Posted on 12/26/2015 4:58:56 AM PST by Kaslin
Can you name the most contentious issue in American politics?
Here's a hint. It's being fought at the federal, state and local levels. And it doesn't go away. The struggle is persistent, ongoing, unending.
Here is a second hint. The issue is not gay marriage, or gun control, or police brutality and or immigration. Those issues are either settled, largely settled, isolated or completely out of the control of local and state governments.
Here is a third hint. The issue divides Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. But it is especially divisive among Democrats and among people who call themselves "liberal."
Give up?
The most divisive issue in American politics is: What should we do about the education of children from low income families?
To appreciate how divisive the issue is among Democrats consider that Bernie Sanders can't talk for two minutes without bringing up the issue of inequality. But when it comes to allowing poor children to escape bad schools and go to better ones he is virtually silent. He opposes public money going to private schools and has little encouraging to say about public school choice. Yet the state he represents (Vermont) has the oldest and most extensive system of school choice found anywhere in the country.
Hillary Clinton's unwillingness to vigorously stand up for the kids is costing her big campaign contributions. Although she has supported student testing and charter schools in the past, her recent cozying up to the teachers unions is making wealthy school reform Democrats close their checkbooks to her presidential campaign.
To make matters more complex, parents are becoming more of a factor. In a recent election in Los Angeles pro-reform Latino parents managed to prevail against the teachers unions and white voters in affluent suburbs in what USA Today called "the priciest and most bitter school board race in history."
The Obama administration has been completely inconsistent. Under Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the administration tied state grants and waivers from onerous federal regulations to support for charter schools and the linking of teacher pay to student test scores. His replacement, John King, is a charter school co-founder who, as New York's education chief, pursued reforms designed to root out bad teachers.
Yet the administration's Justice Department fought a losing battle in court in an effort to stop Louisiana's new state-wide voucher program. And the administration joined with Nancy Pelosi and other congressional Democrats in an ongoing struggle to end Washington DC's Opportunity Scholarship Program. Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform explains the issue this way:
Democrats oppose this program not because it is failing but because it is succeeding. They fear that as these choice programs succeed, poor and minority moms and dads are going to figure out the Democrats are selling their kids out to the teachers unions.
To appreciate what's at stake, consider two Harlem schools that operate side by side in the same building: Wadleigh Secondary School (a public school) and Harlem West (a charter school). At both schools 95 percent of the students and black and Hispanic and most are from poverty level families. As one of the teachers describes it:
The students … eat in the same cafeteria, exercise in the same gym and enjoy recess in the same courtyard. They also live on the same blocks and face many of the same challenges.
Yet not one of the public school students met state standards in math (a typical question: What is 15% of 60?) or English, while the passing rates at the charter school were 96 and 75 percent, respectively. The city wide scores, by the way, were 35 and 30 percent, despite New York City average spending of $20,331 per pupil.
So, should there be more Harlem Wests and fewer Wadleighs?
Hard to believe, but that is currently the most contentious political issue in New York City and maybe in the whole of New York state.
Also hard to believe, the CNN panel asked not one question about the public schools in last Saturday's Democratic presidential debate.
Standards suck. Every nut and bolt should have its own thread dimensions.
“I’d first ask: What is the goal of education?”
A very good question, allow me to ask first, what is the DEFINITION of education? Personally I think education is about learning how to make a LIFE. If it is all about how to make a LIVING I call that job training rather than education. Much of modern “education” seems to fall into either how to make a living or political indoctrination. By my proposed definition (not original, I read it somewhere) there is very little education going on in the USA today. Young people seem to have little or no knowledge of history, civics, literature, geography etc. Amazingly most don’t even know the number of feet in a statute mile, maybe that is unimportant but it seems strange to someone like myself who learned that at such an early age I couldn’t even guess at when I learned it. I cannot forget that it is 5280 feet but most now seem never to have learned it.
Ask any recent college graduate how many square feet are in one acre and you will almost certainly get a blank look. Ask him if he knows how to calculate the number and you will get another blank look. Tell him to square 5280 and divide it by 640 and you will get a realy blank look unless his parents happen to be in the land surveying business.
Or one furlong times one chain :)
Sounds like an F150...no two alike.
No. You meet the standards or your funding is decreased.
43,560 sf in an acre! I did not google it either, I am a Realtor and we learn it in RE school. I remember it by using a hint, 7/11. I also serve on the Board of Equalization for the county property taxes. We do the price per sf in land value all the time.
Wish it were that simple.
Common Core is for Mind Control. (It destroys individualism and fosters “group think” (emotional control only).
