Saturday, July 22, 2006

GOP floats voucher proposal

Congressional Republicans yesterday proposed a $100 million plan to let poor children leave struggling schools and attend private schools at public expense. The voucher idea is one in a series of social conservative issues meant to energize the Republican base as midterm elections approach. In announcing their bills, House and Senate sponsors acknowledged that Congress likely won't even vote on the legislation this year.

Still, the move signals a significant education fight to come. GOP lawmakers plan to try to work their voucher plan into the No Child Left Behind law when it is updated in 2007. "Momentum is on our side," said Rep. Howard McKeon, a Republican of California, the chairman of the House education committee.

The Bush administration requested the school-choice plan, but yesterday's press event caused some awkwardness for the Education Department. The agency just released a study that raises questions about whether private schools offer any advantage over public ones. Under the new legislation, the vouchers would mainly go to students in poor schools that have failed to meet their progress goals for at least five straight years. Parents could get $4,000 a year to put toward private school tuition or a public school outside their local district. They could also seek up to $3,000 a year for extra tutoring.

Supporters say poor parents deserve choices, like rich families have. When schools don't work, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said, "Parents must have other opportunities."

During President Bush's time in office, Congress approved the first federal voucher program in the District of Columbia, and private school aid for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. So far, Congress has refused to approve Mr. Bush's national voucher proposals.The new one is the first to target money for children in schools that have fallen short under federal law.

Critics dismissed it as a gimmick. "Voucher programs rob public school students of scarce resources," said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, a teachers union. "No matter what politicians call them, vouchers threaten the basic right of every child to attend a quality public school."

Meanwhile, Ms. Spellings faced questions about her department's handling of a new study comparing students in public and private schools that had been quietly released on Friday. The study found that overall, private school students outperform public school children in reading and math. But public school students often did as well, if not better, when compared to private school peers with similar backgrounds. The study had many caveats and warned that its own comparisons had "modest utility."

Source







Academe loves the loony Left

In the jungle of today's political scene, there has been a lot of shrill, intemperate, and vicious rhetoric from the right directed at liberals, leftists, and, particularly, liberal academics. In the rhetoric of people like talk show host Sean Hannity or activist and writer David Horowitz (to use just two examples), liberals are portrayed as fuzzy-headed naïfs at best and terrorist sympathizers at worst, as people always ready to believe the worst about the United States and the best about its enemies.

It's too bad that, at times, some on the academic left seem determined to live up -- or down -- to this stereotype. The latest in the academic follies comes from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where the administration has cleared the way for an instructor to teach his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were plotted by the US government to create an excuse for war. There's nothing new or surprising about Sept. 11 conspiracy theories. E-mails with ``conclusive proof" that the attacks were an inside job land regularly in my mailbox. They are subject to automatic deletion, right along with ``proof positive that evolution is a fraud" and invitations to collect $150 million from a Nigerian bank.

As a rule of thumb, conspiracy theories are bunk. People are not smart enough to carry out their scenarios, and not discreet enough to keep their secrets. It is particularly a stretch to believe that the Bush administration, given its track record in managing things like the Iraq War and the Hurricane Katrina response, could have pulled off a conspiracy so immense.

Kevin Barrett, an instructor at the University of Wisconsin and the head of something called the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, thinks otherwise. On the group's website, he claims there is ``compelling evidence" that the attacks were planned by the United States. This fall, Barrett is going to teach ``Islam: Religion and Culture," a course in which he plans to present his theories to the students (along with the ``official" version, which he calls a ``big lie"). After he shared his views on the radio and in a newspaper interview, a controversy ensued, with some politicians demanding Barrett be fired.

University provost Patrick Farrell and two other officials have reviewed the course as well as Barrett's past record, and have given him the green light. In an official statement, Farrell declared, ``There is no question that Mr. Barrett holds personal opinions that many people find unconventional. These views are expected to take a small, but significant, role in the class." He added that Barrett has assured him that students will be free to challenge his viewpoint.

Defenders of the course say that academic freedom is at stake. But does academic freedom really protect the teaching of what Farrell politely calls ``unconventional" views? How about a course expounding on Flat Earth theory and presenting ``compelling evidence" that the moon landing was faked? Or, better yet, how about a course called ``Germany: History and Culture," in which the instructor presented his ``unconventional" view that the Holocaust is a myth and Hitler was a misunderstood great leader?

According to Farrell, ``We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas." Would he use the same kind of reasoning to defend a Holocaust-denying course or a course in ``creation science"? When it comes to those issues, it is widely understood that even to open up an academic ``debate" about certain crackpot theories is to give them a legitimacy that will be corrosive to genuine scholarship. It is one thing to say that professors should not be penalized for whatever views they preach outside the classroom; it's quite another to say that they have the right to poison the well of the college curriculum.

Mir Babar Basir, a recent University of Wisconsin graduate and former president of the Muslim Students Association, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that Barrett had many supporters, which was not surprising since ``Madison is fairly liberal." But what exactly is ``liberal" about the belief in bizarre conspiracy theories? If one wants to promote tolerance toward Muslims and counter the stereotypes that equate all Islam with terrorism, denying the link between Islamic fanaticism and Sept. 11 is hardly the way to go about it. No one knows if Barrett's nonsense will persuade any of his students. One thing, however, is clear: His course, and the university's lame defense of it, are a gift to all those who want to malign liberals as America-haters and to portray the academy as a hotbed of left-wing lunacy.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Friday, July 21, 2006

U.K.: PHASING OUT SELECTIVE SCHOOLING WAS A DUMB IDEA

The British Left hates Grammar schools but they were the best highroad to better things for poor kids with brains

The proportion of state school pupils and those from low- income families at university has dropped to its lowest level in three years, despite government pressure to increase their numbers. And, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency figures released today, the worst performer is Oxford. The agency said that 320 fewer state-educated pupils went to university in 2004-05, down 0.1 of a percentage point from 86.8 per cent the previous year. The percentage of students from low-income families dropped from 28.6 per cent to 28.2 per cent.

Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, told The Times that he was disappointed by the figures and that he had asked the Higher Education Funding Council to audit university programmes aimed at admitting more state pupils. “I’m reasonably confident these [programmes] will work but to be 300 per cent sure, I have asked [the council] to do a widening participation audit and report back to me by October,” he said. The Government wants half of young people to go to university by 2010.

The proportion of students from state schools was down in 14 of the country’s 19 leading universities, with Oxford still the most elite — 53.4 per cent of it students in 2004-05 were from state schools, a drop of 0.4 percentage points on the previous year, and the second fall in two years. Cambridge’s state admissions dropped by 0.1 percentage points to 56.8 per cent.

While many top universities complained of being set impossibly high intake targets, admissions of state pupils rose at UCL and Liverpool, Newcastle and Edinburgh universities. Malcolm Grant, chairman of the Russell Group of universities, said that he wanted to see more state pupils at university, but that it was important to maintain standards. “We’re not saying that children from working-class backgrounds are less able, just less well prepared,” he said. The figures also showed a rise in drop-out rates.

Source






Leftists attack school choice in Australia too

A school voucher system would cost at least $5 billion more than present Federal Government funding, widen inequality among students and potentially lower average results, a study has found. Its discussion paper, which evaluated school vouchers overseas, concluded that introducing the system here would give parents a greater choice of schools. But this benefit would be largely confined to those on middle and high incomes and outweighed by negative effects on educational achievement, equality of opportunity, social cohesion and social capital.

Andrew Macintosh and Deb Wilkinson, of the left-wing think tank the Australia Institute, argue in the paper that a voucher system for all students could lower average results and widen social inequality. "The positives of greater choice must be weighed against the financial costs and risks associated with voucher schemes," their report said. "Universal voucher schemes would direct more resources to wealthy private schools at the expense of public schools and poor private schools, thereby reducing the opportunities available to children from low socio-economic backgrounds. "The redistribution of students and resources under a voucher scheme could result in sink schools that offer services that are vastly inferior to those available in the rest of the school sector. Public schools could ultimately become nothing more than a safety net for those who cannot afford to send their children to private schools."

The report concluded that a system that would provide a voucher of $8675.80 for each primary school student and $11,072.50 for a secondary student would cost the Federal Government about $32 billion - $5 billion more than it spends now (based on 2002-03 figures).

Yesterday, the federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, reinforced her support for a broader voucher system, which would give parents government funding for each child so the money could be spent on a public or private school of choice. She has commissioned a study of a possible voucher system for students with disabilities, which would enable those in public schools to attend private schools and take their government funding with them. Ms Bishop has given a favourable assessment of a national pilot program which offered $700 vouchers to parents of children who failed to meet year 3 reading benchmarks. "I am supportive of the principle of funding following students: for example, the reading tuition vouchers for students who have not met year 3 literacy benchmarks, which will be continued this year," she said. A spokesman for Ms Bishop said the minister was keen to look at the broader application of a voucher system for all children.

The Australia Institute's report said that a voucher system would increase subsidies to wealthy non-government schools and disadvantage or provide little benefit to poor private schools. Schools in rural and remote areas with special needs would be particularly at risk of losing a substantial proportion of their government funding. Vouchers could also cause greater segregation on the basis of race, religion, academic ability and socio-economic status.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Associate Vice Chancellor of White Guilt

By Mike Adams

My university recently announced the appointment of Dr. Tamra Minor as our new Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity. Dr. Minor said her appointment illustrates that the entire university leadership is now serious about the commitment to diversity and the promotion of a "culture of inclusiveness" at UNC-Wilmington.

I respectfully take issue with her socially constructed interpretation of reality. As a preliminary matter, this Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity position is not actually a new position at all. The name of Dr. Minor's old position of Director of Campus Diversity was simply changed to sound more important. Her previous salary of $84,000 hasn't changed either. She'll do the same job for the same money despite making this grand statement in a university press release:

"My major focus will include identifying strategies to enhance the culture of UNCW by assisting students in developing the intellectual, social, emotional, cultural and civic capacities essential to lead in a global economy."

Dr. Minor's statement that she will help students develop the "emotional capacities" that are "essential" to lead in a "global economy" could not be further from the truth. Directors of "diversity" - or even "institutional diversity" - always have the opposite effect on minority students. Without fail, they encourage minority students to be hypersensitive and, thus, deprive them of the emotional maturity needed to function in any economy, global or otherwise.

In my experience, the more money a school spends on "diversity initiatives" the more minority students complain. And, sadly, this also causes non-minority students to walk on eggshells around them. This, in turn, produces a form of accidental segregation, which only serves as a supplement to the university's intentional segregation. In fact, this intentional segregation is one of exactly three unstated goals of the diversity movement:

1. To promote racist discrimination.
2. To promote non-racist discrimination.
3. To promote racial separatism.

I am fairly certain that every reader knows the meaning of racial separatism. But the distinction between racist and non-racist discrimination is not widely understood. The former is any initiative that seeks to increase minority presence on campus by lowering standards for minorities, usually blacks. For example, in a recent press release, UNC-Wilmington made reference to Dennis Carter - an associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs - who has been instrumental (in the school's opinion) in supporting efforts on behalf of minority students at UNCW through programs such as "Great Expectations."

Often, when diversity initiatives make mention of "great expectations" they are simply concealing the fact that the initiative actually sets lower expectation for minorities. I classify these initiatives as "racist" forms of discrimination because they so often reinforce notions of black intellectual inferiority. This is both tragic and counter-productive.

