Posted on 12/06/2001 2:50:38 PM PST by Dr. Octagon
This sounds almost identical to the education proposal Alan Keyes made during the Republican Primary last year. I thought it was a good idea at that time (at least better than the alternatives), and I still do now. One nice effect is that it pretty much eliminates the need for "public schools," as the term is understood today.
But it would be nice if we could get back to the idea that parents ought to pay for their own kids' education without having to send the money through the government first. That obviously won't happen until public attitudes about that sort of thing change, and this would be a large step in that direction.
You're missing the point here - if the FEDERAL government nor the STATE governments had any control over matters concerning education - each local community could have whatever they wanted in their schools and "offended" feelings be damned. Once upon a time in this Nation, parents made decisions about where to live based on LOCAL options (like schools) because there was REAL choice between them. Now, with everything being top - down controlled, parents, and by extension, students, cannot escape the system with double paying (through taxes and then tuition) for their children's educations.
Remove the bureaucracy/government and a great many of the problems simply cease to exist.
make that WITHOUT double paying.....
[note to self: stop the fingers from getting ahead of the brain.....]
I'll assume you were attempting to be sarcastic.
The Theory of Evolution is the total opposite of Christian belief (creation). When Christian kids get this information from authority figures (teachers) it's confusing at best. One can prepare a child for it so they understand that it's an unproven theory that is now treated as a religion by the non-religious and put it in perspective. Many Christian parents do this and help their child separate science from spiritual belief.
Todays public schools are totally ACLU approved with secular humanism as the only 'religion' that's allowed. Man is All. A belief in God spoken in the classroom will usually bring derision and 'counseling' in some extreme cases. Meanwhile, the testing scores plummet and things such as American History (with strong religious ties running through it) are watered down and we get chapter after chapter about slavery and our mistreatment of the Indians. Sex education begins sooner and sooner while sexual activity begins earlier and earlier and now the homosexuals want to be front and center to push their agenda on children captive in the classroom. Our national academic standings in the world are a joke, but hey, we don't put up with any of that religious stuff. No siree! We're enlightened here, boy. Just look at our kids scores...well, never mind. Wait until next year.
Look, Christians have no problem with the hard sciences. I believe that most scientific discoveries point to a Creator anyway but my faith is not on what man does or says or discovers, but what God says in his Word.
I can co-exist with non-believers in an educational setting but the fact that my beliefs are not just dismissed but made out to be a form of heresy by the humanists running most public schools is something I totally disagree with and when it occurs, I criticize it and protest. Simple as that.
good observation. i had not looked at busing in that light before. i agree with you.
I fear that the only thing that MAY actually force a change would be a MASS boycott of the government run schools. Sadly, (from past experience) people, even if they are absolutly incensed over some problem, will not stand up and be counted because they are either afraid of repurcussions or unwilling to expend the energy. It was a wise man who once said that "When the government fears the people, there is freedom but, when the people fear the government, there is tyranny".
I don't care a witt who's in power, the Dems or the Repubs. Government has NO place in education nor in stealing everyone's money (at the point of a gun, if you will) to support their involvement.
I think not...from his speeches during the campaign:
"At last count, the federal government had 760 different education programs operating within 39 different agencies, boards and commissions. Each was launched as a step toward reform. But the actual results are usually a mystery, because no one measures them. The only thing we know for sure is that federal money comes with a lot of regulations and paperwork. By one estimate, this consumes about 50 million hours each year – the equivalent of 25,000 full-time employees just to process forms.
The problem here is that failure never turns to wisdom. New layers of federal mandates and procedures have been added to the old, until their original purpose is long forgotten. It is a sad story. High hopes, low achievement. Grand plans, unmet goals.
My administration will do things differently.
We do not have a national school board, and do not need one. A president is not a federal principal, and I will not be one.
The federal government must be humble enough to stay out of the day-to-day operation of local schools, wise enough to give states and school districts more authority and freedom, and strong enough to require proven performance in return. When we spend federal money, we want results – especially when it comes to disadvantaged children.
Today, I want to outline three reforms to help ensure that no child is left behind:
We will start by funding only what works in education – only those methods and ideas that prove their power to close the achievement gap. We need good, reliable, scientific information on the best methods of teaching. What the federal government sponsors, however, is often sloppy and trendy, focusing on self-esteem over basic skills. My administration will require every federal program – in teacher training, curriculum research, school safety – to prove results. If it can’t, we will shift that money into a program that is using it wisely. No federal education program will be reauthorized merely because it has existed for years. It is more important to do good than to feel good.
"Education bills are often rituals of symbolic spending without real accountability – like pumping gas into a flooded engine. For decades, fashionable ideas have been turned into programs, with little knowledge of their benefits for students and teachers. And even the obvious failures seldom disappear.
This is a perfect example of government that is big – and weak. Of government that is grasping – and impotent.
