Education secretary says Forrester's the man

INJersey.com/Gannett State Bureau ^ | 9-27-02 | LILO H. STAINTON

[GraniteStateConservative]

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS -- U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige campaigned for Republican Senate candidate Doug Forrester at a library Thursday, calling for more federal funding for Garden State schools and including moral and ethical lessons in the classroom.

"Leadership matters," Paige said, echoing Forrester's campaign theme, that Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli is ethically unfit for the job. "It is awfully important we have people of very high moral standards. Ethical men and women."

[ladylib]

"Forrester also praised President Bush's education plan, underscoring the need for parents to have some choice among public schools. The Bush plan allows for children in low-performing schools to transfer to other public schools in the same district, but few have taken advantage of this provision, in part because good schools tend to be crowded."

President Bush's education plan is a farce. You can't tell me that the people behind this plan didn't realize that there were not enough good schools in a district for students to transfer to. This is just another school reform bill that is destined to fail, full of high-faluting language stating, for one thing, that 100% of students will be proficient in math and reading in 12 years -- as if a demand will make it so. Sorry, kids are individuals and there will be many who will not be proficient in very much, especially if theu can't leave failing public schools.

Just dump the bad public schools altogether and give parents the money to send their kids to good public schools, charters, private or parochial schools. Don't limit their choices to "some choice among PUBLIC schools." The plan is laughable.