But other forms of discrimination have nothing to do with racism in the purest sense. For example, initiatives that seek to retain minority faculty members - by paying them much more than whites - do not reinforce truly racist stereotypes. But this minority hush money does prove that affirmative action is no longer necessary.

Remembering these three goals of diversity helps achieve insight into why Dr. Minor was hired for this "new" position. It wasn't because she is bright (though she is). It wasn't because she is a nice person (though she is). It wasn't because she's attractive and skilled socially (though she is both). She was given this job simply because she is black.

Put simply, the diversity movement at UNCW, which advances racism, discrimination, and segregation, is there for the benefit of white college administrators who are seeking career advancement. But, since their agenda so closely resembles the agenda of the racist opponents of the civil rights movement in North Carolina fifty years ago, these white opportunists must find a black person to oversee the operation. That is another way of saying that the new Associate Vice Chancellor really was not hired to promote institutional diversity. She was hired to expunge white guilt and to deflect potential accusations of racism.

I predict that under the protection of Dr. Minor, UNC-Wilmington will expand drastically upon at least two of their three unstated goals of diversity in the coming year. First, I predict that they will further their agenda of racial separatism by applying it to the ever-growing population of Hispanics in the Wilmington community. Within the next year, I expect UNC-Wilmington to break ground on a new Hispanic Student Center. The prediction isn’t that bold, given that the university has already started to write separate university brochures – written in Spanish, of course – for potential Hispanic Students.

Second, I expect that in the next year UNC-Wilmington will significantly lower admissions requirements – both SAT scores and Grade Point Averages – for incoming Hispanic students. And they will continue to do so every year to try to keep the university’s Hispanic population proportionate to Wilmington’s Hispanic population.

I also predict that after taxpayer-supported segregationist and racist policies grow out of control for a few years, the sensibilities of the public will finally be offended. When this happens, the university will finally have to reverse direction and undo some of the damage created by funding a movement based upon a notion (diversity) that no two people seem to be able to define the same way.

Since the diversity movement had to be implemented by a black PhD, maybe a white PhD will have to dismantle it. If I’m right, some day I’ll be the new Chancellor Emeritus of Institutional Diversity. Maybe one day, I’ll be tearing down “colored” signs that hang above water fountains. And, perhaps some day, I’ll restore the legacy of a man named Dr. King.

Source






Australian teachers whine about merit pay

On the grounds that teachers don't make a difference!

Plans to reward teachers for results, rather than years in the job, have been dismissed by the national president of the Australian Education Union, who said it was "completely unreasonable to hold a teacher responsible foroutcomes". Pat Byrne disputed the idea that the teacher was more important than a student's family background in determining achievement and rejected the idea of tying pay to academic results.

She said a such system would set teacher against teacher and discourage them from helping difficult pupils. "You can only hold teachers responsible for what they can control and teachers have no control over the nature of the students they have," she said. "Classes are different, the way kids interact in a particular class is different, every subject area is different, every school is different. "All these things are variable and interchangeable and it is completely unreasonable to hold a teacher responsible for outcomes."

Ms Byrne made her comments after federal Education Minister Julie Bishop outlined a plan this week to reward good teachers with bonuses. Ms Bishop accused the states of complacency in accepting low standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy, and proposed an incentive fund as a way of keeping the best teachers in government schools.

The Association of Independent Schools of NSW is looking at introducing merit-based pay to replace the current system of incremental rises for every year of service, with the top pay rate cutting in after about eight years.

Ms Byrne's views were disputed by NSW Institute of Teachers chief executive Tom Alegounarias, who said student results were directly linked to teaching practice. Mr Alegounarias said that while a student's social background influenced their education, their social circumstances did not dictate a lower quality of teaching or expectations. "We hold the same aspirations for disadvantaged students as we hold for advantaged students. Our expectations of their achievement cannot be any less." He said public consultation revealed teachers and the community believed excellent teachers should be recognised and assessed. The debate now focused on how best to do it. "You risk, in schools that do add value, overlooking excellent teachers that get good results when the results are ultimately average," he said. "You also risk in schools like selective high schools and in high socio-economic communities believing that teachers are excellent simply because students are well-resourced and highly motivated."

But Ms Byrne said paying teachers according to an individual assessment would lead to teachers declining to work in challenging schools. She said it shifted responsibility from the government to the teacher without providing any support that might help students improve. Ms Byrne also said it was difficult to define the term "better teacher" and it was "extremely insulting" to say they had to be encouraged into state government schools because it implied that good teachers worked only in private schools.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

What billions can buy

Warren Buffett will soon give $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose chief domestic priority is education. If the money is used to promote free market reforms, it could change the world. But if it is poured into the existing system, Mr. Buffett himself may well outlive its effects.

Mr. Buffett and the Gateses are not the first to invest over a billion dollars in an ambitious school reform plan. Ambassador and TV Guide mogul Walter Annenberg trod this path during the 1990s, donating $500 million of his own money and another $800 million in matching funds to the "Annenberg Challenge." Mr. Annenberg's goal was to create exemplary schools and districts that would act as models for the nation. He sought not incremental change, but systemwide transformation. He didn't get it. Though some Annenberg Challenge projects showed promise, at least for a time, their impact on the system as a whole was negligible.

Why? The Wreck of the Annenberg can be attributed to a single fundamental flaw in the ambassador's approach: he assumed that excellence, once demonstrated, would automatically be imitated. It is easy to see why people who have amassed riches in the private sector might assume that successful models are always mimicked on a broad scale. That is what happens in competitive markets – including competitive education markets.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith praised the vigorous education industry of classical Athens, noting that: "The demand for ... instruction produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite appears to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection." But the "emulation" that Mr. Annenberg was counting on never happened because there was no competition to "excite" it. Absent market forces, America's public school monopoly has no mechanism by which excellence can be routinely identified, perpetuated and disseminated. As a result, there are myriad examples of public school excellence achieved and then lost.

