August 18, 2007
ROVE'S GREATEST FAILURE (via Luciferous):
An Optimist in Newark (George F. Will June 7, 2007, Washington Post)
[Cory] Booker is an African American whose father was born to a single mother in North Carolina in 1936. By the time Booker was an adolescent in an affluent northern New Jersey community, both his parents were IBM executives. After being a high school football All-American, Booker earned degrees from Stanford, Oxford (he was a Rhodes scholar) and Yale Law School. In 2002 he ran against the incumbent mayor, Sharpe James, another urban boss in the fragrant tradition of some northern New Jersey cities. Booker almost won; James prudently decided not to run in 2006, when Booker won with 72 percent of the vote. [...]Fifty years ago Newark's population was 460,000. Now it is 284,000 -- up about 10,000 in five years -- of which 54 percent are black and 33 percent are Latino. In 1995 the state took over the school system, in which principalships were being sold and so much of schools' budgets went for the salaries of unionized teachers that some classrooms lacked even chalk.
Today, per-pupil spending tops $17,000, which is 75 percent above the national average and a (redundant) refutation of the public education lobby's not disinterested judgment that in primary and secondary education, cognitive outputs correlate with financial inputs. Seventy percent of Newark's 11th-graders flunk the state's math test. Booker says that under the previous mayor's administration, every elected official sent his or her children to private schools.
"I'm the Malcolm X of education -- 'By any means necessary,' " Booker promises. He says Newark should reverse the assumption that in education "time will be a constant, achievement will vary." If children are not succeeding, extend their school day, bring them in on Saturdays, extend the school year.
He also favors school choice, although he tiptoes around the word "vouchers," which inflames the more than 190,000 members of the state's teachers union. He advocates giving tax credits to companies for money contributed for scholarships to private as well as public schools. "Who," he has asked, "can object to a pool of money that will give poor children the same opportunities as middle-class kids?"
Mr. Booker and Harold Ford should both be Republicans by now. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2007 12:00 AM
Eu Contraire OJ,
Republicans should be Cory Bookers!!
Instead, they are trough-feeding, bribe-trolling, patronage-pigs, just like the democrats (only with less experience).
Note how both Gingrich and Thompson are starting to talk in less partisan terms, even telegraphing the coming attack on congressional Republicans.
When some one finally has the guts to take on the piggish teacher's unions full bore we will start to see real progress.
Until then, both parties are wholly (or partially) owned subsidiaries of the "new, new left," of which the teachers unions are the vangaurd.
It is my hope that Booker is the first black president, and I'll vote for him, Dem or Rep.
Posted by: Bruno at August 18, 2007 9:39 AMYes, the white middle class doesn't want black kids from Newark in their neighborhood schools.
Posted by: oj at August 18, 2007 12:06 PMIf there were decent schools in their neighborhoods, black kids from Newark would grow up, get a good job, buy a house in a middle class area (now not so white only) or they could buy up a lot of the slums, using their own dime, tear them down and build great looking urban housing, tempting those in the middle class districts back into town.
oj you've been living in an academic ghetto too long. There's nowhere as bigoted and anti-Semitic than academe. Most middle class neighborhoods aren't all white, but they are all middle class. See the difference.
Yes, middle class black families don't want them either.
Posted by: oj at August 18, 2007 4:11 PMWhy would anybody rational want them?
Posted by: Perry at August 19, 2007 10:54 AMNo one Rational would.
Posted by: oj at August 19, 2007 12:50 PM