one that's most subject to influencing voters the wrong way. While there's been an increase in its use because of the convenience for the actual voter, the convenience comes at a very high price in inaccuracy of voting and voting counting.

So I think that the notion that absentee voting somehow is going to be the correct way of the future is probably completely wrong, and therefore we have to set a land at least for the foreseeable future for the next decade or so, with the available options that now exist. And again, what's nice about that is we do have an available option that has been tested, that has been approved by the National Association of Election Systems, and therefore can afford an easy and straightforward solution that will restore the sense of legitimacy to our voting system and to the governments that are elected in our voting system. Professor Carfigel and Professor, thank you both very much. Still to come on and who's our tonight, making teachers. Now and finally tonight we do have an extended look at teaching, beginning with our sixth and final report on some new teachers in New York City's public school system. Our special correspondent on Education John Merrill visited them again last month as the school year ended.

July 31, 23 men and women who'd never taught before accepted a challenge, become teachers in some of New York City's toughest public schools, and after only one month of training they did. Twelve of the so-called teaching fellows were assigned a PS25 in Brooklyn. It's a K-8 school with 350 students. It's also one of the city's lowest performing highest-need schools. The attitudes and feelings of the teaching fellows changed as the year passed. Dana Goldberg taught second grade. My hope is to make a difference. If I could get one child to improve from start to finish, then I've achieved my goal. I came in here with this broad-eyed idea that I'm going to change the world, and quickly I've realized that I can't change the world.

We've been behind here. Renakes and taught fourth grade. I don't want to change things like, okay, these kids don't mind. Let's see what we can do. Let's make it interesting for them. It must be negative, but this year I don't see that much problem. Maybe I'm clouded, but this has not been a positive experience for me. It's been a growing experience where I've had to grow up and see what reality's about, and yes, I tried out teaching, and it doesn't look like this is something I really want to stay with. You could probably answer some of the questions on the first page. I would love to be that teacher that someone talks about and says, this guy made a difference in my life. I think that would be the greatest reward possible.

Certain things surprised me, just particular instances, but it's not like I came in with this mask on that I had no clue what it was like in a public school. I didn't have all these illusions, and I didn't have them. Of the original 323 teaching fellows, about 40 left the program, including Megan Sutherland, who left PS25 to write for a magazine. Public schools in New York City remained open until June 27th, and as the year went down, the rookie teacher has faced the challenge of trying to hold their students attention. Renakes and Tucker fourth graders on a field trip to the zoo. Student St. Janice Wright and Sarah Castello's fifth grade classes created newspaper. I corrected your TV review. This is on me, Margaret, down. I spread it up since from the counts. And Jack Yastasi entertained his sixth graders with what he called modern day favorites.

What if, when the kid was growing up, his daddy's always drank a lot of beer? The last week of school was a time for parties and award ceremonies, including prizes to those who've done well on the city and state math and reading tests. It was a good achievement in the reading school. PS25 had devoted a great deal of energy to the standardized tests, suspending instruction in Spanish, music, art, and phys ed for one month in order to practice for the math and reading tests. In the end, however, only 43% passed the math exams. Reading scores did improve, 66% passed, and that was cause for celebration. You got a shot at winning one of the bikes, pick one, pulling a mom, telling you one, and as soon as we can make arrangements for them, you guys are all set to graduates.

Now you got to get a helmet. However, the results were not good enough to get PS25 off the state list of low performing schools as principal Leroy Johnson acknowledged. It's focusing on the areas where kids need to improve, particularly in the skill areas of mathematics, computation, number theory, algebra patterns. We need to look at that and look at the data from this pastiest test and use that information to inform on instructional practice next year. At years end, we sat with Jack, Renee, Dana, Sarah, and Janice. At the beginning of this project, you all had, I want to say, romantic sense of teaching, things have changed. I thought that if I was able to just forge relationships with these children that I'd be able to teach them anything, but there's so much more outside of that that you need to be able to do, but still at the core of it. After all, said and done with the paperwork and the administration, you still have to build the relationship with the child to teach them.