Many readers will remember the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, celebrating real-life Los Angeles public school teacher Jaime Escalante. Mr. Escalante painstakingly built a rigorous math program at Garfield High School, enabling an unprecedented number of its low-income, mostly Hispanic students to take and pass the Advanced Placement calculus test. His results were so good that many observers literally couldn't believe them, and his students were forced to retake the test – on which they succeeded admirably once again. In a competitive industry, a star like Mr. Escalante would have been rapidly promoted. He would soon have been designing curricula and training teachers for the benefit of thousands or even millions of children. He got threats and hate mail instead.

Because he successfully taught difficult material to classrooms of 50 or more students, Mr. Escalante drew the ire of his own colleagues. The local union contract stipulated that teachers could not serve more than 35 children per class, and Mr. Escalante's achievements made that stipulation seem gratuitous and self-serving. The union balked, the threats started, and Mr. Escalante's chairmanship of the math department was revoked in 1990. He left a year later.

The dysfunctional incentive structure of our public school monopoly is not only incapable of sustaining excellence, it actually works to crush it by setting the interests of school employees against those of students and parents. Countless other exemplary teachers and model schools have failed to transform the system for this reason. So the $30 billion question is: Will Mr. Buffett and the Gateses pursue the same ill-fated course? These are brilliant people, but there is reason to worry. Echoing Walter Annenberg, Melinda Gates recently told a reporter that she "thought, if you get enough [small schools] going across the country, people will realize they're good, and more and more will pop up."

It's a promising idea. In both atmosphere and test scores, small schools often enjoy an edge over institutions enrolling thousands of students. The problem is that, without altering the dysfunctional incentive structure that produced our current low-performing, Titanic-sized schools, the Foundation's successes are apt to be isolated and short-lived. As Adam Smith argued and Mr. Annenberg demonstrated, you need competition to drive the spread of good ideas.

But if there is reason to worry, there is also reason for hope. What did the Gateses present Mr. Buffett as a thank-you for his unprecedented generosity? A copy of The Wealth of Nations. So Mr. Buffett and the Gateses have a choice of futures. They can risk frittering away the largest philanthropic donation in history on a system they know, on some level, to be bankrupt, or they can work to introduce the same market forces that are responsible for growth and innovation in every other field – and that made classical Athens the wellspring of Western culture.

Source







It's time to give parents a chance

Post lifted from Betsy Newmark

Clint Bolick writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd) about a suit being filed in Newark, NJ seeking to give 60,000 students trapped in failing schools by giving their parents the money to transfer their children out of the horrible schools to attend schools of their choice.
Seeking to vindicate the state constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" education, the plaintiffs in Crawford v. Davy ask that children be allowed to leave public schools where fewer than half of the students pass the state math and language literacy assessments that measure educational proficiency; and that the parents of these children be permitted to take the pro rata share of the public money spent on their children, to seek better opportunities in other public or private schools. Supporting the families are three prominent New Jersey groups: the Black Ministers Council, the Latino Leadership Alliance, and Excellent Education for Everyone.
Sounds like groups that care more about students' education than the public school teachers' union. Note that these parents have gone beyond what such suits normally ask for - more money for the school districts to equalize what one school district receives compared to more successful districts. Perhaps that is because New Jersey is already spending huge sums of money on their public schools and not seeing the results they desire.
New Jersey courts have for their part repeatedly recognized that the state constitution's education guarantee is judicially enforceable; and the state itself has set the minimum proficiency standards to which the defendant school districts in Crawford v. Davy fall appallingly short. New Jersey is also the state that has traveled farthest down the path of pursuing educational adequacy through new school funding and programs -- starting in 1973, when the state Supreme Court first declared the state's school finance system unconstitutional in Robinson v. Cahill and again in 1985 in Abbott v. Burke. Today, dozens of schools in the so-called Abbott districts remain under court control. With abundant funding, some Abbott schools have improved, while others haven't. On balance, however, the New Jersey experience demonstrates that money alone cannot solve the ills of public education.

One of the defendant school districts in the new suit, Englewood City, spends $19,194 per student, well over twice the national average. But at Dismus Middle School, over two-thirds of the students do not have basic proficiency in math and fewer than half are proficient in language arts literacy. Newark, a recipient of massive Abbott funding, spends $16,351 per student and pays its teachers an average salary of $76,213. Yet in 24 of its schools, fewer than half the students demonstrate basic proficiency in math or language arts. At William H. Brown Academy and at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, fewer than one of every 10 students demonstrates basic math proficiency. It's time to try something else for these children.(emphasis added)
Those are amazing numbers of per-student spending. Clear evidence that increasing spending doesn't correlate with improving student performance. As Bolick says,
New Jersey courts have for their part repeatedly recognized that the state constitution's education guarantee is judicially enforceable; and the state itself has set the minimum proficiency standards to which the defendant school districts in Crawford v. Davy fall appallingly short. New Jersey is also the state that has traveled farthest down the path of pursuing educational adequacy through new school funding and programs -- starting in 1973, when the state Supreme Court first declared the state's school finance system unconstitutional in Robinson v. Cahill and again in 1985 in Abbott v. Burke. Today, dozens of schools in the so-called Abbott districts remain under court control. With abundant funding, some Abbott schools have improved, while others haven't. On balance, however, the New Jersey experience demonstrates that money alone cannot solve the ills of public education.

