Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, state boards of education are required to set up criteria to designate "persistently dangerous," schools. Only 46 schools in eight states were designated during the last school year. Six of those schools were in Baltimore city, the only Maryland jurisdiction represented on the list.

Maryland has one of the strictest set of regulations defining a dangerous school and some board members have expressed opposition and called for a redefinition. The U. S. Department of Education which allows each state to set their own standards has received criticism of the policy requirement. More importantly, while significant effort goes into the policy and procedure, there is no policy regarding expected results once a school has been designated. The designation is clearly punitive to the administration and the reputation of the school.

Rather than providing an incentive to provide a better education for students, there is more incentive to under report incidents or categorize them in a way that the school does not make the list. Either way, the students are left behind because they are not in a safe productive learning environment. Schools with stricter policies may be listed while in fact, the suspensions are a result of their stringent criteria, and the school is actually safer than some who are not on the list.

School officials, administrators, students and parents know the reality in their schools. They do not need a list to verify the facts. It is more important to focus on improvement at these schools than to give them a proverbial scarlet letter.