How about for you, Renee? What are you feeling? I'm happy it's over. Tell me more. It's been hell, and I'm glad it's over. The hardest thing for me is figuring out how to balance the emotional impact of this. I think we've all struggled with the emotional side of going home with things. It doesn't just stay in the classroom. The problems of these kids face are very real and they go home with you as well. It took over a lot of our lives for a while and we finally figured out how to balance it. We're ignoring it, but I'm able to balance that better with my own life, and with my job here as a teacher, as opposed to a mother, counselor, sister type figure, that has been the hardest thing for me, but I think I finally figured it out. Are you surprised you made it in any way? No. You knew you were going to make it.

Yeah, sure. That was going to... I never looked at this like what I make it. I never like... I didn't sign on to try and make it. If I figured when I started off, I'd definitely finish it. There was not really a question in my head if I would make it. Any advice for Harold Levy, the New York City school chancellor, the men who set up the program? How should it be done differently? How should it be done differently? Come visit Unannounced. Unannounced, because if they know that he's coming, they're going to paint the walls and paint everything over. And this guy's coming, and he's important, and be good. And that's the kind of announcements we get. Unannounced visits, and Sarah? I think he also needs to get feedback from the fellows from this year, because he put us out here to be the ice mirrors and think out of the box, but does it's no good if you have 300 and so many people in the classroom, if you're not going to ask what their experience was, how it worked, what didn't work, what should be different. I mean, it does it's no good to be in here.

I feel like we're just filling spots if he doesn't want to hear what we went through this year, and you try to communicate with him, and there's no way to do it. But what's it feel like? Because, you know, school's over, basically. What are you feeling? It's a lot of mix of emotions, and it's, you don't know how to feel. It's relief that we made it through. Finally, we have some time for ourselves. It's sadness, because we're leaving these kids. You could say something if you raise your hand. And I call happiness, because I can't imagine waking up for, I don't know what I would have to do if I had to do this in another month. But at the same time, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do, not doing it. I'm sad. I didn't think I'd be sad, but now I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'll probably miss someone when the summer, the kids. Well, you had the toughest year. I'm trying to finish my two-year commitment. Do we want to be here? I'm not particularly happy.

I'm not particularly happy. I'm not particularly happy. I'm not particularly going to miss some children with them and then. I like more than, more than the rest, but... Don't worry, I am so mad. I'm not. Maybe I just seem to try this out to see that maybe children are just not human beings. I want to be around right now. See if the principal, Leroy Johnson and assistant principal, Jim Flannery, provided thumbnail sketches of the five teaching fellows, beginning with Dana Goldberg. I suppose I think she really caught on to what she had to do. Oh, my goodness, you are the smartest second grade class in this whole school. She absolutely amazed me. She walked in here and she possesses skills that you would expect from a teacher that maybe had four or five years of experience. She's got a passion for teaching at home. Sarah Costello, a breath of fresh air.

She's always bright-eyed, always eager. She's young, she's vibrant, she's intelligent. She's done some really remarkable stuff in writing with her classes. They put together magazines and newspapers. She's always published in the student's work all the time in the classroom. Jack Nastasi. He's going to fantastic report with the children. He's brutally honest. And that's refreshing. I'm really proud of his accomplishment. There are times when you talk to Miss Nastasi and he's like, I don't know, guys. But he hung in there and he really overcame a lot of obstacles and he made a difference. Janice Wright, a smart teacher, a prepared teacher. She had a little incident last year. She broke up a fight and she was more concerned with the child. That's just a lot of better person. Renee Casey. She has bought a lot of good to the school. And she wasn't teacher, came to the classroom.

