Wednesday, January 24, 2007

A RATIONAL THINKER WOULD STOP FUNDING SOMETHING THAT IS NOT WORKING

But failure earns MORE money in State education. Comment from Minnesota below says it's not just devotion to government education as a sacred cow:

Gov. Pawlenty, sounding at least as obedient as any other governor of either party to the powers of government education, called for even more money to be spent on schools during his State of the State address. Year after year, more and more money is spent on a system that clearly is failing.

I have never heard a governor stand up before a large crowd and say, "Well, thank goodness our education system is working'' or "Let's have a big hand for the schools and the great job they are doing cranking out so many cracker jack kids.'' No, every year it is the same begging and pandering. In this state, if not every state, it is merely orthodoxy to believe that as much money as possible should get shoveled into the government schools. And, unbelievably enough, this is because the schools are failing.

I used to worry about this, the amount of money we spend on education. But I have stopped worrying about it. I can't do anything about it. And, to be perfectly clear, I am not a teacher basher. Most teachers love what they do, do it well and don't complain. They know, deep down, what they are up against. I can still be an administration basher, but that's a different story.

I have arrived at an entirely new theory that takes teachers off the hook. Actually, my theory takes everybody off the hook: teachers, politicians, taxpayers. Maybe human beings are just dumber than they used to be. Yes, I'll say it. Maybe we spend as much money as we do on education because we are trying to coax acceptable results out of stupid people. We even expect them to go to college! There. I said it. Stupidity could very well be the problem.

This never gets looked at. I don't know, maybe it is the modern diet, or the radio waves in the air from so many cell phones or the fertilizers they use on golf courses. I don't know where to begin to search for the root cause of so much stupidity, but I bet if you would be honest with yourself you would agree that stupidity is a problem. To this day I can still make myself amazed that a couple of years ago two kids, about 15, asked me for my hockey tickets. They were in Rice Park. I was walking to the game. For some reason I decided to quiz them. "If you tell me where Edmonton is, you can have the tickets,'' I said.

They could not. I know, it's not that big of a deal. But come on, we're spending billions of dollars on education. It's not just kids in school who might be a touch off their game. We have been sending more and more stupid people out into society. This point was driven home last week with absolute clarity. A 28-year-old mother of three children died, horribly, from water intoxication during a Sacramento, Calif., morning radio show stunt. The wacky morning radio crew on some station out there had a contest to see who could drink the most water without going to the bathroom. The winner would receive a Wii video game console.

The woman drank so much water she died. She even talked to the radio hosts on the air, complaining that she didn't feel well and the people on the air were so stupid they didn't realize the harm that was being done to the woman. And, of course, the woman must be held accountable as well.

I realize you don't have to go all the way to California to find examples of stupidity, but that one was so glaring it stood out. You don't have to go far at all to find examples of stupidity, and I'm not going to get into a contest with myself pointing out the local examples. Sometimes, when I find myself in deep thought about the newspaper business, I know with certainty that we will never go out of fashion. We might change our appearance. We might experience tough financial times. But we will never go out of fashion because much of what we do is chronicle stupidity.

That's why I was not alarmed when Pawlenty called for more money for the schools. Probably, we all know that stupidity is a problem that cannot be solved by throwing more money at it. And, as though to prove myself correct, that's what we do because we are so stupid. We spend more money.

Source





THE NYC MESS THAT NYC LIBERALISM WILL PERPETUATE FOREVER

RINO Bloomberg just talks and even a tough GOP guy like Mayor Giuliani could do little about it. No "compassion" for the many thousands of poorly educated kids that come out of the system, though. But liberal compassion never was more than a pose. "Must not fire unionists" -- no matter how useless they are -- is a much bigger priority

A flawed tenure system that grants teachers almost automatic lifetime protection - whether deserved or not - has allowed hundreds of terrible teachers to keep working throughout the city. Principals are supposed to decide on whether to grant tenure after a teacher's three-year probationary period, but this is mostly a rubber-stamp process. Right now, 99 percent of teachers receive tenure after their third year. And once a teacher gets tenure, it's tough to get rid of him.

In 2005-06, 981 teachers received unsatisfactory, or U, ratings during their annual reviews from their principals, 662 of them tenured. For 124 of the tenured teachers, it was their second consecutive U, and for 170, it was their second in five years. Yet, of the 187 tenured and nontenured teachers with two U ratings in five years, 145 are still working. "It's incredibly difficult to get rid of bad teachers," said the principal of a Bronx elementary school. "I had a teacher who fell asleep in a kindergarten class. She was lazy, she was incompetent, but she's still teaching somewhere."

The number of teachers deemed unsatisfactory is artificially low in the first place, with only 1.2 percent getting the U tag. That's because principals often use the detrimental score as a bargaining chip to force bad teachers to transfer out of their schools. "If you give a teacher a U, it's hard to get them out of your school," said one Manhattan middle-school principal. "So you offer them a satisfactory rating if they'll leave. It happens all the time."

It's not just low-performing teachers with U ratings - which can be appealed - who escape termination. It's also teachers facing serious accusations. Special Commissioner for Investigation Richard Condon investigates cases of misconduct by Department of Education employees. In 2006, his office recommended that 121 employees - mostly teachers - be fired. So far, only 41 have gotten the boot. In 2005, only 78 of the 124 employees recommended for firing were axed. In 2004, 48 of 78 were fired, and in 2003, only 39 of 113.

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"


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