Free Republic

Here is the education story from Wisconsin this week that really matters: only 39% of eighth graders in the public schools are proficient in math, and only 34% in reading, despite a 65% increase in per-pupil spending over the past decade. While the attention of the nation is focused on what Wisconsin teachers earn, the question of what they do to earn it has been largely ignored. What they do not do is educate our children. The public education system is operated under the work rules that have been collectively bargained; that is reason enough to end collective bargaining privileges....

As I've said before, kids don't surf the Heritage Foundation website, they don't listen to Beck or Hannity, and they don't watch Fox News. They listen to rap and "death metal", watch movies and reality TV, play video games and daydream they're LeBron James. If they get any "news" at all (and I seriously doubt the kid who calls Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker 'that dude' is a news consumer), it comes from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Pop culture is the way we're going to have to reach them. We've got to deliver our message in an envelope they'll actually...