designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. we're coming to you tonight from the studios of ketc, our pbs affiliate in st louis, missouri. for the second time in this year's race for the white house, republican presidential candidate donald trump has publicly raised the specter of violence against his democratic opponent, hillary clinton. campaigning in houston, texas, today, trump was silent on the subject. but last night, at his rally in miami, trump stated incorrectly that clinton favors abolishing the second amendment right to bear arms. and then he said this: >> i think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. they should disarm, right? ( cheers and applause ) right? i think they should disarm. immediately. what do you think? yes? yes. yeah. take their guns away. she doesn't want guns. take them, let's see what happens to her. >> sreenivasan: trump's words echoed a statement he made last month at a rally in north carolina, where he suggested gun owners might take action against clinton if she were elected. before clinton resumed campaigning in washington, d.c., tonight, her campaign manager, robby mook, said of trump:" inciting people to violence" is an "unacceptable quality" in anyone seeking the presidency. f.b.i. and a.t.f. agents are investigating the scene of a five-kilometer charity run benefiting u.s. marines and sailors that was canceled today after a pipe bomb exploded near the race route. officials say the device in seaside park, new jersey, exploded inside a plastic garbage can, and other devices were wired together inside it. no one was hurt, but authorities locked down a four block area of the boardwalk. about 5,000 runners were scheduled to take part in the third annual "semper five" event. in syria, where a five-day-old cease fire brokered by russia and the united states is on shaky ground, russia claimed today u.s.-led air strikes on a government military base surrounded by islamic state militants killed at least 62 syrian soldiers. in a written statement, u.s. central command acknowledged it halted the air strike in eastern syria, near the isis stronghold of raqqa, immediately after being told by russian officials that syrian forces were being targeted by accident. centcom said its coalition forces "would not intentionally strike a known syrian military unit." meanwhile, convoys of aid supplies for aleppo and other besieged areas remain stalled, with united nations officials blaming the syrian government for blocking access. for more on the precarious situation, i am joined by skype from beirut by "washington pos"" correspondent liz sly. liz, given the information that's coming out this afternoon, what does this do to the truce that's been in place for the last week? >> well, it doesn't do very much for it at all. we know already that the truce wasn't going very well at all. lot of things that were supposed to happen, didn't happen, such as delivery of aid to civilians. there has been fighting along the front lines. and now we have this allegation that the americans have bombed and killed 60 syrian soldiers, and they're kind of admitting they probably did do it. so this is going to send tensions sky high and make things only much more complicated than they already were. >> sreenivasan: at this point does president bashar al-assad, accept the u.s.' contention that this was an accident or does he go forward and say this was an act of war? >> i'm not sure president assad was keen on this truce to begin with. i don't think he was keen on the americans and russians teaming up at all. this definitely bolsters his position that this was not's good truce, this was not a good cease-fire. the russians are saying this proves that the americans have to coordinate with us, that the americans do say they did coordinate with the russians. they said they did happen to tell the russians that they did plan to bomb it this position, and the russians knew they were going to bomb this position. but-- so we don't really know what happened here, but whatever it was, it's a giant mess. >> sreenivasan: you mentioned this earlier-- the humanitarian aid that was supposed to get through. that was one of first phases of the truce. what was the when was the progthat this week? >> there's been no progress at all. the aid hasn't gone into any of the communities at all because thesyrian government has refused to give permission for it to cross the border. >> sreenivasan: and there was also supposed to be military cooperation by the u.s. and the russians. unfortunately, we're seeing that that was not the case, that these two clearly hadn't coored, at least in the site of this incident this afternoon. >> well, the military coordination was supposed to follow seven days of calm during which aid flowed unimpeded to the neediest civilians. now, there has been relative calm, although fighting has continued on the front lines, but the aid has not flowed. so americans are saying the truce hasn't worked yet. the russians are accusing the americans of not having disentangled the fighters they wanted to disentangle, and now as we see we have this new information where it does look like some kind of ghastly accident, or whatever you want to call it-- act of war-- which is what the other side will almost certainly say-- has occurred to blow it all up before it really began. >> sreenivasan: "washington post" correspondent liz sly joining us from beirut tonight. