Posted on 02/15/2011 4:29:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Former first lady Barbara Bush said on Greta Van Susteren's "On the Record" this past week: "We've got a real problem in public schools. ... This is a national crisis. It's as bad as anything in our country."
When Van Susteren was pointing out from Bush's own op-ed piece that "Texas (is) 36th in the nation in high-school graduates (and) 3.8 million Texans don't have a high-school diploma," Bush said, "No more, you're killing us."
Bush was commendably protecting Texas pride as she told Van Susteren not to cite any further degrading statistics about the state of Lone Star education, though she herself references it in her op-ed piece:
--Texas ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.
--Texas ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
Such low verbal and literacy scores make it even more unbelievable that just this past week, some of the state's educational administrators joined the feds in seeking to mandate Arabic classes for Texas children. No joke!
The Arabic studies program -- funded by a five-year, $1.3 million Foreign Language Assistance Program federal grant -- was to begin this semester at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and then spread to neighboring schools in the Mansfield Independent School District.
Thank God for the parental passions and patriot fires of the almost 200 parents who showed up at a meeting last week to question the wisdom of school officials. They are fighting in their own personal education Alamo and presently have the upper hand. For the moment, the school district has backed off plans for its Arabic studies program.
With 14 percent of American adults (32 million) incapable of reading a newspaper or instructions on a prescription bottle, don't you think federal monies could be put to better use by helping Americans learn to read and write English?
I appreciate Bush's non-politically correct stance on the primacy of English in America, which she echoed to Van Susteren: "I'm against English as a second language. My great-grandmother came here as a German. She didn't have someone give her English as a second language. She learned it in three months. It's survival. And you see it in schools all around now where you're allowed to speak English only, and you sink or swim. And they swim, because they're immigrants from all different countries. I've seen a school in Boston where they asked me to read, and I said, 'Read? They all speak 80 different languages.' But in three months, they learned English."
What Bush and I (and others in this educational reform movement) are essentially calling all of us to do is fight in a local education Alamo! To square off and fight against all the negative forces that besiege our children and impede their proper education. You don't have to have kids to engage in this culture war; you only have to be concerned about their future -- America's future.
It is people like the 200 parents helping to overturn that Texas school district's decision to mandate classes on Arabic who are showing the way. They prove another point Bush made to Van Susteren: "I don't think government can do everything at all. Parents, grandparents, neighbors, churches, everybody ... we've got to get ourselves geared up and not be lazy parents and not be lazy neighbors, but we've got to help children."
The only way to get America and its educational system back on track is to take back the primary role of parenting from teachers and other societal guardians (including Big Brother government). That also includes our not expecting those who lead Sunday schools to be the primary spiritual teachers of our children, rather owning that area of their maturation, as well.
What U.S. educational reform entails is that we all find a place in the battle. It might mean that you join an influential group that makes decisions in your local schools or pressures those who do.
What I'm saying is this: Be proactive. Don't wait for first lady Michelle Obama to correct your children's school diet before you do something about it. Ensure that civic organizations in your area, including tea party groups and churches, are activists for your public schools. Call parishioners out of the pews and into school community outreach.
My wife, Gena, and I are fighting for the next generation, and our life mission is to take physical education up a notch in public schools by offering our KickStart Kids program. For years, we also have supported The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and we encourage you to do the same by going to its official website, at http://www.BarbaraBushFoundation.com.
It all comes down to one question every citizen in our country must answer: Are you spectating or fighting for America's children in your local education Alamo?
Simple cure:
1) No teachers union or cushy tenure. Pay for perform.
2) No assistance dollars for any household where a felon, illegal, juvenile delinquent or truant child lives.
Texas ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
At least they have something to be proud of.
Amen.
Also, the end of education degree credentialism. That’s where they get brainwashed in all sorts of idiocy, including whole word reading.
Not to nit pick, but it seems to me that our state has somewhat of an albatross around its neck when it comes to literacy and graduation rates, given the huge numbers of illegals occasionally attending our larger metropolitan school districts.
Same sorry state of ed in Nevada. Courts say we must educate children of illegal aliens.
How many of those failing english could pass the test in spanish?
Dismantle the public school system.
You are correct.
I think it needs to go much further.
Every time the government enacts some kind of reform, the situation just
gets worse. Get the Fed out of education.
Even state goverment is too much in my opinion.
Parents should be able to pick, choose, and define the education that their children will receive.
Probably not too many. Many immigrants are not very well educated in Spanish. They can read and write, but grammar and spelling are pretty weak. Children from Spanish-speaking families can be taught correct Spanish in Spanish class, if they think it’s useful.
One can’t blame the failure of native English speakers to use the language correctly on immigrants. Students are simply not being taught to read English effectively and write it correctly, as a deliberate policy of the “education” establishment.
It needs to go much farther.
Get the Fed out of education.
Even the state government influence should be drastically cut.
One major root of the problem is the influence that professors of education in the University system have.
Parents should be able to pick, choose, and define the education that their children receive.
I wasn't trying to blame as much as point out that perhaps the immigrants may be overwhelming the system so that the school systems can't keep up on the standardized tests. But I don't know the statistics in Texas so I posed the question.
Thank God for the parental passions and patriot fires of the almost 200 parents who showed up at a meeting last week to question the wisdom of school officials. They are fighting in their own personal education Alamo and presently have the upper hand. For the moment, the school district has backed off plans for its Arabic studies program.
Ah, I hadn't heard that. good to know.
Bless these parents for fighting the good fight.
Tell it to the unions, Babs.
Probably none of them. Very few kids from immigrant homes can actually read the language, and virtually none of them can write it. Children of immigrants only retain their family’s original language if they study it (for example, some well-off urban Chinese families send their kids to Chinese classes).
As for “bilingual classes,” which were supposed to give kids a reading and writing knowledge of two languages, these things were absolute trash. Most of the staff (a lot of it was taught by aides) were poorly educated in both languages, spoke miserable English and were nearly illiterate in Spanish/Chinese/Tagalog/[fill in the blank with the language of your choice]. Its sole purpose was to make money for school districts and employ otherwise unemployable, ignorant, foreign-born low-end educational workers. It left kids ignorant in two languages.
Maybe they’d have more success if they just stuck to teaching English. But they don’t seem to do that very well either.
It does seem like kids from any background would be well served to be immersed in english at school. They can always take foreign language classes in middle school and high school if desired like everyone else but there has to be a common language of learning.
Even the leaders of europe are declaring multiculturalism dead. I hope it doesn't take generations for our stupid "educational leaders" to get the point.
This assumes that they are not dumbing us down on purpose, which I'm not sure isn't the case anyway...
The decline in test scores has been going on for 30 years or more, across the board, in school systems rich and poor, urban and suburban, regardless of ethnic demographics. The schools have more money and more employees than ever, yet the failure persists because it is inherent in the system.
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