The city and state are having some more trouble implementing the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which gives many parents the option of removing their children from failing or violent schools. As our Kathleen Lucadamo reports at Page 3 of today’s New York Sun, the state’s definition of a “persistently violent”school may be a bit lax: It requires that the violence involve guns or other weapons. Rape doesn’t count, and neither does gang fighting in the classroom, unless someone is armed. Further, in a school of 1,000 students there would have to be 30 such incidents for a school to make the list. All of this seems like a high, and poorly set, bar to us. The state says it is looking at expanding the definition. Quick action would be appreciated by children and parents trapped in dangerous schools.

Meanwhile, the city’s Department of Education is having its own problems implementing the provisions of No Child Left Behind that give students the chance to leave failing schools. According to the chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, the parents of about 80,000 children entering failing kindergartens and middle schools have not received proper notice of their rights under the federal law. What’s worse, some parents who were given a choice between a transfer or supplemental tutoring for their children in failing schools might have been given a false choice, according to Ms. Moskowitz. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, there are different eligibility requirements for transfers and tutoring. Some who forewent a transfer in favor of tutor ing might not be eligible for the tutoring and could wind up with neither. The Department of Education says that these children haven’t been turned away. We would add “yet.”

The most striking thing to come out of the No Child Left Behind process so far, however, is that out of 19,500 students for whom transfers were requested, only 5,861 were put it new schools. The rest stayed put; most didn’t even respond to the city once they saw what their options were. That means that the parents of more than 13,000 children who were unhappy enough with their schools to make their voices heard found that they had no reasonable options. If the politicians in this city and at Albany cared about these 13,000 children more than the teachers unions do, the students would be sitting come September — or at least next September — in new charter schools, or they would be taking advantage of a pilot voucher program. Such is not the case. Another way students feel the effects of the Tweed Trust.