It sat down about a newspaper all day, but the kids went around in circles. So it's just a matter of her recognizing and really doing her own esteem to do this kind of thing. She has trouble with class control. And for a new person who walks into her own and loses a little bit of that control in September, it does get progressively worse. I think if she walked into that same class next September, 99% of those problems would go away. Does this what a circle looks like? Beginning teachers receive one of three ratings. Satisfactory, doubtful, or unsatisfactory. All five teaching fellows receive satisfactory ratings and have been offered positions for the fall. See. Would you like to have more teaching fellows? I would. I would. Absolutely would. That's what we need in education. We need people that are dedicated and that have a passion to teach kids. We do this. Carlita. And that it was time to say goodbye.

It must be tough. It's been with you for the whole year. Yeah, they're my first class. So I'm probably a little more attached. We can be back in September. Yes, I will. I just said goodbye. Well, you know, I'm going to miss them, but I'll see you again. You'll be back in September? Yeah, I'm going to be back in September. For me, it's very emotional because it's been such a rough year. Will you be back in September? Absolutely. I don't question. Well, I'm glad we're all mutually happy to go. Will you be back in September? Yeah, I'm going to go. I'll be back. I will be back. I will be back. It's very sad. It's very sad. You have a big smile on your face. I know. I'm proud of them. Will you be back in September? I'll be here. Same room. John Merrell. It's with me now. Well done, John. Thank you very much. What kind of experience was it for you?

It was, I feel a little bit like Dana. I don't know if I could do it again. Go back again, but I don't know what to do. Not that I'm not going back. It was, you know, for me and for my colleagues, Donald didn't know your visconity. It was immensely rewarding to watch these teachers change. That optimism at the beginning became tempered. They adjusted and realized that they couldn't save each kid with all their energy and they had to take care of themselves. And they did, you know, they adapted in different ways, but it was a remarkably gratifying experience. I mean, they're real, they're real survivors. It's sort of the PBS version of Sapphire. How did you get onto this story and this particular school? Well, a bit of good luck, I think. I was intrigued when Harold Levy said he was going to start this program. There is a teacher shortage in New York City and this, they were under orders. They had to have certified teachers in these tough schools. They're called SIRS schools, schools under registration review. And Harold Levy and his people basically set up a kind of Teach for America Peace Corps program,

appealing to idealistic people. I believe they had about 1300 applicants. Maybe more. They picked the 343 or so. And I called up, said I'd like to follow this and he said, sure, fine. And he had full access. Full access. Absolutely. Wonderful access. We then went to training and they were trained at three different places during the summer. We just picked one randomly. Actually went to that in Brooklyn College and just started walking around, going into classrooms, looking at the group, watching the teacher, and basically sitting in there for while and saying, okay, that seems like a good class. I mean, it was not scientific. And we sat in that class, started watching. And then said, who wants to be part of this? And about 15 or so did. And we interviewed all of them. Picked about eight. And then Jim, we got lucky. It turned out that four of the five we picked were it happened to be assigned to one school. So he said, oh, that's fine. The fifth one in the same school.

Sure. And a lot of good luck about that. This was the sixth report. And we've gotten a lot of your reaction to this. And one question that was asked by several people, there was one of your segments on standardized testwork. Absolutely. And you interviewed the teachers. And so the teacher, some of these teaching fellows, were really complaining about standardized testing. And you interviewed them in front of the kids. And a lot of people objected to that. Why did you do that? We did it to do something new, to do something a little bit fresher than sitting them down. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't a good idea. Although it was a nice litmus test in terms of the teachers willing this to talk easily with the kids. I mean, Sarah Costello, in the interview, actually Sarah took it and turned it into her interview with the kids. I don't remember these test kids. I mean, this wonderful, natural ease. But in a way, perhaps it wasn't for you.

