GraniteGrok

Most peoples' reactions to the word "teacher" is the kindly school marm (apologies to the other gender) smiling broadly at her little charges, apple on the desk (at least, that's my reaction).  For the individual teacher, for the most part, it works.

However, teachers unions, it's a different story.  No longer is it an individual face that a parent interacts with during parent - teacher conferences.  Now, it is one of the largest unions in the country and they do like to throw their weight around.  Perhaps others in town may not know, but the overall budget of the NEA is $345 million dollars.  Of that amount, the national organization will spend up to 1/3 of that on political stuff (e.g., ballot initiatives, media, et al).  The average compensation per NEA employee is around $196, 000 for over 560 people - not bad for "it's for the children".  And your tax money is the fuel for this salary structure.

What sparked this post?  Well, I've been kinda busy with lots of stuff and I've been adding to a stack of papers for a while; now that I'm on vacation, I'm trying to get caught up (yes, I am that bad / obsessed - but TMEW is quite kind and since the weather didn't cooperate, we bagged the trip to the beach.  Instead, we got TMEW an HD-DVR).

More...

One of the items in the stack was from my local paper, the Laconia Citizen from a couple of weeks ago (Citizen, 7/17/08) concerning the Laconia School District:

Schedule spurs dispute with LEA
Article Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008

As students prepare for this fall's implementation of a new block scheduling program at Laconia High School, the district's teachers union is urging the state Labor Board to squash the plan until school district negotiators are willing to bargain over the changes proposed in it.

"We wrote to them three times in three separate letters from mid-February through the end of March (asking them) to bargain with us ... they refused to do it," said Dick Coggon, a consultant to the Laconia Education Association and the union's co-grievance chair.

Continue reading "Professional or just a union worker?" »

Posted by Skip at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have one of these up here, Prof Leo Sandy at Plymouth State who is about on the same par as these folks.  Paid with our tax dollars, his site gleefully flies the UN flag and he absolutely advocates for a one world government.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you (thank, tenure!).  And no, I'm not linking him.

Anyways, here's more of that same rogue gallery.

Transnational' Profs Forego Patriotism   [Candace de Russy]

Via Roger Kimball:

• The philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns that “patriotic pride” is “morally dangerous.”
• University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann, when she was affiliated with Princeton, revealed that she finds it “repugnant” for American students to learn that they are “above all, citizens of the United States” instead of partisans of her preferred abstraction, “democratic humanism.”
• New York University’s Richard Sennett denounces “the evil of a shared national identity” and concludes that the erosion of national sovereignty is “basically a positive thing.”
• Cecilia O’Leary of American University identifies American patriotism as a right-wing, militaristic, male, white, Anglo, and repressive force.
• Peter Spiro of Hofstra University says it “is increasingly difficult to use the word ‘we’ in the context of international affairs.”

I give you agents of destruction of this nation.

Remember parents of college age (or soon to be) kids - I hope you have taught your kids well.  I hope that you have instilled in them a love for this country in spite of it's failings and errors, for even if all the "badness" was added up, all the good that is in this country and the good it has done around the world far outweighs that "bad".

If that were not true, why wouldn't these folks see their hypocrisy and move?  If they truly believed what they spout, why haven't they skaddadled to another fine world hotspot (hmm, many talk about Cuba....)   Yet again we see the case of "fine for me, but keep passing the paycheck!"  Go ahead and rant and rave here - try that somewhere else.

My problem is that the "young skulls full of mush" (as Rush puts it) really don't really know much better as much of their previous education concerning our history and civics gives little to act as a bulwark against this kind of dribble.

(H/T:  Phi Beta Cons)

Posted by Skip at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No, this really is politicians trying to "save" stupid people throwing away their money on gambling that is sponsored and sanctified by the State in order to raise money for education. Got that?  Legislators railing against another part of government for being too successful - in doing what the Legislators mandated them to do!  Law of Unintended Consequences!

Or, is the not stupid people but stupid Legislators refusing to acknowledge what they have done?

Naw, they want it both ways - the money ("It's for the children!") and pandering to the adults ("It's for your children that we save you from what we've done!").

From Buffalo, NY:

Leaders in Buffalo’s minority community, charging unfair practices by the New York Lottery, are calling for change.

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples has called for a moratorium on new lottery outlets in her East Side district and wants the state to revamp its prize payouts, which critics say penalize poor, minority neighborhoods.

“It’s incumbent that the state correct this. You need to get some equity,” the Buffalo Democrat said.

No, she has it exactly wrong.  It does not penalize the poor.  It does not penalize minorities.  It does not penalize "the inner city".  Neither does it penalize the rich, whites, or the educated. There is only one class of people that it discriminates against:

It does penalize those that didn't pay attention in school and failed math. 

Look, the whole idea of gambling incorporates the "house percentage" - the margin built into the odds of winning and losing.  Pretty much, all legalized gambling has it - how else would casinos get to be so big and flashy?

