LV high school earns praise

Stephen Curran

Friday, May 14, 2004 | 9:07 a.m.

Local civil rights activists will speak Monday to commemmorate the landmark Supreme Court ruling that ended legalized racial segregation in the nation's schools.

The discussion will be held Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the Cheyenne High School theater, 3200 W. Alexander Road in Las Vegas. It is open to the public.

A high-level U.S. Department of Education official on Thursday touted a northeast Las Vegas high school as a model of equality in education.

Kathleen Leos, the senior policy adviser to the department's Office of English Language Acquisition, visited Desert Pines High School as part of a survey of the nation's schools.

The survey is scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that forced the nation's schools to desegregate.

Leos and other department officials traveled the country this week to draw parallels between the historic ruling and the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act, which proponents say established a national accountability system for the country's public schools.

Leos, who toured the 5-year-old school with principal Roger Jacks for about two hours, said the bill "continued where Brown (v. Board of Education) left off," making inner-city schools subject to the same standards as more affluent suburban schools.

"The intent of Brown was to desegregate schools," she said. "But we're seeing that some schools are moving back (to segregation)."

But at Desert Pines, she said, the level of student involvement in the classes she saw "could be a model for other urban high schools."

Democratic critics and some educators have blasted the No Child Left Behind bill, which they say creates a rigid set of inadequately funded standards that leaves teachers unable to meet the requirements.

Under the bill, state education leaders must present a plan to narrow the gap between inner-city and suburban schools.

Jon Summers, spokesman for the Nevada Democratic Party, said the Bush administration was off base in its effort to link the historic Supreme Court ruling with the law.

Only a fraction of the estimated $33 billion needed to make the program a success has been funded, he said.