Another question that people asked was that the, as one of one person put it, the total lack of discipline that seemed to be rampant in these classrooms. What was your impression when you went into these classrooms? Maybe the people are talking about noise. I've always tried to distinguish between good noise and bad noise. And I think it's an important distinction. When teachers doing his or her job and has the kids engaged, not just stand up there talking, but actually engaging the kids, there's going to be a lot of noise. Again, you go into Sarah's class, the Janice's class, Dana's class. It was a lot of noise, but it was most often focused. I think what Jim Flannery said about Renee's class, she did lose the assistant principal. The assistant principal. And Renee did lose control, and that's a hard thing. And I don't want to be too harsh on her because if the program suffered in some way, there weren't enough mentors to, at least after all, these people had one month of training.

That was at Brooklyn College. That was just one month. In the summer, they went one night a week during the year for a couple of hours. In a way, it would be better to have the Brooklyn College people come to the school. But there are any surprises for you, John, in terms of these people. After you first met them and talked to them and seen them, but this one didn't go to make it. This one is going to make it, or whatever. Any impressions of them and your expectations met are not met. I was thrilled and delighted to see how well most of them did. I mean, it's a very tough job being a teacher. I was a first-year teacher. I remember vividly. Yeah, you didn't think of yourself. And it's hard work. And I really grew to love all of them, to see how hard they worked, how much they cared, and what surprised me was that the system wasn't more sensitive to the fact that they had actually

had 12 of these teaching fellows in that one building. And somehow it seemed to me the system would say, wow, we got 12 new people here. We better change the system in some way, so that maybe once a week, all 12 of them can talk to each other. And they bonded and helped each other survive. But they would put into an existing system and the system didn't change their economy there. And I think one of the issues for this program would be how do you change the system so that these people will stay. Yeah, they made it through one year. But you want people like Sarah to stay five years. Well, I look forward to your doing something like this again. I look forward to it, too. Okay, great pleasure. Thank you very much, John. And now from John's Six of Reports comes the central question. How do you make a teacher race-war as that? School districts across the nation face a similar dilemma, ever burgeoning classroom enrollment

and an urgent need for teachers, trained or untrained. But just how effective is an untrained or partially trained teacher? We get two views. First, Harold Levy, Chancellor of the New York City Schools and Arthur Wise, President of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Chancellor Levy, looking back over the last school year to the teachers that we met here on the news hour and the other teaching fellows did the plan work? I think the plan worked very well. I think it worked much better than I had the slightest hope that it would. What we did is we brought in 300 people who, while they had very good grades, had not had any teaching experience or any real teaching training. And what we did is we put them through a four-week course and we gave them the basics. And then we tried to give them all mentors. And we put them in the midst of some of the toughest schools. It was learned by fire.

It was very difficult. So many of them. So many of them did wonderfully. And what you just saw, I think, is emblematic. I think John Merrow did an excellent job both showing the strengths on the weaknesses. The downside, of course, is we've got to learn from that. We've got to make sure that we don't make the same errors and that we improve the program. At the end of the day, there's no substitute for somebody who's gone through real rigorous teacher training. But with the kind of shortages we have and the kind of people who are out there who are interested in teaching and see it as a calling, see it as something that they can dedicate their lives to. I think we have a real opportunity here to bring in people we wouldn't otherwise get. And I think that's for the betterment of public schools. You heard the teaching fellows themselves when asked if they had any message for you. They said, come see what we do. You have your marching orders now for next year? The truth is, I make lots of unannounced visits and I make a point of going to as many schools as I can and I certainly listen to their suggestions.

I think my marching orders are to do more. And I think my next job is to clone myself and have three or four of me. Author-wise, given the shortage faced by New York City in this one example, but in many other districts around the country, is this a proper response to bring lightly trained teachers in to quickly fill a need? No, the evidence really suggests that that is not the right course of action. In fact, this approach will likely exacerbate the supply problem rather than improve it in the long run. And in fact, it's likely to increase the challenges that New York City and other cities face in recruiting and retaining teachers. But the real reason that it is an unfortunate program, though, is you need to think about the children first. Children in low-performing schools need the very best that we have to offer. And to offer them year after year, untested, untried trainees