Face it, when Legislators saw the money being raked in, they decided that government would move in on the racket themselves (calling it "for the children" to make it palatable) instead of raising taxes. In essence, government "moved in" on the Mafia and other criminal enterprises.

A government-operated lottery system that pays the least in prizes for the games most popular in the poorest neighborhoods is “a travesty,” said the Rev. Darius Pridgen.

“Even if it wasn’t intended, they [lottery officials] should aggressively be working with the powers that be — the Legislature and the governor — to even the playing field,” added Brenda McDuffie, president of the Buffalo Urban League.

Utter nonsense!  Lottery commissions everywhere...

Continue reading "The Lottery - a tax on people who cannot do math (or refuse to learn)" »

Posted by Skip at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

by Ann Marie Banfield

The state Superintendent of the Georgia schools contacted parents to give them the news that the math scores from the state proficiency exam proved to be dismal.  The Superintendent decided to release the news to help prepare parents for this grim news.

What I find interesting is that Georgia has pretty good math standards.  According to the prestigious Fordham  Foundation, GA received a "B" after the experts analyzed GA math standards.  Compare this to the "F" assigned to the NH math standards.

Now what if the NH students were required to meet higher math standards as GA, or Massachusetts which was given an "A"?  How well would our students perform? 

The GA news is reporting that 40% of the eighth graders would have to be held back based on their failing grades.  Would our students be able to pass the same test?  This is a dilemma for parents in NH.  NH has set the bar so low, that parents cannot rely on state exams to give them a clear idea of whether or not their child is proficient in mathematics. 

With the bar set so low in NH, and with students in NH are having difficulty passing the state exam, just think if that bar was raised to the level of other states who've decided that math proficiency is important.  Why is it, parents must rely upon outside tutoring services, private schools or choose to home-school in order to get a decent education in this state? 

While reading comments at the Union Leader web site where the headline reads: NECAP Math Scores Fall Short, I found the following comment revealing:

"I am a Junior and I took the NECAP this year. I was home schooled until high school, so I come from a different background than other students. I was the only student at my school to get all 4s on the test. It really was not a hard test, it just tested basic concepts which should be learned at a young age, and apparently were not taught in public schools. I think this test shows the holes in early education, because it is not just testing information we should have recently acquired like most high school tests do."

This comment was posted by a home-schooled student who avoided the pitfalls of the NH public school system.

With all the resources and the well educated parents living in this state, it still surprises me that there is no organized effort to raise the bar.

Ann Marie lives in Bedford and is a well-informed parent concerned about the kind of math being taught in many of today's schools-- what she calls "fuzzy math"... She recently appeared on MTNP radio to discuss the subject. Click here to listen.

Posted by Doug at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had a small concern going on around here in NH where the Democratic (highly leveraged Teacher Union support) with an encircle and envelope strategy.  Well put by Consent of the Governed:

The Live Free Or Die State wants to regulate homeschooling curriculum. So much for "living free"

This week, on March 13, the New Hampshire State Senate will be voting on a bill that will require homeschoolers to submit curriculum plans at the beginning of each school year for each homeschooled child. It might be interesting to note that this very requirement was removed from their statutes a few years ago. Apparently, they are looking to put it back in place because the educrats have determined that homeschooled kids who enroll in public school are not prepared.

...Isn't the curriculum already offered by the state in public schools one of the reasons many people opt to homeschool in the first place? People choosing to homeschool want to follow their own curriculum for a million different reasons. If the state is dictating what you do at home - you might as well just go to school... right?? Otherwise it's just doing public school at home ... and believe me if you are going to replicate what is done in the public school model at home then it isn't really worth one's time to homeschool at all. Maybe that's what the state is trying to acheive here...

You know, the thought should occur to everyone that we have public schools that are totally managed and controlled by the state government; they set their own standards, they control their own curriculum, they dictate how everything is done - and yet they have mediocre results at best - that's a fact that the news reminds us of almost on a daily basis. And yet, the state and their mediocre schools are the same people that want to oversee and control homeschooling!

And then you have the decision of a California appellate Court that basically made homeschooling illegal: 

A state appellate court ruling that says parents must have a teaching credential to home school their children has rocked home schoolers throughout the Golden State...

And now, this from Tennesee and our friend Ken over at Blue Collar Muse:

Recently, the Tennessee State Board of Education ruled diplomas issued to home-schooled students from religious based schools were invalid as proof of the successful completion of High School should it be presented for employment purposes for a job for which state law requires a diploma. You read that right. According to the State Board of Education, all diplomas are equal but some diplomas are more equal than others.

According to Tennessee ConserVOLiance blogger Red Hat Rob,

… anyone from a public school (or a private accredited school) who presents a diploma in order to be hired as a daycare worker, police officer, fireman (or any other position which state law requires a high school diploma for) will be automatically accepted. Anyone who presents a homeschool diploma will be automatically rejected.

So, we have a state ratcheting up the edu-bar favoring "the professionals", a state favoring "the professionals, and another state (well gee whilikers!) favoring "the professionals"!