One of the defendant school districts in the new suit, Englewood City, spends $19,194 per student, well over twice the national average. But at Dismus Middle School, over two-thirds of the students do not have basic proficiency in math and fewer than half are proficient in language arts literacy. Newark, a recipient of massive Abbott funding, spends $16,351 per student and pays its teachers an average salary of $76,213. Yet in 24 of its schools, fewer than half the students demonstrate basic proficiency in math or language arts. At William H. Brown Academy and at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, fewer than one of every 10 students demonstrates basic math proficiency. It's time to try something else for these children.
This puts the courts in a quandary. They have recognized that it is a violation of students' rights to send them to such awful schools. They've tried over and over to improve the schools by spending scads of money on them. So, clearly, more money is not the answer, but I don't expect to see the education blob to recognize that. However, Bolick is right that it is time to try something new. It's not enough for a child to say that we hope schools will improve sometime in the future. Children don't have the time to wait if they're stuck in terrible schools and every year puts them further behind. They need a change now, before it's too late and the gap in their education becomes insurmountable. This is a case to watch for what it could mean. Why shouldn't we apply competition to education just as we do in other aspects of our lives. We've tried everything else. Let schools realize that if they fail their students, they will lose the students and the funding attached to those children. But at least, let those parents who wish, get their kids out of these failed schools. Now.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Time to face our education crisis

By Newt Gingrich

School is out for the summer, but as a grandfather and former college professor, the education of our children is never far from my mind. My own grandchildren are young -- ages 6 and 4 -- and have their entire educational experience ahead of them. I saw a report recently that makes me worry about the education system they will inherit. It makes me worry what kind of country they will inherit. And it makes me ask this question: When it comes to educating our children, at what point are we willing to face the truth and declare that the education system created for the industrial era is failing to prepare our children for the demands of today's information age?

If a 21.7% Graduation Rate Isn't Failure, What Is?

The education bureaucracy likes to play a game with statistics. They usually publish data on educational successes or failures only on a statewide basis, so parents and teachers have no way to hold the education bureaucracy accountable where it counts -- on the district level. But a new study sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took a different approach, and the results it reported are deeply troubling to those of us with a concern for the future of American children.

The study looked at graduation rates on a district-by-district level and found that they are shockingly lower than previously reported by the education bureaucracy. In big-city public school districts like Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas and Denver, fewer than 50 percent of high school students graduate on time. In three districts, the public schools graduate fewer than 40 percent of their students: In New York City, the graduation rate is 38.9 percent; in Baltimore, it's 38.5 percent; and in Detroit, incredibly, only 21.7 percent of students who enter public high schools will graduate.

Failing Four Out of Five Students

Consider this finding for a moment. If only 21.7 percent of students graduate from Detroit schools on time, that means that 78.3 percent of students fail to graduate. Almost 80 percent of students -- four out of five -- are failed by our educational system. Why do we tolerate this level of failure? The fact is, in most aspects of life, we don't. If a private company took the money from its customers and then failed 80 percent of them, it would be closed in a day.

I am a firm believer in establishing measurable standards of success (or failure) and constantly assessing the wisdom and workability of policies against these standards. One of the most basic measures of the success of our school system is high school graduation. A high school diploma is the minimum requirement for successful participation in American life. The failure of our schools to graduate their students isn't limited to Detroit or to our big cities. Nationwide, it is estimated that three of every 10 students who start high school won't graduate on time. For minorities, these numbers are far worse. One of every two African-American and Latino students won't graduate on time or graduate at all. So dramatic is the failure that today there are more African American males in prison than there are in college -- a fact that is a national disgrace.

First, Save the Children

We've all heard the rallying cries of "Save the Whales" and "Save the Rainforest." My view is that reports on our public schools like this latest one should have us all shouting "Save the Children." Every time we allow policies that favor the education bureaucracy over our children, we not only hurt our children, we hurt our country and our prospects for future safety and prosperity.

Here's a case in point. One of the favorite talking points of the left-liberals is that more money will cure what is wrong with our education system. But here is just one of the facts that exposes this for the lie that it is. Nationally, our education bureaucracy is receiving more than $440 billion a year of our tax dollars to fund our schools, but only about 61 percent of this is actually spent in classrooms. In a state like Michigan, that number is even lower -- only 57 percent of education funds are actually spent on teachers and teaching. The rest goes to the bureaucracy for undefined, unaccountable "overhead." It cannot be overstated, that unless and until we make it a priority to put the welfare of our children over the welfare of the education bureaucracy, our education bureaucracy will continue to consign our children to future poverty and our nation to future failure.

The Valedictorian Who Flunked Out

America has many great public schools and many, many dedicated teachers. And we have more than our share of education success stories. The problem is that too often these successes are achieved in spite of our current education system, not because of it.

I am reminded of a tragic story I heard about the valedictorian at a high school in New Orleans who couldn't graduate because she had failed the math portion of her graduate exit exam five times. She had a near-perfect grade point average -- and had even received an A in an advanced math class her senior year. But when she took the test required of all Louisiana students before graduation, everything her school system had supposedly done for her was exposed as a lie. She hadn't been educated -- she had merely been processed, passed up the line from grade to grade in order to avoid exposing the failure of the very institutions and officials that were entrusted with her future.

Had this story ended here, it would have been just one more tragic tale of how our education system is cheating kids and lying to their parents. But thankfully, the story of this young woman didn't end in failure. Even though she had been humiliated in front of her peers and the nation when the press picked up the story, she didn't give up. She persevered and, on her seventh try, passed the state graduation exam and received her diploma.

America abounds with more energy, resourcefulness and innovation than any nation in the history of mankind. We deserve an education system that nurtures and develops these qualities. I've said it before and I'll say it again: We owe our children and grandchildren an America at least as prosperous and secure as the one our parents and grandparents fought and worked to give us. "Save the children" isn't just a slogan, it's a call to win the future for all Americans, starting with our children. Let's not wait to get started.

