Make lead testing mandatory for all small children

A law signed by Gov. Tom

Wolf on Nov. 3 encourages doctors to test pregnant women, and children up to 2 years old, who they believe have been exposed to lead.

Act 150 is a smart move, but it doesn’t go far enough. Lead is everywhere — especially in industrial regions with older housing, which means Pittsburgh and vast swaths of Pennsylvania. Sen. Lisa Baker, R.-Luzerne, wanted Act 150 to make testing mandatory, but it was watered down in the amendment process. Now she’s reintroducing a bill to switch “encourage” back to “require,” making lead testing mandatory for all young children. This time, legislators should pass it as-is.

The effects of lead poisoning are serious and potentially permanent, especially in the brains of young children. Due to their growing frames and immature organ systems, children absorb five times as much lead into their bodies as do adults. The state Department of Health found elevated lead levels in 3,100 Pennsylvania children in 2020. But only 32% of kids under two were tested. So the tests might have missed more than 6,000 cases of high blood lead levels.

Not surprisingly, the areas with the highest number of elevated tests are those with the oldest housing and greatest history of industrial activity: the City of Pittsburgh and the valleys of the Three Rivers. High lead levels generally correlate with poverty, bolstering the argument for mandatory testing.

It’s not just antiquated home decor, like lead paint, that delivers the toxic metal into kids’ growing brains. It’s also soil and outdoor dust, which is contaminated by decades of lead-laced emissions from cars and factories — and is much more likely to end up in toddlers’ lungs and tummies than adults’. Infinitesimal particles of the additive tetraethyl lead were expelled from exhaust pipes and floated down to the earth — tens of thousands of metric tons of lead in Pittsburgh alone — where they have accumulated in soil, until gardeners, contractors and other diggers release them.

More comprehensive lead testing of small children has helped doctors and policymakers understand a problem that’s on the decline, but not yet eradicated. Until it is, mandatory testing would ensure that no child falls through the cracks.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Grow more teachers

Pennsylvania has an urgent need to convince more high school students to return to classrooms as teachers.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of college students completing education degrees declined by 25% from 2011 through 2020. In Pennsylvania, according to the state Department of Education, the number declined by 66% over the same period.

As reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Temple and West Chester universities have launched separate programs to convince more high school students to become teachers.

Temple launched Temple Education Scholars in 2018. It allows academically qualified high school students to take introductory education courses at Temple, for credit and for free, and includes opportunities for students to get an inside look at teaching from the teacher’s side of the desk. About 60 students have enrolled, 20 of whom have become education majors.

Temple also has a program to help paraprofessionals who already work in Philadelphia schools to become teachers; 84 people are enrolled.

West Chester’s newly announced program is similar. If participating high school students maintain “B” averages, West Chester automatically will admit them as education majors.

The programs make sense on multiple levels. They give students a different perspective on teaching beyond what they experience in their own classrooms. And as Pam Grossman, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, told the Inquirer: “Most people teach within 30 miles of where they went to high school. If you recruit locally, people are more likely to stay.”

Illinois launched the “grow your own” concept in 2005. Washington and Texas later launched statewide grant programs.

The decline in education majors also is of particular interest to the state’s struggling state university system, in that it is at least partially behind declining enrollment overall.

The state Legislature should make the “grow your own” project a statewide initiative, funding grants to help universities that offer education majors, along with nearby school districts, introduce more high school students to the prospect of teaching as a career.

— Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice