A Local Lesson That Democrats Fail (Lib Richard Cohen: Don't Just Throw Money At Schools Alert)

The Washington Post ^ | 07/03/2007 | Richard Cohen

[goldstategop]

But not a one of them even whispered a word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child -- third-highest among big-city school systems -- and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about any category you can name. The only area in which the Washington school system is No. 1 is in money spent on administration. Chests should not swell with pride.

The litany of more and more when it comes to money often has little to do with what, in the military, are called facts on the ground: kids and parents. It does have a lot to do with teachers unions, which are strong supporters of the Democratic Party. Not a single candidate offered anything close to a call for real reform. Instead, a member of the audience could reasonably conclude that if only more money were allocated to these woe-is-me school systems, things would right themselves overnight.

[goldstategop]

You don't hear this often from a lib: we should stop throwing more money at public schools. Richard Cohen gets that right and calls for parental responsibility. Now if he really wanted to buck liberal orthodoxy, he should have endorsed school choice as well.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[California Patriot]

Good column by Cohen. Sometimes, the Rats’ arrogance and utter lack of solutions is clear even to “mainstream” liberal journalists.

[iowamark]

Every single American should question why we spend so incredibly much on government and into whose pockets that cash actually goes.

[driftless2]

"single American"

Most co-workers I talk to have no idea what goes on in public schools. Or even know that there's a huge problem. Some believe that the same things they were taught forty years ago are being taught today.

I mentioned some of the new-age, lib garbage being thrown at kids today, and one co-worker said he had no idea what was being taught. He didn't know what multiculturalism was or anything at all about a homosexual agenda. One other co-worker argued that public schools are better than private schools in educating kids. Of course both my co-workers are graduates of public schools. Even if both are sixty or near it and went to school when public schools actually did a decent job educating children.

[Zack Nguyen]

Democrats are utterly hopeless when it comes to education. Left to them schools will become more expensive, more dangerous and more incompetent.

Public education to them is an issue to be manipulated, not a problem to be solved. Our public schools are failing our children, and Democrats have nothing to say.

[JenB]

The government school system discourages parental responsibility in all forms. Everything is decided by the officials running the school. The parents put the kid on the bus and take him off and the clear message is that they shouldn’t get too involved with what happens in between. Look at the Massachusetts father who was arrested for asking that his 6 year old not be in class for the gay agenda lessons.

The government schools are the most socialist structure we have in the country. More socialist than welfare or medicare, since almost everyone in the country participates in the system.

[Zack Nguyen]

Everything is decided by the officials running the school.

The most important thing, the curriculum, is controlled indirectly but almost entirely by those who create the standardized test. In my experience the schools adopt this as mthe defacto curriculum, because their state rating is dependent on the collective score of the students. It is a poor state of affairs, and a test is a poor substitute for an education.

All this parents have little or nothing to do with so far as I see.

[JenB]

And that’s total garbage, I was homeschooled and we were required to take standardized tests in certain grades... we never studied for them or “taught to the test”, they were always so incredibly easy we just showed up, took them, and scored 99th percentile.

[Zack Nguyen]

Probably the tests are, or should be, easy. But I can tell you that the school were I taught as a substitute absolutely revolves around them, and a significant percentage do not pass all components the first time around.