January 19, 2005
THEY'RE WELCOME TO AN ACCOUNT, JUST NOT MY KID'S SCHOOL:
Apply 'ownership society' to government schools (Terence Jeffrey, January 19, 2005, Townhall)
President Bush has become, quite rightly, an evangelist for the virtues of private property, speaking about an "ownership society" just about everywhere he goes. Just about everywhere, that is, except when he visits a government-owned school.
Then he is a big-government man.Consider back-to-back speeches the president gave last week. On Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C., he promoted his excellent plan to create personally owned retirement accounts as a part of Social Security reform. The next day, at a public high school in suburban Virginia, he proposed new spending programs for the Department of Education's No Child Left Behind Act.
"I love promoting ownership in America," Bush said in his Social Security speech. "I like the idea of encouraging more people to say 'I own my own home,' 'I own my own business,' 'I own and manage my health accounts,' and now 'I own a significant part of my retirement account.' Promoting ownership in America makes sense to me, to make sure people continue to have a vital stake in the future of our country."
But the next day at J.E.B. Stuart High School, the president did not say anything about encouraging parents to "own" their children's education. [...]
[T]he No Child Left Behind Act...included only a tiny, mocking gesture to school choice: parents of children in persistently failing government-owned schools would be allowed to send their children to other government-owned schools.
The reality is that the President could barely get even public vouchers through, both because Democrats in the Senate would filbuster private and because Republican legislators and their white suburban constituents don't particularly support them. A federal system of private vouchers will only come when blacks force Democrats to forsake the teachers' unions and support them or else switch to the GOP over the issue.
MORE:
Majority backs plan to improve La. schools (WILL SENTELL, 1/11/05, The Advocate)
A solid majority of voters back Louisiana's latest bid to improve public schools, and support from black voters has risen in the past year, a poll shows.Posted by Orrin Judd at January 19, 2005 9:33 AMThe drive for better schools -- known as accountability -- appears to enjoy more support from black voters in part because most back Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and she backs the push, said pollster Edward Renwick of New Orleans, who did the survey.
However, a majority of voters remain opposed to using state tax dollars to pay tuition at private schools through vouchers for students in failing schools.
Vouchers have been pushed by some as a way to improve education. The idea is backed by 41 percent of voters and opposed by 52 percent, while 7 percent expressed no opinion.
The results are from a statewide telephone poll done for The Advocate. The survey was taken Dec. 1-11, included 750 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.6 percent.
So, Blanco's tacking Right, is she?
How's that going to sit w/Landrieu? After voting against vouchers?
Posted by: Sandy P at January 19, 2005 10:44 AMImprove schools??
Everything needed to teach kids is known. There's no mystery.
It begins with the requirement that the kids sit in their seats, face front and keep quiet. The next step is learning how to be polite to their classmates and their teachers. Only after a quiet respectful atmosphere is established can anything other than chaos take place. Those who haven't been in a classroom lately would be astonished at the pandemonium.
When I retired a couple of years ago, I volunteered as a classroom aide. When I walked into the third grade classroom in an affluent middle sized Florida city, I was stunned.
The room looked like there had been an emergency evacuation. Chairs and tables overturned, books and papers littered the floor and yet there was the teacher sitting on a student desk chatting with some kids while other kids were walking around pushing and shoving each other.
When she saw me, she said, oh I'll be right with you. Half hour later, she noticed me again and said she had nothing planned for me, so just come back tomorrow!!! Her casual rudeness was astonishing.
The teachers' unions have the public schools in their vise like grip and ed biz bureaucracy has reached epic proportions. More money, more aides, more meetings, conferences, smaller classrooms, etc. The schools are totally out of control and the only way to "improve" them is for schools to be returned to local control and that'll happen just before the moon turns blue.
Concerned parents are sending their kids to private schools or home schooling.