is, I think, clearly a disservice to them and helps to explain, in fact, why they are low-performing schools. Well, Chancellor, how about that? The idea that these newest teachers went into the sum of the most burdenschools, the schools that had tremendous needs. I think at base, Mr. Wise and I probably agree a lot more than we disagree. If we had enough certified high-quality teachers to put in these schools, I don't think this would be to go and get career changers would be the first instinct that most of us have. The other side of the coin, though, is there are so many people who view teaching as a calling and who may not have gotten the training while they were in college and may not have made up their minds that they wanted to become teachers, but nonetheless, to perhaps give up the rat race of getting and spending and rather do something that's going to have an effect in the long haul. I don't think he's right with all due respect.

I don't think Dr. Wise is right that we're going to be hurting ourselves in the long run because the alternatives in so many of our schools is that we have completely uncertified people who have no training at all. Here, what we're going to be doing this year is giving them seven weeks of training, 60 hours of student teaching. And in fact, in two years, they're going to go through a very rigorous mentoring program, winding up with a master's degree. What I've got in so many of my classrooms today, we have 80,000 teachers and 12,000 of those have no teaching degree at all and are not going through this kind of training. I mean, we talk a big game in this country about having a national commitment to teaching and to education. And the reality is, we don't. There is no national commitment because otherwise teaching would be paid properly and the teachers would have the respect that the society reserves for the much higher paid professions. I mean, I'm a former lawyer. In New York City, in 1970, a starting lawyer

and a starting teacher were paid about $2,000 differently. Today, a starting lawyer in one of the top firms in the city and a starting teacher in the New York City school system get paid about $120,000 difference. Now, what's the prize that we're having trouble getting people to become teachers? You've got to do this for love, for compassion, for altruism, and then you saw what happens to these teachers. They become realists and they get to know their trade. It's not a one-year exercise and my bet is we can do retention. But, you know, Dr. Wise is right at the end of the day, what you really want is people who go through this who make this decision early on. But in the meantime, it's a hard time. Career changers, I think, are right. What's behind your contention that this will only make the problem worse programs of this kind? Well, first of all, the retention rate of individuals trained this way is not great.

The Teach for America program, which has been the longest-established version of the New York Teaching Fellows program, about 6,000 people have entered that program. Today, a mere 2,000 or so are still in the schools. This is not a way to staff our schools. It is a way to make, too. What we really need to do agreeing with the chancellor, we must make teaching a more attractive profession. In fact, New York City pays less than its surrounding suburbs and some of the most challenging schools in New York City are very difficult places in which to work, requiring an individual not only to have commitment and zeal, but also willing to make quite considerable financial sacrifice. We would not have a shortage of teachers today if we paid market-sensitive salaries. This is the way we solve labor shortage problems

in other areas of our economy. It is certainly one in which deserves a try in trying to recruit and retain teachers for our schools. But money alone is not the answer. I think we need to have high-quality preparation, high-quality induction, high-quality mentoring. I just want to say that I agree with that. I think that we need to have those high-quality programs. This is not Teach for America. This is a program where you make a two-year commitment because otherwise at the end of it, you don't get your master's degree. And these are people who want to get master's in education. And we now have arrangements with, you know, Long Island University and City University, 13 institutions, St. John's, Pace, Columbia. This is an opportunity for people to come in and become teachers. And the fact that they've had experience in the rest of the world in other careers, I'm not sure should be considered a detriment. The other side of that coin is that we do have to pay our teachers a real wage, and we're not doing it.

I mean, I don't know who thought that the laws of supply and demand were repealed when it came to public school teachers, but whoever it was, they were wrong. Well, otherwise in the short term, are we really going to have the kind of national conversation about education that would result in really drastic racism? Well, well, my hope would be that there would be because the research is very clear. Teachers who are prepared and accredited institutions outperform those who are not prepared. Teachers who are fully licensed by the state outperform teachers who are not. Children learn the test score results that we heard reported earlier in this program, our abysmal. We cannot regard this program as having been that successful when such a high fraction of the children fail. And I want to stress that this is an experience that these children will have perhaps year after year being taught by somebody who is underqualified or unqualified or at best a committed trainee.