Let me share an example. The Department of Education recently streamlined the grant application process for states. The old procedure involved 487 different steps, taking an average of 26 weeks. So, a few years ago, the best minds of the administration got together and "reinvented" the grant process. Now it takes a mere 216 steps, and the wait is 20 weeks.
If this is reinventing government, it makes you wonder how this administration was ever skilled enough and efficient enough to create the Internet. I don’t want to tinker with the machinery of the federal role in education. I want to redefine that role entirely.
I strongly believe in local control of schools and curriculum. I have consistently placed my faith in states and schools and parents and teachers – and that faith, in Texas, has been rewarded.
First, I will fundamentally change the relationship of the states and federal government in education. Now we have a system of excessive regulation and no standards. In my administration, we will have minimal regulation and high standards.
As president, I will begin by taking most of the 60 different categories of federal education grants and paring them down to five: improving achievement among disadvantaged children; promoting fluency in English; training and recruiting teachers; encouraging character and school safety; and promoting innovation and parental choice. Within these divisions, states will have maximum flexibility to determine their priorities.
They will only be asked to certify that their funds are being used for the specific purposes intended – and the federal red tape ends there.
This will spread authority to levels of government that people can touch. And it will reduce paperwork – allowing schools to spend less on filing forms and more on what matters: teachers’ salaries and children themselves.
In return, we will ask that every state have a real accountability system – meaning that they test every child, every year, in grades three through eight, on the basics of reading and math; broadly disclose those results by school, including on the Internet; and have clear consequences for success and failure. States will pick their own tests, and the federal government will share the costs of administering them.
States can choose tests off-the-shelf, like Arizona; adapt tests like California; or contract for new tests like Texas. Over time, if a state’s results are improving, it will be rewarded with extra money – a total of $500 million in awards over five years. If scores are stagnant or dropping, the administrative portion of their federal funding – about 5 percent – will be diverted to a fund for charter schools.
We will praise and reward success – and shine a spotlight of shame on failure.
What I am proposing today is a fresh start for the federal role in education. A pact of principle. Freedom in exchange for achievement. Latitude in return for results. Local control with one national goal: excellence for every child.
I am opposed to national tests, written by the federal government. If Washington can control the content of tests, it can dictate the content of state curricula – a role our central government should not play.
Not sure if the links still work, they were from the GWB campaign website, I just had them on file from the campaign, but if you plug the titles into a search engine, I am sure you can find copies on the www.
*Homeschool_list bump...
(Free Republic Bump List Register)
The right to a school that will leave my child feeling good about himself without him learning anything substantive.
The right to a school that will teach him that homosexuality is equivalent to heterosexuality at as early an age as possible.
The right to a school that will ban all religious teaching except for belligerent religions like Islam.
The right to a school that will have the school psychologist recommend depressant drugs for my child.
The right to a school that will refer my daughter for an abortion without my knowledge.
The right to a school that will teach my child how to use a condom.
The right to a school that will teach my children that we live in an oppressive patriarchal society that does not recognize the contributions of women and minorities.
The right to a school that will have computers and access to the pornography superhighway.
The right to a school that will teach children to reject their parents' beliefs.
In many ways I think that President Bush is a good man. This does not, however, mean that I think he has a CLUE about the founding ideals of our Nation. He seeks to correct problems by doing the very thing that is guaranteed to worsen them - more federal control and involvement. Before Reagan was elected, one of the things he promised to do was to abolish the federal department of education. Of couse, with the other issues he was dealing with, this simply fell by the wayside and never came to fruitition. Typically, the Republicans have, at least, paid lip-service to the ideals of smaller, constitutional government. Now, they are not very far removed (if at all) from the Democratic Party and their socialistic ideas. Expanding the size and scope of ANY federal oversight agency is certain to only bring about further problems and more layers of costly, ineffective government bureaucracy.
For every single school program that has been put into place, actual knowledge of the students has dropped. Some would say that this is being done deliberatly to effect a change of our way of thinking and way of life. I'm not so certain that this is the entire case. I honestly (may, naively) believe that most of this has been done by misguided people who did not see down the road to what havoc their programs would wreck on our society and then attempted to make corrections and only made things worse.
It's past time to rid the entire Country of this particular bureaucracy and the power elite who control it. For information on how best to accomplish this, see Seperation of School and State Alliance
GEEZ!! Looks like you got your Bill of Rights passed right through all the necessary places --- This garbage is taking place in every single state in the union and, yet, most of the parents don't have a CLUE!
Sure, yeah right....guess this is why the ESEA got re-authorized with no qualms and why the Workforce Investment Act got pushed through. Now we don't even have to worry about little Johnny and little Susie feeling good about themselves, we just have to worry about whether they will be good little worker bees and pay their taxes on time or not.
Such drones are the goal of totalitarianism.
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