OPPORTUNITY SOCIETY:

One girl's struggle to find a future: Rayola Victoria Carwell is transferring to a new school under a bold federal law--a move her mother hopes will lead to a better education. The switch, however, is just the start of a daunting odyssey. (Stephanie Banchero, July 18, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

Rayola Victoria Carwell sits quietly on a wooden bench in the principal's office and folds her arms across her stomach to calm the whirling butterflies.

She straightens the leg of her favorite jeans, the ones with the embroidered purple daisies, the ones she creased to perfection at 6 this morning. She grabs a braid cascading from the ponytail atop her head and slips it into her mouth.

It's the first day of school, and it's the first time the 9-year-old has set foot inside Stockton Elementary School. As pupils pile into the office talking about their summer vacations, Rayola stares at the floor, her slender shoulders hunched, her right leg bouncing nervously.

After shuttling among some of the city's worst schools near her home on the South Side, Rayola is enrolling in a new school on the other side of town. Her transfer is permitted and paid for by President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, one of the most expensive federal education experiments in history.

She has left a school in her Englewood neighborhood that repeatedly failed to teach children to read, write and do math at grade level and moved to a school 13 miles away in Uptown that is succeeding at all three. She is one of an estimated 70,000 students nationwide switching schools under the law.

The central promise of the law is simple: A low-income child can get a better education by transferring to a better school. In some respects, Rayola is an ideal candidate. She is bright and eager to learn. She pays attention in school, never gets in trouble and does her homework diligently.

But Rayola will face obstacles that the law does not address, obstacles her mother cannot seem to overcome and sometimes aggravates with her own impulsive behavior.

The circumstances of each child who transfers are as different as each of their faces, and there will be no way to quantify the success of the program for years. But Rayola's experience will show that getting a good education is more complicated than transferring to a new campus.

Schools can open their doors to children, but it is much harder to reach across the threshold into the home, where so much can influence whether a girl like Rayola will succeed academically.

The stakes are high for this girl and the nation's public school system.

For Rayola, the transfer is potentially life-altering. It gives her a shot at getting the kind of education and opportunities her mother, a high school dropout, has never known.

Contrary to the dreams of the Left we can't guarantee equality of results in life, but in order to realize the ideals of the Right we should provide everyone with equality of opportunity. Rayola has an opportunity now; may she make the most of it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 18, 2004 11:35 PM