Good things are happening

Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh. It doesn't seem like five weeks have passed since your departure for treatment of your addiction to pain medicine. You've been missed to broaden and enlighten in the discussion of events and ideas along with your motivation. Here's to a complete recovery.

---

The steel is going up for the new LaCroix United Methodist Church auditorium. It is an impressive addition for the rapidly expanding congregational needs.

The Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge will be one of the major landmarks in the Midwest when completed (as the arch is to St. Louis). And Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus is now visually adding to the river bluff setting overlooking the Mississippi River.

---

The special fund-raising event sponsored by Westfield Shoppingtown was not only well attended, raising $40,000 and exposure for 70 Cape Girardeau charities, but it also provided valuable discounts and savings by the participating merchants. Special thanks to the organizational efforts of ever energetic Joyce Hunter at the mall.

---

I missed him but heard appreciation of the music provided by Mark Sparks, principal flutist of the St. Louis Symphony, who's listed as one of the top 10 flutists in the United States. Who says there is nothing to do in the Cape Girardeau area?

---

All construction has slowed down for a couple of weeks as the deer hunters are hitting the woods. That's something I've never done, but it's a don't-miss annual experience for many of my friends.

---

What is it about political rallies that everyone feels they have to speak as if they have the mic at a World Wide Wrestling Federation event? They're going to destroy their opponent who has no traces of good, has achieved nothing and threatens the future of everything we hold dear.

Such was the Democratic fund-raising event in Iowa. Such is generally the same at similar Republican events.

But that's what the audience seems to want, along with cheerleading response chants. What a way to select your leader. It's tough to watch by those who don't participate.

The Louisiana governor's race was somewhat different as both runoff candidates held similar views on the issues and refrained from personal attacks until the last weekend when the eventual Democratic victor's campaign turned a negative 4 percentage points into a four-point victory by negative attack ads. Unfortunately these negative ads work too often.

---

Thanks to TiVo, I've been able to watch the last three St. Louis Rams football games. (TiVo let's you record and play back later while speeding past the slow areas.) They were three of the most tortuous games I've ever witnessed, even though the Rams won two of the three. The defense has learned to blitz and bump, hold and run with the Rams receivers, taking away some of their speed and cuts.

The entire season has been the same for the Southeast Indians, who, after much perseverance, find themselves playing for the NCAA playoff birth of the Ohio Valley Conference. With a victory this Saturday at home, the team would tie for first with victories over the potential co-champion. The Indians deserve the support of everyone in the area as recognition of their determination to succeed after an 0-5 start.

---

Reading, writing and cream-skimming: National average costs in 2000-2001 constant dollars have gone from $3,000 per pupil spending to $9,000 over the past 40 years. Spending has tripled while test scores barely budged. How are we going to improve our schools? Some of the things that haven't worked in urban areas are lawsuits, lavish facilities in so-called magnet schools and long bus rides to correct racial disparities.

One thing that does work is classroom instruction and parental support and involvement.

The Knowledge Is Power Program runs charter and contract schools in Washington, D.C., the Bronx and elsewhere. KIPP schools are, for the most part, taxpayer funded, but they are free of much of the union rules and bureaucracy that hamstring other urban schools. The one in D.C. delivers dramatic improvements in reading and math ability. It does this with a demanding schedule that has the school open 8 to 5 and students putting in seven hours a day, double the norm, on the basics.

The objection raised to charter schools (and, with more vehemence, to private schools funded with vouchers) is that they will skim the cream off the student population. KIPP's promoters make much of doing no such thing. Admission is first come, first serve or by lottery. But there is, in fact, a subtle form of segregation going on. Only the most motivated of students can abide the grueling schedule, and they are the ones that sign up. -- From a column by William Baldwin, editor of Forbes magazine.

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.