Source







Australia: Muslim schools bad for integration



Pupils taught in Brisbane's Islamic schools may struggle to integrate into Australian society, a leading Muslim has warned.

The number of parents choosing an Islamic education for their children has soared in the past five years. More than 750 pupils are now taught in the city's two Muslim schools and the number is set to pass 1000 when the next academic year begins. But Abdul Jalal, president of the Islamic Council of Queensland, says more should be done to integrate Muslim and non-Muslim children. "Segregation is not healthy and I'm totally opposed to it," he said. "The schools have to look at which direction they are taking our young people. How will this generation integrate if not at school?"

Mr Jalal said he supported religious schools in principle, but was concerned about the lack of non-Muslim pupils attending the Islamic College of Brisbane and Brisbane Muslim School. "It's a concern to me and I have made it known to the college's authorities that they have to get non-Muslim students into our schools," he said. "Unless schools integrate with the wider community, bringing people from different races together, then I'm afraid. We are trying to seek ways of ensuring another Cronulla doesn't happen here."

A recent British report on the aftermath of the London bombings said Christians and Muslims should be encouraged to integrate, claiming that the two communities lead "parallel lives". Co-author Asaf Hussain said: "Multicultural policies saved no lives in London on July 7. Britain's population has to become more integrated."

The Islamic College of Brisbane has 550 pupils and next year hopes to enrol 700. But Islamic College principal Dr Mubarak Noor said the school regularly hosted visits from non-Muslim schools and took part in inter-school sport contests. The school has three non-Muslim pupils - two boys and a girl, who has to wear a headscarf in line with the school's uniform policy - and is trying to enrol more. Pupils are taught the standard syllabus, as well Arabic and Islamic studies.

Shahid Khan, principal of Brisbane Muslim School, said it was founded in 2002 with 19 pupils, but today it has 233 and next year will have at least 300. He stressed that his school also took part in inter-school sport contests and visits and is now setting up a scholarship scheme to encourage local Aboriginal children to attend the school. More than half of his staff are non-Muslim. "We haven't closed the doors to others and are actively seeking Aboriginal participation in our school," he said. "We are not isolated in any way. We are trying hard to create good citizens and teach them Australian principles and to be proud of their country."

Mohamad Abdalla, head of Griffith University's Islamic Research Unit, said many Muslim parents opted for Islamic education because of a perceived lack of "ethics and morality" in state schools. "There are arguments back and forth on this subject," he said. "Some experts claim Islamic schools seclude students from the mainstream, but others say Jewish and Christian schools show pupils from religious schools can integrate without any problem."

State Education Minister Rod Welford declined to comment on the issue, but National MP and state opposition schools spokesman Stuart Copeland said: "I don't have a problem with religious schools, but they have to make sure they are producing well-rounded young people. I don't want any school to be too narrow in its focus."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Monday, July 17, 2006

Learning the lessons of small schools

From their creation two years ago, three small, independently run schools in the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District have been a source of interest and resentment. The schools have butted heads with the teachers union and run into space and logistics conflicts with the sister schools whose buildings they share. School trustees and administrators have alternated between cutting them slack and reining them in. Meanwhile, the three schools have produced impressive results, as measured in test scores and parent and teacher approval.

A recently released independent evaluation of the schools won't end debate over their value, but it dispels misconceptions and provides evidence for keeping them alive and learning from them.

Small start-up schools with control over budgets and curriculum have had considerable success in New York City, and in Oakland under state-appointed administrator Randall Ward. Alum Rock is the first district locally to create small schools; Franklin McKinley will open one in the fall. Each of Alum Rock's small schools is distinct. Adelante Academy is the district's only English-Spanish dual-immersion program. LUCHA is a K-4 school that strongly encourages parent participation. Renaissance Academy is a middle school that stresses leadership with a theme of social justice.

LUCHA's and Renaissance Academy's API scores are among the best in the district, although the evaluator, R.E. Castro, found no definitive reason why. (Adelante's students weren't old enough yet to take the tests.) Teachers in the sister schools charged that small schools recruited good students, but Castro found no evidence of that. What may be true is that active and involved parents, frustrated by the pace of change, choose schools where reforms are happening.

Castro also examined the rates of academic improvement among a cluster of students in the small and sister schools, and found no big difference. However, it was only a one-year look at a small number of students. What Castro did find was intense collaboration among teachers at the small schools -- a solid indicator of a successful school -- and high rates of parent participation and satisfaction.

Small schools can foster close-knit student and teacher relationships. By controlling discretionary money, they also can experiment with scheduling and the curriculum. The district's challenge is to figure out how to better define the role of the smaller schools and, if results warrant, to create more of them.

Instead, there has been more tension than cooperation. Friction has grown between the administration and PACT, the church-based citizen group that has been the small schools' patron. The district also has started charging 25 percent of the small schools' tuition revenue as overhead -- an excessive amount. Nonetheless, before he retired this month, Superintendent Tony Russo took some steps to provide stability. LUCHA will move to the former Miller Elementary, where it will share space with KIPP Heartwood, a terrific charter middle school. Renaissance Academy will move to Fischer Middle School, where Nancy Gutierrez, Renaissance's principal, will be Fischer's principal and appoint her successor.

In the small schools, Alum Rock has talented teachers and engaged parents. The district should do no harm: Let them innovate and thrive

Source







Best way to teach English skills argued in California

A high-decibel debate among education officials, politicians and advocates of bilingual schooling that led to the recent yanking of funds from the state Board of Education boils down to one difficult question: How should California teach roughly a quarter of the state's public school population -- students who are not native English speakers -- how to read and write? The persistent issue moved into the spotlight last week when former governors Gray Davis and Pete Wilson urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to resist bilingual activists and stick with California's current approach to teaching English learners how to read and write.