As Fichte stated who is the Father of the Prussian system of mass education (programing attitudes and godless “faith”) along with other Germans-—you have to “destroy Free Will” (Kill God (Christianity/Free Will) in children (program them with operant conditioning— lies and misinformation) so that they will never be able to use Reason and be critical thinkers. Facts and Truth (God) will be meaningless.
Control the emotions of the masses-—and you can control the NWO with the useful idiots. Lenin knew this and is why he destroyed marriage laws to destroy the emotional formation of children-—to make them easily programmed by the State-—then Stalin reversed the easy divorce laws since it was going to collapse culture (by 1935-—it was creating such irrational, useless, unmanageable idiots). With the collapse of religion, addicts and unreliable people who can’t form lasting, solid relationships which destroys the moral formation of the children-—makes little drones—incapable of a Republic which requires a virtuous people (Founders).
The most irrational, evil concept used to destroy Free Will in children is teaching them to hate the opposite sex-—to be dysfunctional and desire the irrational (evil) and programing hate for males/females/self/God (Christianity). The promotion of Vice (sodomy) in a “Justice System” is what will ultimately collapse Reason and Virtue in children——make them like little tribal, irrational people who actually believe Good is Evil.
It throws out the concepts that made America and the Age of Reason and the ability to be critical thinkers —Natural Law Theory (Science/biology/Objective Truth (God)). Without Truth (God), you can have no unity and no individual Natural Rights from God.-—only from the State.
Homosexuality promotion is Malthusian and Marxism at its core—to destroy the Christian Worldview to collapse Classical Ecuation (Christianity/Stoicism/Excellence) for non-thinking interchangeable drones who are “Happy Slaves” of vices (irrational dummies) for the State/corporations-—happy with crumbs and being used.
No surprise that the gop doesn’t want to talk about charter schools. While they’ll grudgingly support minimal education reform when their backs are against the wall, both factions of the uniparty are complicit with the status quo.
The government schools need to be shut down. Anything less is nibbling around the edges.
Just curious. How can 93% of schools be below average?
When I say stuff like this to people I know, they look at me like I have three heads. But if even a cursory read of Marxist literature (Gramschi, Friere, etc.) reveals these to be their actual modus operandi.
My wife used to work at Target. They had a sale where everything was 10% off. the registers were supposed to calculate the 10% discount and the cashies were to key the discount in and get the total.
However the 10% calculation wasn’t working. And not one cashier could figure it out, even when they handed out calculators. They had to tell the customers they couldn’t get their promised discounts.
You can’t disband state government control of education. If CA wants to teach kids that they’ve originated from swamp ooze, who cares? As long as that crap isn’t taught in my state.
Haha - Mark Steyn explained it this week. She cuts 50% of schools in year 1; the next year, half of those are below average so they’re cut, and so on until only a few are left.
Even if she meant only one year, if a conservative had something so stupid, they’d be Palined.
” Begin the process of privatizing all education in this nation from pre-K through university graduate school. What is needed is complete separation of school and state.”
I certainly do not disagree with this. I think the key to this is not so much the separating of the school and state (which I do agree with), as the end-result requiring citizens to be actively responsible for themselves, their children, and to seek assistance from non-governmental entities when they need help.
This encourages independence from government, and the building of institutions of local relevance, including neighborhood relationships, as well as church and civic group relationships.
You make a good point, though. Our nation's citizens have been trained to look to the government for schooling services instead of their own personal resources or that of private charity.
The solution perhaps must be from both ends.
1) Reeducate our nation's parents to be more self sufficient with regard to education.
And..
2) Begin the process of privatizing all schooling.
In a generation or two the same arguments used here on Free Republic will be used by conservatives to suggest reforms for socialized medicine. They will fail to understand that the fundamental problem is socialism and statism.
Why not? At one time there was no government control of education on any level ( federal, state, or local) and our nation was far far far more literate than it is now.
It was **common** for ordinary and lowly sailors to read and perform Shakespere’s plays while at sea. While a sea, ships exchanged books with one another and there was an informal system of returning these books to **private** libraries. The weavers in the cotton mills pasted books in serial form that they cut from newspaepers to their looms and read book after book while working. These women also borrowed books for a minimal fee from private lending libraries.
The Federalist Papers were a massive literary hit.
The letters of Civil War soldiers are beautifully written.
Tocqueville wrote of the amazing literacy of the citizens of the U.S.....even the common farmer.
Solution: Begin the process of completely privatizing all schooling.
I thoroughly disagree. Local control is not socialist, but social contract — the way our founders envisioned everything: their just powers derived from the consent of the governed. So whether private or public, it is the social contract aspect that should prevail.
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