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: belgium has recorded that country's first known legal incident of doctor- assisted suicide, for a minor. the country's euthanasia law, as amended two years ago, permits doctor-assisted suicide with parental approval for minors of any age in the final stage of a terminal illness. the child was 17. the illness was not disclosed. florida officials today began spraying larvicide in an expanded zika zone in miami beach. governor rick scott tripled the transmission zone yesterday from 1.5 square miles to 4.5 square miles. the announcement followed health officials identifying five new people infected with the mosquito-borne virus through local transmission, not from traveling abroad. florida has counted 93 cases of zika from local infection, with 35 in miami beach. edward albee, who died friday at 88, wrote "who's afraid of virginia woolf?," considered a masterpiece of american theater. read more on our web site at www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: a group of private schools started only three years ago by technology industry entrepreneurs has designs on reinventing the way children learn by using data to personalize education. the school system, called altschool, now operates eight small private schools in san francisco and new york, with plans to license their proprietary software to schools around the nation. newshour weekend special correspondent joanne jennings has our story, which is part o"" american graduate day," a public media initiative dedicated to helping youth stay on track to high school graduation. ♪ >> what's that i hear? >> it's "mission impossible." ( "mission impossible" theme ) >> oh, my gosh, we must be in for a real treat. >> reporter: emily greenberg is introducing her students to" passion projects" at altschool's newest location in downtown san francisco. >> so, we're thinking of passion projects, about something that i've always wanted to know about but i kind of never got the time to figure that thing out. and here's your time. >> reporter: in greenberg's class, student proposals range from learning spanish to building a go-kart. >> you'll need to learn about go-karting. you're going to need materials. >> reporter: the mission of this network of private, for-profit schools is to personalize the educational experience, in part, by letting these kindergarten through eighth grade students decide 20% of their schedule. >> so, it's the idea that 20% of their week, or their time, will be spent doing something that's really personally meaningful to them. it may not fit into, necessarily, our core academic growth, but it's something that's truly meaningful to them as a person. it really fits into that personalized whole-child thinking. >> reporter: the concept of 20% its early days, google gavehere employees one day a week to pursue whatever they wanted, passion projects that resulted in products like gmail. >> we've done a lot of research into how that might fit into our classroom, and what it might look like at altschool. >> reporter: the philosophy of altschool is to avoid a one- size-fits-all approach to education. let students choose more of what they do in school, program a" playlist" of lessons responsive to student interests, collect data on how students learn by monitoring their computer use and performance in class, and track progress to give teachers quantitative feedback. the concept came into focus for 35-year-old altschool founder max ventilla when he and his wife started to look at pre- schools for their daughter. at the time, he was in charge "" personalization" at google, developing those user profiles based on how you use the internet, which web sites you visit and what terms you search for. >> as a parent, with my wife, thinking about when my daughter was two, kind of what would she do during the elementary school years, and not necessarily finding those schools that we thought would prepare our daughter, who's very different than us, for the very different kind of life she will lead. the kind of school that i wanted is actually something that the teams that i've always been part of might be able to support. not just for one school, but for many, many schools in the long run. >> reporter: ventilla, whose daughter started altschool this year, believes applying google's user profile techniques to create learner profiles can improve student performance. so, altschool draws inferences about its students the same way google does, by collecting their data. >> it's the same in an education context. the idea that, as you start to have this deep understanding of who a child is and what a child does, you're able to start to make inferences and suggestions and say, "similar students pursuing objectives like that were really well served by this kind of experience." maybe that's something that, as a student or as a teacher for that student, you might want to consider. >> something that you need to know is that i can definitely see, and so can your teachers. i can see everything you do on your chromebooks. >> reporter: even elementary school students are told every keystroke on their laptops used in class is monitored. teachers analyze how students answer questions and interact to better understand how each child is learning, and then they use that information to customize what they give students to read, even current event articles on the web site "newsela." >> and this will be how you find an article that i just assigned to you based on your reading level. >> reporter: by using the information collected, teachers create so-called "playlist cards," a customized lesson plan for each individual student. emily dahm heads two altschools. >> behind the scenes, teachers are creating units made up of these cards. a lot of what the kids end up doing is off the screen. a playlist card might ask a student to play a game or build something, and then they're going back to that playlist card to document their work. >> reporter: last spring, pbs'" nova" captured middle school student juan martin using his playlist to apply a math lesson about ratios to designing a model home. one inch in his model