There is no argument that a solid grounding in those skills is essential to success; they open the gate to almost everything else students will learn. And both sides agree that students must learn to read and write in English, as mandated by Proposition 227 in 1998. But even in English-only public schools, there's controversy over how best to reach students who are typically among the poorest-performing in the state.

One side insists students new to English should learn to read and write in a way that's geared toward non-native English speakers. They've yet to develop specifics, but advocates say the approach would incorporate more pictures, written passages with simple syntax, common vocabulary and less academic English.

The other side demands all children learn to read and write the same way, whether English is native to them or they're just learning the language. They argue that reading and writing lessons geared for English learners would amount to state-sanctioned segregation. "Why would we then give them something different from, less than, what native English speakers get? It's an equity issue," said Dale Webster, a policy consultant with the state Board of Education.

He helped develop an approach the Board of Education approved in April that calls for first- through fifth-graders to learn reading and writing the same way during 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day. The program includes an extra 30 minutes of instruction, tailored to non-native speakers, to learn English.

But advocates of an approach rejected by the Board of Education say non-native speakers should be taught English while taking lessons on reading and writing. They say dividing the English-learning time from other courses doesn't make sense and takes too much time. Under the method approved by the Board of Education, said Maria Quezada, executive director of the California Association for Bilingual Education, students new to English must sit through a two-hour reading lesson they don't understand before they get a 30-minute lesson that's comprehensible. "Why are we using an English-language arts program that's made for English speakers, not English learners?" she asked.

The approach bilingual advocates prefer -- known as Option VI -- was supported by the Legislature's Latino caucus and the Association of California School Administrators, which represents principals and superintendents. The approach would be used only in classrooms dominated by immigrant children. And it would be a choice for districts, not a requirement. There is no need to worry that the approach would segregate schools, advocates say. "This segregation business -- that's baloney," said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles. "The only districts that would buy these materials are the ones that are overwhelmingly English learners."

But creating equality among schools was the whole point behind academic standards in the 1990s, said Marion Joseph, a former Board of Education member. She was on the board when it approved standards meant to raise achievement and expectations. "The commitment that those standards would be for every child, that's the No. 1 piece," Joseph said. "That's a commitment that had never been made before, and taking that very seriously and making sure it's not just hypocrisy took a lot of thought and research." In her eyes, a reading and writing curriculum that's different in an immigrant community than it is in an affluent white community defeats the whole point of standards.

Others say the state can uphold the same standards for all children but permit them to reach those standards along different paths. As an example, they point to an elementary school book that tells the story of a friendship between two girls, Chrysanthemum and Delphinium. "For a second-language learner, those names are almost impossible to say and the fact that their names are flowers is completely lost on the kids," said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman of the Los Angeles County Office of Education. She would prefer a book that tells the friendship story whose characters have easier names.

Webster, of the Board of Education, said it's important to expose children to academic English and sophisticated vocabulary from an early age to prepare them for the upper grades when they are expected to understand history and science texts.

The fight now turns to the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Senate Bill 1769 by Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Whittier, would require the Board of Education to develop an approach to teaching reading and writing that incorporates English instruction for non-native speakers. The bill would restore funding to the state Board of Education. Democrats said they pulled the funding from the state budget in retaliation for the board's rejection of the proposed English learner curriculum. A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman said he had not yet taken a position on the bill

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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Sunday, July 16, 2006

NEA Union Spending Millions on Groups Opposing "No Child Left Behind" Law

Analysis of disclosure reports exposes financial relationships between union and wide array of groups:

The National Education Association's funding practices came under scrutiny this week as USA Today ran with the story of the over $8 million the NEA has spent paying for groups to create an artificial echo chamber of opposition to President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law as it comes up for reauthorization next year.

While the national education union has made its opposition to NCLB no secret even since before the law was enacted, the union?s massive funding of a wide array of civil rights, education and left-leading policy groups that have opposed or criticized the law makes clear the union's strategy to give the impression that opposition to the law is more widespread and more intense than would otherwise be the case.

USA Today's story is based on a report produced by Joe Williams, senior fellow with Education Sector.

Among the groups opposed to NCLB receiving handouts from the NEA:

Political and advocacy groups including Ameri cans for Democratic Action, the National Conference of Black Mayors, and Communiti es for Quality Education.

Union-funded "think tanks" including the Keysto ne Research Center and Great Lakes Center for Education Research.

Civil rights groups including the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Indian Education Association.

Interestingly, the NEA's funding of alliances and front groups to oppose NCLB might not have been discovered without another Bush Administration initiative: improving the accuracy and detail of financial disclosure reports required of big national labor unions.

During President Bush's first term, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and her staff worked to reform the financial reports which the federal Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) requires of large labor unions with at least some private sector members. The reformed LM-2 forms require the unions to disclose information on membership, income and expenditures with a level of detail sufficient for union members, the news media, and watchdog groups to have an understanding of unions are spending their members' compulsory dues. The new reports began to be filed last year.

Not surprisingly, national unions led by the AFL- CIO aggressively fought the new disclosure rules, taking the matter to court (where they lost) and resorting to such outlandish claims that compliance would cost "a billion dollars." In realty, the Labor Department made compliance with the law far easier than, for example, the IRS makes filing one's federal income taxes.

While nothing in the NEA's funding of other groups is illegal, the funding scheme reveals a coalitions strategy aimed at raising the volume of voices of groups supported by the union in an effort to steer the public debate over education reform as Congress takes up the law again next year.

The impact of this echo chamber strategy is no doubt amplified when the financial relationships between the union and the recipients of the union's largesse is not known to policymakers and the press.

Members of Congress, staff, and the media deserve to know when a group comes before them to advocate in opposition to the federal education reform law the nature of their relationship to the labor union that may be funding their activity.