I think we need to take a leaf from medicine where we have provided much higher quality internship experiences for beginning physicians, beginning nurses. I think we should create professional development schools in our urban areas, strong collaborations between universities and the schools to prepare a generation of teachers who will be effective and who will stay the course. Some quick final thoughts, Chancellor Levy briefly? The only thing I would say to that is these are not simply trainees. This is not just simply people being dropped in. What you saw people who are being trained and they're going to go back and get more training and these are people going to come out with a master's in education. And my bet is that they are going to turn out to be, we're going to have hypertension rates and we're going to have good success with them. But I agree with Dr. Wise when this country has a real national commitment to teaching that we're going to see the prices, the wages of these people go up because that's what they deserve.

Harold Levy, Arthur Wise, gentlemen, thank you both. Thank you. Again, the major stories of this Thursday, the House voted to give religious charities a larger role in social programs at past a scaled back version of President Bush's faith-based initiative. And the President and British Prime Minister Blair and the U.S. European differences over missile defense and global warming. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and G. Go among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer has been provided by. Imagine a world where we're not diminishing resources. Growing with ethanol, a cleaner burning fuel made from corn, ADM, the nature of what's to come.

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are available from PBS video. Call 1-800-328-PBS-1. This is PBS. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, I'm Jim Lara. On the news hour tonight, the vote in the House on the President's Faith-Based Initiative.

Two new studies on how to fix the American way of voting and a report and a debate from New York on ways to create new teachers. It all follows us on some of the news this Thursday. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by. Imagine a world where no child bakes for food, while some will look on that as a dream, others will look long and hard and get to work. ADM, the nature of what's to come. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

The House voted today to give religious charities a larger role in social programs. It passed a scaled-back version of President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative, 233 to 198. It would let religious groups compete for federal funds, and housing, hunger relief, and other efforts. It also provided new tax breaks for charitable giving, but much less than the President wanted. There were new warnings today about Social Security, a draft report for a Presidential Commission, said the program cannot avoid benefit cuts or tax hikes unless workers are allowed to invest in stocks. The Associated Press said the Commission would consider the findings next week. The group is co-chaired by former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Richard Parsons, an AOL-time Warner executive. This charged with proposing investment options for Social Security, final recommendations are due this fall. President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair played down U.S. European differences today.

They spoke at a joint news conference outside London. Blair acknowledged disputes over global warming and missile defense, but he said more issues unite us than divide us. Mr. Bush said he's optimistic about a meeting of industrialized nations starting tomorrow in Genoa, Italy. I think people find out that I'm plenty capable of conducting foreign policy for the United States in a way that reflects positively on my nation. And I'm glad to be back in Europe. I look forward to a frank discussion in Genoa, and I'm confident that we'll find areas to work together on when the disagree would do so in a respectful way. Earlier the President rejected criticism that he was isolating the United States. The charge came from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Dashow. In an interview, published in U.S.A. today, the White House complained it was unseemly to attack the President while he's abroad. Dashow had this response. He had question and answer forms.

I try to be as open and honest as I can. I was being open and honest yesterday about my feelings. And had I given some thought to the fact that the President was departing, I probably would have chosen a different time to make those comments. But having said them, I certainly will not back away from my comments. And in those published remarks, Dashow said the Bush administration was straining relations with Russia and China and was not doing enough to foster peace in the Middle East. Redstone Firestone will not voluntarily recall more tires. A company spokesperson said that today. She confirmed that National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had pressed for such action. Last August, Redstone Firestone did recall six and a half million tires. They've been linked to more than 200 deaths, 700 injuries. A broader recall could involve millions more.