Time for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, November 27, 2001 | Linda Bowles

[JohnHuang2]

Quote of the Day by Alberta's Child

[Fraulein]

Ping!

[.45MAN]

"Someone really is after us ... [the NEA and its affiliates] have been singled out because of our political power and effectiveness at all levels – because we have the ability to help implement the type of liberal social and economic agenda that [they] find unacceptable."

And we should be.... These people have systematically brought the education system in the country to it's knees.

In the past election the NRA was attacked for being part of the power that elected Bush.. It's time we attack the NEA for the dumbing down of American children. They have been in the background for many years undermining the education system in this country. A small group of leaders in the NEA control the large masses of incompetent members to vote the agenda they dictate.

[StDonTheBaptist]

bump

[GailA]

68 of Memphis schools are under threat of State take over, as if that would help them, considering the State can't even bungle it's way out of a fiscal crisis of their own making or fix that FLOP TennCare that is the second largest blackhole of Tax $$$$. Top Memphis business man and State School Board Member Avron Fogelman wants to DUMB down the standards EVEN MORE: Click Here

[ikanakattara]

This entire story is b.s. If you want to get really *meaningful* data on student performance, you have to separate schools out by demographics and geography. Inner city schools with largely minority student populations are doing terribly, and continue to do terribly no matter how much money you throw at them. Suburban school districts NOT under court-ordered integration plans do very well. If you look at middle or upper middle class suburban districts that ARE under court-ordered integration, and *separate out* the scores for the transfer students, you see that in general the non-transfer students score well.

This is the dirty little secret BOTH the left and right try to cover up. The leftists want to cover it up because worse *average* performance means more money for their programs. The right wants to cover it up because it undermines their agenda of privatization of the public schools (*including* the good suburban districts!)

You can do the same thing with test scores for *non-English speaking* immigrants. Of COURSE school districts like Los Angeles are going to have terrible performance on tests - the vast majority of their students can't speak or read English because of illegal immigration! In my state of Missouri, we have entire rural school districts that have been swamped with enormous numbers of Mexican immigrant children who can't speak a word of English, and yet they have to sit in the same classrooms and take the same tests as everyone else.

There are many problems with public schooling, but public schools are NOT responsible for: failure to enforce immigration laws; 14-year old crackhead mothers who abuse their babies to the point the kids are mentally disabled; parents who ignore their kids entirely, don't read to them, don't teach them proper English, etc. These "lower test scores" are showing the demographic cracks in American society, not an overall "failure" of public education.

[Taxman]

Well done, John. Linda Bowles article is timely and right on the money.

Ms. Bowles comments that "Only an informed and outraged people can change this."

Our job is to "inform and engender outrage in the American public" about the issues important to Taking America Back!

If we are successful in our campaign to "inform and outrage America," we can, most assuredly, Take America Back!

But we have much work ahead of us. Keep up the good fight, my man. We are with you.

[Cowgirl]

The public school kids in my Sunday school class are not learning to read well at all. I live in a very small town in mid-America. The methods used to teach reading in public school are wrong. Many people such as Samuel Blumenfield have pointed this out for years to no avail. Also, the behavior problems in public schools are evident throughout the country. The suburban schools may not be as bad as inner-city but they are not good schools.

[LaBradford22]

"There are many problems with public schooling, but public schools are NOT responsible for: failure to enforce immigration laws; 14-year old crackhead mothers who abuse their babies to the point the kids are mentally disabled; parents who ignore their kids entirely, don't read to them, don't teach them proper English, etc. These "lower test scores" are showing the demographic cracks in American society, not an overall "failure" of public education."

So, what you're advocating is tougher immigration laws, fewer teenage mothers, stronger families, and better parenting. All good ideas. Unfortunately, the Left has historically opposed these ideas as well.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Here’s some links to some education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel Blumenfeld

NEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda Harvey

Why Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas Sowell

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: 2/21/01
Author: John Leo

Free Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: Various

Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}

New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. Wild

Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

From the Littleton Crisis to Government Control link

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health link

[defeat_the_dem_igods]

A small group of leaders in the NEA control the large masses of incompetent members to vote the agenda they dictate.

ditto, for the American Red Cross, the United Way, and on and on...

these organizations exist, in large part, for a perpetuation of good (and sometimes exorbitant) paying jobs, for people who would find it difficult to make a living in the private sector. But then, I'm preaching to the choir.

