VISIT TO CHARTER SCHOOLS FINDS REAL URBAN POTENTIAL

In the last 10 days, this writer has taken the opportunity to tour a couple of Missouri's new urban charter schools, first in Kansas City and, a few days later, another in St. Louis. The Della Lamb Charter School in Kansas City is in a decent neighborhood. The Lift for Life Academy, on the other hand, is located in a troubled neighborhood at 1415 Cass Ave. on the near north side of St. Louis. This latter is the first to be chartered by Southeast Missouri State University. Both appear to be in the early stages of working miracles as they help to re-invent urban education in our state.

In the case of Della Lamb, I was told 95 percent of the 300-plus students are on free-and-reduced lunch (the key measure of poverty in public education), while at Lift for Life, all but one of 65 students fall into this category. Della Lamb is using the famed E.D. Hirsch "Core Knowledge" curriculum enamored of us traditionalists and disdained by most of the modern Education Establishment in its endless pursuit of the fads that have left millions of fourth graders illiterate. Professor Hirsch, famed author of "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them," is a distinguished professor at the University of Virginia who has no truck with the modern fads that have done so much harm to generations of American school children.

Not only are nearly all the students in both schools minorities, but they are heavily from single-parent households. So much for the argument of charter critics that these schools will cream off the ablest students from the best households, leaving behind only the weakest students in the regular public schools.

At Della Lamb, there is a significant sprinkling of immigrants, and not just Hispanics but Hindu girls wrapped in traditional saris and other Asians as well. This is a reminder of a never-to-be-forgotten truth: America is the only country in the world to which you can immigrate and become, well, an American. I can't go to France, Japan or Thailand and become French, Japanese or Thai. But citizens of any country can come here and become Americans. America is an empire of the mind.

An interesting sidelight on the unfolding success story in St. Louis is the involvement of local lawyer Sam Drusch and his wife, Harriett. The Drusches read about Lift for Life in newspaper accounts and decided they wanted to get involved with donations of their treasure and other forms of moral support.

The husband-wife team of Marshall and Carla Cohen started Lift for Life. The Cohens went out of their way to mention the Drusches and their generosity, visits and interest. Perhaps this good example will be replicated as more of our generous neighbors learn of these enormously promising charter schools. Who can measure the long-term impact of the well-chosen encouraging word?

The Cohens volunteered that, in their work with Southeast as the chartering institution of Lift for Life, they are well pleased with this relationship. Credit goes to Dr. Bob Buchanan of Southeast's School of Education, along with other officials, President Ken Dobbins and the board of regents.

Southeast has chartered a second school in St. Louis. This one will open in the Shaw neighborhood at the start of the coming school year and is to be known as the Garden School, owing to the fact that it has a connection with its neighbor, the world-renowned Missouri Botannical Garden.

Look to these beacons of hope on the urban educational horizon.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.