Source





College Goes to Court: Universities practically employ their own law firms these days. Little wonder


At one point a couple of weeks ago, during the annual conference of college and university lawyers, I found myself seated next to Glynne Stanfield, who, as an Englishman, was an outsider to this club. A partner with the London firm Eversheds, Mr. Stanfield represents many English universities in their partnerships with American schools, study-abroad programs and the like. He was astounded by the sheer number of conference attendees--over a thousand. "The similar association in England has about 40 lawyers," Mr. Stanfield said.

That the U.S. is more top-heavy with legal minds than the rest of the Anglophone world is hardly a fresh insight. But why are so many of them, these days, devoting their careers to the legal ordeals of campus life? Of the 1,040 attendees this year, the vast majority are now in-house counsels, full-timers employed by schools, whereas years ago most colleges hired outside lawyers on occasion, as needed. Large universities now employ the equivalents of small law firms on staff, and it's worth pondering what this Perry Masonification of our schools says about how they operate.

In the case of higher education, litigiousness is driven less by ambulance-chasers' advertisements on television than by deeper, structural changes in how we relate to our alma maters. As Ed Stoner, a retired Pittsburgh lawyer who, over a 30-year career, represented numerous schools in Western Pennsylvania, told me: "People [today] are much less inclined to think, 'I wouldn't sue the university, it'd be like suing my mother.' People tend to look at the university as one more institution that might have a lot of money." And the people are right--more than 50 colleges and universities have endowments of $1 billion, not just Harvard and Yale but also Grinnell, Pitt and Case Western.

Changes in American law have encouraged that attenuation of loyalty. The expansion of Title IX rules for athletics, the constantly evolving rules about gender equality and sexual harassment and, lately, the practice of holding schools accountable for students' mental health--suing M.I.T. for not preventing a beloved daughter's suicide, to take a recent example--mean that there are ever more reasons to sue. On-staff lawyers are thus needed as prophylactics, advising faculty and staff on how to ensure themselves against liability. After all, as Mr. Stoner explained: "In-house lawyers are a lot cheaper. There's a lot of specialized knowledge that you don't want to pay $300 an hour to have someone read up on."


Universities have been growing--adding new majors, opening graduate schools, absorbing local hospitals into their medical schools. Colleges are almost all co-educational, and many of them run what amount to professional sports teams. In this new world, there are always new precedents for school lawyers to master.

At one panel I attended, San Francisco lawyer Zachary Hutton explained Williams v. Board of Regents, a recent case in which a University of Georgia student alleged having been raped by two student-athletes while a third student watched. The police charged the athletes with rape, and the university decided not to conduct its own investigation until the criminal case was resolved. That turned out to be a mistake. The plaintiff then sued the university for sexual harassment, and the 11th Circuit held this year that the university could be liable because, by waiting to conduct an independent investigation until the criminal case was resolved, it had exhibited deliberate indifference to the alleged rape. "The court emphasized," Mr. Hutton told the college lawyers, "that the pending criminal trial . . . did not affect the university's ability to institute its own proceedings, and the criminal charges would not have prevented future attacks while the charges were pending."

To those who believe courts are over-reaching, the decision in Williams may seem absurd. But it actually recognizes a central fact of academia today: Large universities are basically cities unto themselves, with tens of thousands of students and employees. With responsibility for so many people, it can be foolish to rely on police and prosecutors for protection.

There's a downside to this reality: Student courts and disciplinary committees are not necessarily qualified to pass judgment on accused criminals. And civil courts (to take another example) have been more vigorous defenders of free speech than schools with speech codes. At the same time, many universities are much larger and more powerful than the polities they inhabit. Purdue University (one of the schools with over $1 billion) has more resources than the municipal bureaucracy of West Lafayette, Ind.

And it's a sign of how powerful higher education has become that schools are being asked to police themselves. At a panel called "Students with Criminal Backgrounds," the moderator asked how many of the 75 lawyers present came from schools that asked students on their applications if they had criminal records, and about a third of the audience raised its hands. Since universities are involved in certifying teachers and licensing nurses, academia must involve itself even in criminal investigation. In training the professionals who nurse us, teach us history and repair leaky heart valves, large universities have no choice but to consider themselves agents of the law.


What's more, universities are home to the people most likely to be at the frontiers of law, where Congress and the courts have yet to venture. Professors, increasingly working in concert with industries like biotech, are developing new technologies, and schools are thus tackling a host of novel legal questions. A knowledge of copyright law, several lawyers told me, has become the most important part of their job.

The most entertaining discussion I heard at the lawyers' convention centered on what to do about facebook.com and myspace.com--how to prevent slander, harassment and rumor-mongering on these online communities popular with undergrads. The room was evenly divided: Some lawyers recommended ignoring the students' Web sites unless something offensive was brought to administrators' attention, while others suggested taking aggressive action. "If you can't beat them, join them," said Debra Wood, a lawyer who is dean of students at Scripps College in California. "I've registered my name, so the students know that I'm there, watching, and I will call them in to discuss their conduct on facebook."

But despite all they have to worry about, including a regulatory state that makes their job more complicated all the time, this was the happiest bunch of lawyers I have ever met. Their caseload is varied and interesting: negotiating patent agreements for drugs their schools' scientists invent, obtaining post-9/11 visas for foreign students and scholars, defending against harassment claims.

And they are, it occurred to me, important guarantors of the academic ideal of freedom; they negotiate an increasingly complex modern world so that students and teachers don't have to. This protective shield does, of course, allow the sophomore to focus on facebook.com with a worrisome devotion, living in an extended adolescence. But it also allows the same singularity of purpose to the Sanskrit scholar, who, keeping her head in her books, leaving politics and legal matters to the school lawyers, may win the admiration of some of her students, facebook.com be damned.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My home page is here

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