[LarryLied]

public schools are NOT responsible for: failure to enforce immigration laws; 14-year old crackhead mothers who abuse their babies to the point the kids are mentally disabled; parents who ignore their kids entirely, don't read to them, don't teach them proper English, etc. These "lower test scores" are showing the demographic cracks in American society, not an overall "failure" of public education.

The vast majority of government teachers have endorsed every tax raising, family hating, homosexual loving, immigration encouraging, criminal coddling Democrat who has run for public office for as long as I can remember.

One quarter to one third of the delegates to the DNC nominating conventions are government teachers. The NEA spends over $70 million a year (against IRS code) supporting liberals.

Government teachers are not only responsible for wrecking public schools, they are responsible for many of the social pathologies outside our schools.

[LibertarianLiz]

The overall results included scores from private schools, the three largest of which are religious schools: Catholic, Lutheran and Conservative Christian. Whites, blacks and Hispanics in these schools did significantly better at all educational stages than did their counterparts in government schools.

Minority students to not have to remain at the bottom of the pool of students. I have said time and again that a large portion of the problem with education in this country today is corrupted curriculum.

We need to go back to basics (you know, evil rote learning) and jettison the social agenda stuff that takes away valuable time in the classroom. Add teacher testing and merit pay for teachers who perform well (i.e. their students learn something) and putting educational dollars on the backs of students to go to whatever school they choose; and, we might make a dent in this problem.

However, none of this will happen because education (like just about everything else in this country) has been so politicized that it can't be touched.

[biblewonk]

These failures of our public education system are great. They show parents who actually care about their kids, a rarity these days I think, what they need to do.

[LibertarianLiz]

California came in dead last among the states.

This is really pathetic. California came in behind Mississippi and Alabama and Arkansas? What a wonderful legacy for Gray Davis.

[1 FELLOW FREEPER]

N E A is public enemy # 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[1 FELLOW FREEPER]

Homosexual Lobby is public enemy #2(joined at the rib with public enemy #1)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Education union leaders are open about their mission to get more money for teachers and protect them from the consequences of incompetence as individuals and from accountability as a profession. As one union leader boasted, "as for the kids, they don't pay dues."

EXACTLY! They are the number one political force behind LIBERALS (just behind trial lawyers).

NEA To Support Non-Testing Measures, gay education, partnership with AFT -- The union has long warned against an overreliance on standardized tests, though Bush wants the test results to determine how much federal funding schools should get. The measure directs the NEA's lobbyists to fight for federal laws that allow parents to opt out of tests. It doesn't require delegations to lobby for state laws but promises union support for those who do.

TEACHERS BACK DNC WITH MONEY, MUSCLE [Excerpt]--In Iowa, New Hampshire, and other key primary states, teachers knocked on doors, staffed telephone banks, and helped get out the vote for Gore. In New York, members of the United Federation of Teachers helped distribute more than one million fliers for Gore in one day. In Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Teachers Association contacted each of its 90,000 members three times by phone and by mail, urging them to vote for Gore over Bradley………….

The teachers and their unions have long been a force in American politics. From 1991 to 1999, for example, contributions to the Democratic Party from the NEA, AFT, and the Service Employees International Union, which includes some education workers, totaled $6.7 million, making teachers by far the party's biggest donor bloc, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. The largest single contributor to Democrats - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - gave $3.7 million in that period……..[End Excerpt]

[LarryLied]

80 and 100 years ago when we had massive waves of immigration, schools faced the same problems they do today. parents didn't speak English, parents were working like dogs to survive, kids were on their own, disease was rampart, poverty was the norm...yet our public schools worked. Better than today.Teachers whine about parents and kids now. Imagine what it was like in 1912.

I don't know what government teachers think. We pay them to do a job and all we hear is bitching. If they don't like the pay, if they don't like the kids, if they don't like the parents, they should go do something else. A member of any other occupation who blamed the customer for their failure would be out of business in a week.