Posted on 02/25/2004 5:27:34 AM PST by SJackson
"[Calling the NEA a 'terrorist organization' is] the most vile and disgusting form of hate speech, comparing those who teach America's children to terrorists." — Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.
Of course Rod Paige was wrong when he called America's most powerful teacher's union a "terrorist organization." Al Qaeda isn't nearly as bad at terrorism as the NEA is at educating our children.
Everyone agrees, including Secretary of Education Paige himself, that his flippant comment went too far. He apologized, the White House is pleased that he apologized, and the Democrats are thrilled to have yet another opportunity to prove they have sold out totally and utterly to Big Labor, particularly the teacher's unions. So everybody's happy.
Everyone, that is, except parents who care about children trapped in the wildly expensive, pathetically underachieving government-run school system. And why are these moms and dads trapped? Because of a political cell of heartless, vicious, ideologically-driven extremists who are willing to sacrifice the future of millions of American kids for the sake of their personal gain and ideological principles.
No, the NEA is not a "terrorist group." Not quite.
For example, nobody believes the NEA actually wants our kids dead. But they certainly don't care to see them educated, either. And parents who want the best education for their children don't go to bed each night in fear of the teacher's unions. But perhaps they should.
When Secretary Paige made his unfortunate remark he was meeting with a group of governors, all under pressure from teacher's unions back home to wiggle out of the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" act. According to the states' own testing, about 25% of public schools perform so poorly that no student should be forced to attend them. Keeping kids trapped in these schools almost assures they will either drop out, or flunk out, or receive an education so useless it will limit the economic opportunity of their entire lives.
What kind of heartless monsters would want to continue to force children into these failing, educational rat holes? That would be the NEA.
The teacher's unions are terrified of Bush education policies that might allow families to escape the worst-of-the-worst public schools. Why? Because that's where the worst-of-the-worst public school employees go to get their paychecks. Does the NEA care that these schools are so lousy they couldn't teach a University of Colorado football player how to get lucky in a Vegas bordello? Of course not.
In Washington, DC, the NEA is desperately trying to kill a voucher program that would rescue a handful of children from the worst performing, most dangerous schools in America. Is it because these vouchers take away money from an underfunded public school system? Only if you D.C.'s $12,000 per student is "underfunded."
Washington schools aren't underfunded. What they are, and have been for a generation, are cesspools of educational incompetence. And yet the NEA is screaming, yelling and suing to keep low-income black kids trapped inside those walls. The closer those children come to a quality education at a private academy or parochial school (for about half the cost, by the way), the more frenzied the teachers' unions become in their efforts to shove these children back down.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Tell her to try this ...
REQUIRE from our members, to EDUCATE the children, and save the country from a growing problem of uneducated generations.
To my knowledge, homeschooling is about 1-2% of the school age population, and I don't see it getting appreciably larger.
In reality, what people with intact families and any money at all used to do was move. First they moved out of the inner cities to the suburbs, and then from the inner suburbs way out to the "exurbs." Their exurban school districts have been largely pretty good, and many parents have been satisfied with them.
With No Child Left Behind, that is changing, because the quality of a district is *not* determined by the people who live there, who run the school district, or by the state, but is rather determined by the federal government. The federal government has for now defined about *half* the school districts in the entire country as "failing." In St. Louis, virtually *all* the St. Louis County (suburban) districts are now on the "watch list."
So it doesn't matter how far you move, anymore - as long as a district has an "identifiable sub-group" (either minority, or special education, or both), if that ISG doesn't get up to "proficient" standards, the district will be labelled "failing."
Just about every large exurban school district *will* have an ISG of special-ed students, and thus ultimately practically *every* district in the US will be considered "failing," if this nonsense continues.
People in the US by and large have shown themselves committed to public education - when they themselves have some control over it, especially in being able to buy a house in a good district.
Homeschooling has been one way for parents to control their children's education, but expecting everyone - especially parents who believe that a good public school education *is* best for their kids - to do it is unrealistic.
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