could represent five feet at full scale. the lesson, which is preserved digitally, can be useful to other students in the future. >> our technology enables educators to create curriculum and also capture data about students that can be shared with other educators. so, an educator might create a unit which can be used by another educator, and that educator might improve upon it and then use it again with their kids. that's just not something that can be done easily without this technology. >> reporter: altschool teachers also get feedback from these cameras and microphones hanging in every classroom, recording every lesson. >> and it's great to be able to review and think, "how could i have done that in a better way or in a more effective way," or, "next time, when i deliver this mini-lesson, maybe i'll use a different tool next time," or, "that student looked super off- task, how can i help that student?" >> reporter: altschool eighth grader janice demings says she was wary of the cameras at first. >> everyone was, like, so freaked about the cameras, like, "oh, my god, they're spying on us and they have like a whole spy team!" we started a petition to get rid of the cameras just for fun, and now i feel that the cameras are a very beneficial thing because the cameras are here to track how we're growing as a class, how we're growing in our interactions. >> reporter: only teachers have access to the video, and altschool says it follows strict guidelines that forbid sharing it. altschool also says it encrypts all the data, which is retained on secure servers. mark eisner is the father of eighth grader emma. one of the ways personalization is possible is by collecting a lot of information about your daughter and the other kids here. how do you feel about that? >> i feel fine about it. they do need to collect information and data to make good decisions, and i think that's fine. i mean, it's all oriented toward teaching and, you know, refining the overall educational model that they are trying to do. >> reporter: since opening in 2013, altschool says its students have scored above national averages in standardized tests but declined to share any scores. a report last year from the gates foundation and the rand corporation looked at 11,000 students in 62 schools with the personalized learning approach. it found those students "made gains in mathematics and reading that were significantly greate"" than their peers in regular schools. for example, during the past two school years, they gained 11 percentile points in math tests. larry cuban is a former teacher, public school administrator and stanford school of education professor. he warns that past efforts to individualize instruction have fallen short of expectations. >> i'm allergic to over- promising. i'm allergic to exaggeration, because i've been in schools for a large part of my life and i still go to schools. what i want is realistic, evidence-based kinds of things that know the history of these efforts and why they flop before, so you can have a much smarter approach to reforming schools, to improve what goes on in classrooms. >> reporter: next year, altschool plans to open its first school in chicago and another in new york, and expand further by partnering with other private schools. eventually, the goal is to license its software to public schools, a potential money maker that's helped attract $133 million in funding from investors. why should they invest in altschool? what kind of return are they going to get on their investment? >> they are looking over the very long-term. so, they are saying, "if this is successful in 15 years, then it can achieve a kind of critical mass. the beauty of that is, it costs a lot to build the first one, but then it's very, very cheap to build the second one, and the 1,000th one, and 10,000th one. >> reporter: with an annual tuition starting at $26,000, relatively small class sizes and only 450 students enrolled in its eight altschools, larry cuban is skeptical the methods honed here can be easily applied to large public schools with the greatest needs. >> that does not make it an easy model for altering or transforming public schools, which have a different demography both in students and teachers. when you have a public school system-- in this case of 50 million kids, three million teachers-- you have a great deal of variation. >> i think you need to start with an idealized environment if you're trying to do something really transformatively different. how do you end up in an education future where the people with resources are actually getting the same experience that people with far less resources have? and i just have this naïve belief that technology is an essential ingredient in that. >> sreenivasan: on pbs newshour weekend sunday, innovations that may predict when someone will attempt to take their own life. >> it predicts better than a person's own report of whether they're going to make a suicide attempt. it predicts better than clinicians' reports. >> sreenivasan: on pbs newshour weekend sunday. >> sreenivasan: as part of the" american graduate day" initiative, our colleagues right here at ketc in st. louis have produced a documentary called" gentlemen of vision." it's about a group of mostly african-american young men who are part of a step team. step is a form of rhythmic dance popular with historically black fraternities and sororities at american colleges. the gentlemen of vision, or g.o.v., team in st. louis includes high school students with challenging backgrounds who aspire to go to college. the program's goal is to decrease the dropout rate and have them graduate high school. in this excerpt, we meet a few of the young men who've committed to the discipline of practice and competition, with a coach who trains them in step