Students

They haunt the parking garages here. Eager students lurk on the outer edges of lots, hoping to sneak into an overlooked space and then race to class. Others linger near the elevators, picking out likely candidates and inching behind them as they head to their cars, waiting to swoop when the space is vacated. A few try a more advanced plan of attack: striking deals with friends, trading detailed schedules and swapping spots at just the right moment. Cal State Fullerton is the quintessential Southern California commuter campus.

Sixteen years ago this month, a popular young Democratic president went before a joint session of Congress to sell his major domestic policy initiative -- healthcare reform -- and failed utterly. That chief executive, of course, was Bill Clinton, and tonight the country will see whether the implosion that crippled his administration in the years that followed also will afflict President Obama. Obama already has established himself alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as one of the great presidential orators in modern history.

Hundreds of children who were jammed into a narrow school staircase panicked and set off a stampede that left five girls dead and 31 students injured in India's capital. Five of the injured were in critical condition, said O.P. Kalra, medical superintendent of Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in East Delhi, where the children were taken. The stampede occurred early Thursday as students arrived for an exam, Kalra told reporters. Amod Kanth, a well-known child rights activist, said the students were told to move to a higher floor because heavy rain was causing flooding on the ground floor.

Nine Cal Poly Pomona students have been suspended after an investigation of a March hazing incident, in which a new fraternity member suffered second-degree burns on a third of his body. Another 45 Sigma Phi Epsilon members received probation, a university spokesman said last week. During a fraternity bonfire ceremony in the high desert, a member splashed gas onto the fire for "dramatic effect," injuring the new member, said university spokeswoman Esther Chou. The student, who has not been identified, asked for medical treatment but did not receive it until hours later, she said.

A President Obama appointee in the Education Department acknowledged Wed- nesday that as a teacher 21 years ago he mishandled an incident in which he failed to notify authorities that a 15-year-old student had told him he had sexual relations with an adult. Kevin Jennings, head of the department's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, said in a statement that he "should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal and medical authorities."

"The Providence Effect" is a powerful thing. It's the effect a school in Chicago has on its students, children who end up making successes out of their educational lives even though a lot of indicators pointed toward that not happening. As directed by veteran documentarian Rollin Binzer, this uplifting film focuses on Providence St. Mel, a former parochial school in a devastated neighborhood, troubled by gangs and drugs, that has turned itself into a premiere college preparatory school.

The Obama administration has made a promising move regarding school reform with its "Race to the Top" program. The $4.3 billion in federal grants is intended to reward states and schools that introduce new models of innovation and accountability. What needs reform just as badly as the schools, however, is the No Child Left Behind Act, a well-meant but ham-handed law that actually encourages schools to lower their academic standards and that often leaves behind the students who most need help.

No matter how squeezed the University of California is, it makes no sense to single out students our economy will need -- such as its future engineers -- and levy a surcharge on them for their chosen major. That's the latest scheme for raising revenue at UC. Undergraduates in engineering and business would be charged $900 more a year than other students, who already are facing a probable fee increase of more than $2,500 next fall. The rationale is that the faculty in these two fields earn significantly higher salaries, raising the cost of education, and that students from those majors will make enough money after graduation to pay off the bigger loans.

Los Angeles' top education official went door to door Monday to urge teens to return to school, netting about a dozen students with the effort and drawing attention to a growing problem. Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ramon C. Cortines was among 150 staffers and school board members who joined campus employees in the first-time, broad-based initiative, which targeted 10 truancy-plagued middle and high schools. This school year, about 20,000 of the district's 680,000 students have failed to show up as expected, officials said.

Nearly 30% of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out, according to a new study released Wednesday. More than half of those students were born in the United States and three-quarters had been in the school district since first grade, according to the report by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at USC. The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district's English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently.