Oct 9, 2015 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers around the country as compiled by the Associated Press:

Last spring, Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, tests were given to students in grades three through eight in core content areas of English-language arts, math and science. The outcome: Collectively, students across Pennsylvania and in our region performed a lot worse on the new, more challenging standardized math test, and slightly worse on the English tests. Sure, there are pockets of improved scores, but for the most part, scores are down.

State Education Secretary Pedro Rivera called the exams “fundamentally different” and cautioned against comparing this year’s scores with last year’s, saying that would not be an accurate measure of student growth or academic achievement.

Simply put, the tests change what is considered “advanced” and “proficient.”

But the work required to improve these scores cannot be done only in the classrooms. The fact is, too many parents do not instill in their children the value of education. That leaves educators with the monumental task of not only teaching knowledge, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but first trying to convince their students that education is so important to personal and professional success.

If education is not valued in the home, it will not be valued in school … or in life.

We can win the war in Vietnam. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. In hindsight, the hubris seems so painfully obvious.

We seem to be witnessing that sort of misguided confidence again in the boldly named Operation Inherent Resolve, in which the Islamic State – a group President Barack Obama once dismissed as a junior varsity team – continues to thwart the campaign to degrade and destroy it.

At the root of this continuing, metastasizing conflict may be one of the most deadly failures of all: a refusal to heed intelligence analysts whose assessments aren’t rosy enough.

To hear U.S. officials tell it just a few months ago, this was all going to be fairly simple: Identify and support Syrian moderates, cut a swath up the middle of Syria, divide and conquer al-Qaida and ISIS, and then replace Mr. Assad with a moderate government.

It didn’t work out that way.

How did this go so wrong? It didn’t happen overnight, as sudden as the news seemed to be. There were doubts about the program early on. And, perhaps more gravely, negative intelligence assessments of the campaign against ISIS were, according to people in the intelligence community, downplayed or discouraged.

It’s not the politicians who bear the consequences of bad wartime decisions, but the young people who put their lives on the line in the belief that their country is doing the right thing. If America is going to continue this war, intelligence is the first thing it needs to get right, a lesson as old as war itself. No one should be the next to die for a mistake.

Heroin overdose is now the No. 1 cause of injury-related deaths in the United States, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People addicted to drugs are as likely to wind up in jail or a morgue as in treatment. Missouri providers offer multiple levels of effective treatment options, yet only a fraction of those addicted are getting treatment and supported recovery.

We must turn that around.

Families losing loved ones to heroin and other opiate overdoses – particularly teens and young adults – are trying to do that with more assertive conversations. One national trend among brave grieving parents is to openly list “heroin overdose” as the cause of death in an obituary. It’s a way to shine a light on the epidemic, one parent explained in a news story.

Public education is imperative, say experts, as is removing the stigma so people aren’t ashamed to get help.

Yet when people do need help, they may not find resources in many parts of Missouri.

How many more obituaries will list “heroin overdose” before we see change?