and in life. >> step, team! >> you have been here for a long period of time, and you still have not learned these steps. please drop. i'm in a low-income family. for everybody else, get back up. so you just know the struggle of not having any money. you hear it all time, "education is key. education is key to survival." so i actually upon to attend howard university, and i want to major in biology 5, 6, 7, 8. >> we gotta this, man. we're going to get thrashed this year. >> mr. warden, one of the things he's always told me, "if you have a problem with something, then you do what you can, and you do it better than the person that's supposed to be doing it now." >> so i apologize. you know i never do that. >> so that explains why i'm president-- >> you have one more year before i kick you out and you have to go college, right? so let's make that work. >> i now call this meeting to order. the first order of business we're going to go around the room and address attire-- dress slacks, dress shirt, botie or tie, dress shoes. >> every time we go out of town, we take a college visit. we like to introduce this to them at such a young age every year, you know, six, seventh, eighth, ninth, on up to 12th, so they are gaining more comfort and doing these things. now we have our singers that cannot wait to leave and go to college. >> we are the g.o.v. we can't be beat. >> we meet one of our fraternity brothers, show us around this college, give us the history of this college, guff us the background of this college. >> we attend school here, and we take classes here. we do mentoring, too, so we help younger student like yourselves to tell you what to expect. >> we have some going to howard. we have some going to lincoln university. we have some going to the university of kansas city. we have them going going all over the place and they cannot wait. they already have the exposure upon they know what to expect when they get there. they believe in themselves. they know that they can do it. and they can do it. >> when mr. warden came up with this vision, it was not only just about stepping, it was really. mentoring. it was about training up the new generation to think differently and showcase we're capable until we're not. when people of color are told they are not capable of doing, some he ground us. he told us where we came from and where we're going. >> i want to thank you for coming down here. i brought two of my teams, nationally ranked teams, to come down and pout a show for you all. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: edward albee, one of the towering playwrights of american theater, died yesterday at his home in montauk, new york. his personal assistant said albee died after a short illness but gave no details. newshour weekend's zachary green has more. >> reporter: albee leaves a legacy of great plays that challenged his audience, some 30 works that earned him three pulitzer prizes, three tony awards and the national medal of the arts. he burst onto the scene in 1959 with the play "zoo story," about what happens when two strangers meet on a park bench. throughout his career, albee's plays turned a harsh, bright spotlight on the accepted mores of american life: love, marriage, religion. he told pbs' charlie rose in 2008, a play should hold a mirror up to people. >> if you are going to spend a hundred bucks or more to go to the theater, something should happen to you. someone should be asking some questions about your values or the way you think about things. >> reporter: which is what albee did in early plays like "a delicate balance" and "tiny alice," and later in the controversial "the goat, or who is sylvia?," about a man who falls in love with a goat. his best known play, revived three times on broadway, was 1962's "who's afraid of virginia woolf," a raw and scathing portrayal of a married couple in a small town college setting. elizabeth taylor and richard burton starred in the film that won several academy awards. >> i'm loud, and i'm vulgar. and i wear the pants in the house because somebody's got to! >> reporter: albee grew up in new york with an adoptive family that he admitted he did not like. in the 1991 play "three tall women," albee drew on his feelings of resentment toward his adoptive mother, saying he was "exorcising his demons" in the play. albee said he relished making theatergoers uncomfortable, telling the "new york times" his only taboo was never to bore an intelligent, responsible audience. edward albee was 88 years old. >> sreenivasan: finally, robert gates, who served as defense secretary for presidents obama and george w. bush said today donald trump is "unqualified and unfit "to be demander in chief. writing in the "wall street journal," gates said trump is stubbornly uninformed about the world and temperamentally unsuited to lead or men and women in uniforms. gates joins other republicans who have come out publicly against trump. but he also said clinton, like trump, has not seriously addressed how she thinks about using military force or the criteria she'd apply before deploying troops. that's all for this edition of "pbs newshour weekend." thees again for watching and thanks again to our friends here at ketc in sluice for hosting our broadcast. i'm hari sreenivasan. good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. anteriormente en "desperate housewives"... we are the women who dub "desperate housewives" into spanish. [ moaning ] "desperate actresses." i never wanted to play any prosties or drug dealers or maids. okay, people, i need a job! "voces" was made possible in part by the national endowment for the arts -- art works, the national association of latino arts and culture, and by the corporation for public broadcasting.

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