Posted on 09/11/2010 2:31:45 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Those who think manufacturing is dying in Connecticut need only look to state government to realize how well doorstop production is doing. For example, agency heads are busily compiling a report for the next governor on ways to reduce state spending by 15 percent. Why this wasn't done years ago so it might have saved taxpayers bundles and mitigated today's record fiscal crisis is a topic for another day. But the next governor won't be bound by these recommendations and may not be even mildly interested in what the vested interests have to say since they eagerly participated the spending spree that produced the crisis. However, once issued, the report should make a sturdy doorstop for a Capitol office.
Another doorstop-in-waiting is the much-anticipated report of the Commission on Educational Achievement, which Gov. M. Jodi Rell created in March to find ways to close the public schools' rich-vs.-poor achievement gap. The issue has produced a good number of doorstops, but Gov. Rell impaneled the commission to give the appearance of "doing something."
Now it's probably a coincidence the commission shares the same acronym as the state's largest teachers union. But based on its recent news conference, its report due out Oct. 20 will read as if it was written by the Connecticut Education Association, even though most commissioners are businessmen.
Rather than promote free-market strategies, the commission has focused on attracting better "educators," offering better training and support for teachers, assisting struggling schools, "reallocating educational resources" and introducing government-run universal preschool. That last option would be wildly expensive, muscle out private preschools in favor of unionized government institutions, and turn 3- and 4-year-olds over to the same education monopoly that already is failing students 5 and older.
But missing from its presentation were two words: mother and father. It was as if they aren't part of the problem or the solution.
This year, the Department of Social Services will spend $5.1 billion on budget and many hundreds of millions off budget. Some money will help residents who are truly down on their luck, but the vast majority will subsidize the cultural rot that puts so many children of low-income, single-parent families behind the academic eight ball. The Department of Education will spend $2.7 billion, mostly on aid to municipalities under a formula heavily weighted toward poverty centers. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will spend upward of 60 percent of their budgets, and many tens of billion in all, on education with disproportionate sums on educational resources already reallocated to help the lowest-performing students.
Over the years, taxpayers have coughed up countless billions to deal with the symptoms, rather than the causes, of the achievement gap; not surprisingly, all this money bought the widest achievement and income gaps in America. And these gaps will continue to grow as long as government continues to subsidize the very cultural and social behaviors that cause them.
In reality, the best the state can hope for is to deliver what the state Constitution requires: "a substantially equal educational opportunity." What students do with that opportunity is entirely up to them and their parents.
Momma’s in the hore house
Daddy’s in the jail
Sister’s on the corner
Public Education is about defying and undermining parents.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this ping list, let me know.
Although this article is primarily about Connecticut, just substitute your own state’s name and it will most likely fit.
Last line of the article wins. Thanks for the ping Graybeard.
And without de-unionizing “teachers”
“Although this article is primarily about Connecticut, just substitute your own state’s name and it will most likely fit.”
...it fits in North Carolina where a huge feral underclass reproduces every 16 years or so...and guess what?...the Dems are registering them as soon as they are able, and driving them to the polls like cattle...that’s what ‘community organizing’ is all about.
And that's a profound explanation of what's really happening and what kind of person we have as a president.
and has been since the 40’s....it’s all about control of the people’s minds..... beginning with their first school year.... it has taken about 70 years (a full generation), but we are reaping the fruit now in abundance, i.e.,the election of an abomination in a free country.
Government education is a dinosaur. They are still doing things the way they have been done for about 100 years. There is no incentive to change or improve, so there will be no progress until we have separation of education and state.
And so many complain that kids in inner-city schools don’t get a quality education. They complain that the schools don’t have enough “resources”. They complain that the teachers aren’t teaching their children properly. They don’t put any blame on parents. They normally blame teachers and school officials.
In the case of minorities, they sometimes complain of racism. Yet in most of the schools in question, the teachers are black, the principals are black, and the boards of education are black people. Yet somehow all of these black people are cheating the black students out of a quality education.
True. My wife is a “highly qualified” teacher— 15 years teaching, a Master’s degree, and National Board Certification. She has kids whose parents simply won’t make their kids do anything. She has one right now. Tells the kid to do something, and the kid crosses her arms and stares into space. Mom won’t discipline the girl, or make her do homework. My wife’s hands are tied.
And there are many others whose parents don’t make them do anything at home, either. And they stay up ‘til 11 o’clock every night— 4th graders. She’s regularly waking up kids who have nodded off.
So your wife is a warden. I do pray that she’ll find the means and opportunity to become an educator, in a private setting, before becoming totally embittered.
No, she’s not a warden. She’s a teacher who loves her job. She’s never been called to teach in a private school setting— wouldn’t reach a tenth of the troubled kids she does now.
Ah, but as long as truancy laws confine people within this "gated community" against their will, they are prisoners, and she is one of the screws. One of their jailers. I'm glad to hear that she's a good jailer who actually cares for the inmates.
Idiotic title and its premise...
When I had a kid, it was Mama’s in jail, Daddy’s breathing down your neck. I had a pretty good relationship with the teachers, and they were happy for it.
Public education is a reflection of the community.
Privatize education and you still have the same kids, the same parents and probably similar administration.
Investigate some private/parochial schools and see if they don’t have drug, sex, and all other kinds of social problems just like public schools do.
No, public education is a reflection of The State, our would-be lords and masters. Secular humanism requires a continuous feedstock of new young "skulls full of mush," to be processed into democratic voters and unbelievers in the faith of their parents.
Oh please. Public Education with federalized standards and pushing porn and condoms on kids does not reflect the community, it hates the community and its values that it seeks to destroy.
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