Any one else see a pattern here: parents cannot be trusted?  Yet, read on for the good part.... 

Continue reading "Homeschoolers - under attack all over?" »

Posted by Skip at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Government Approved Edukashun

Former State Representative Paul Mirski sends the following warning:

RE: Proposed [Public Education] Amendment to CACR 34

“The legislature shall have the responsibility to define the content of an adequate education to prepare the student to become a productive and contributing citizen and to determine the total statewide cost of providing that education to all public school students. The legislature shall have the authority and responsibility to raise the funds that total the statewide cost of this education……”
 

Only a budding despot could love the language the legislature has wrought. No sensible citizen of New Hampshire should let themselves be duped into voting for such misguided social policy nor be duped into giving up rights having to do with conscience, freedom of thought, action and association.

Posted by Doug at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most people believe that the public school system exists to educate their children: reading, writing, 'rithmatic, science, and the like.  They also expect that biases of any type would not enter into that process, right?  If only that part were true. 

As a conservative, I would like to believe the first sentence.  What we have seen, however, is that  there is a real problem in that standardized testing has shown great problems in demonstrating that educational staffs have done their jobs (or are even up to doing so).  Educational staffs decry the use of these tests; yet, they show that the educational system has many holes that have gone unfilled for years and those same educationalists put up all kinds of excuses as to why it is not their fault.

If not their fault, then whose?  And I do not accept the premise that it is the kids (at least, the vast majority of the time).

Especially when I see that biases of that same staff are not tamped down.  In fact, most parents would be irate if they really knew how their kids' teachers were actually trained:

Perhaps the judge should consider that the aim of public education is to interfere with the beliefs of children. Here is the proof:

Chester Pierce, for example, is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychiatry at Harvard University, and a major architect of the development of the "new" American citizen for the global village. Professor Pierce told 2,000 teachers attending the Childhood International Education Seminar in Denver, Colorado in 1973: "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers, toward his parents, toward our elected officials, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.

It's up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future." Could his intentions have been more clear?

Time for America to wake up. The judge is protecting the agenda of those who want a "global village". Christianity stands in their way, so they must kick God out of their indoctrination centers, which we call public schools. The tactic is the same that communist China is using to protect their tyranny.

(H/T: Sibby Online; go read the whole thing) 

I wonder if this guy is/was associated with the International Baccalaureate program?

It is NOT the role of government public schools to "teach" our children a way of thinking that is antithetical to their God, their parents, and their country; that is sheer indoctrination!  Yet, I bet if you dig enough, you'd find it in your local school system (one teacher here in Gilford was heard to say something in a similar philosophical manner "WE have your children 6 hours a day and WE know what is best for them".  In other words, as it was taken "we know better than parents what is needed to be taught!"  Needless to say, it was eye opening to say the least).

Heh! Then the NEA and AFT (teachers unions) wonder why their enrollments are going down and those of charter, private, and home schooling are going up.  Andy why taxpayers are starting to "not fork it over" anymore.

Oh, there's more on this after the jump! 

Continue reading "And then they wonder why conservatives distrust the Academy..." »

Posted by Skip at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ugh....it just keeps getting worse and worse as to what our Public Education system is turning out.  Once again, Joanne Jacobs has the story pointer:

An intro journalism class - and yet, I keep hearing of Journalism Professors saying that bloggers aren't "good" enough to be listened to...or that being a journalist is above being an American... 

Add the two together and nothing good comes from it. 

Posted by Skip at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Blue Collar Muse has this story of educators not setting proper examples and then those in charge said "oh, never mind".  Message sent to the kids?  Penalties?  So what?

My take - set a standard.  Set the expectation that the standard is to be met.  And in a case like this, abusing the standard means a consequence that is kept. Message: bad decisions yield bad consequences.  Think first - some consequences will last a long time. 

Or should.  After all "it's for the kids!" 

Education is supposed to be about learning and knowledge. Today’s education seems to be about far more than that, however. From participating in the “Who gets a seat in the Lifeboat?” scenario to curricula dealing with homosexuality, moral issues are taking up more time in schools. Unfortunately, educators often come down on the wrong side of the matter. How refreshing, then, to read about coaches shunned by the schools for their part in what became a criminal case. It would be if that had been what happened!

Lynn Lang and Milton Kirk were football coaches in Memphis, TN. An outstanding player of theirs was being recruited by top flight NCAA programs around the country. In 1999 and 2000 Lang received $150,000 in cash from Logan Young, a University of Alabama booster, to steer him to Alabama. Milton Kirk was to get a cut. When he didn’t he blew the whistle on Lang.

[snip]

But Lynn Lang’s story is the most intriguing. He initially disputed the charges before finally pleading guilty. He, too, was banned from coaching for life and had his teaching license revoked. Despite facing decades in jail, Lang was ultimately sentenced to time served (all of about a day), two years probation, Community Service and a $2,500 fine. He did not have to repay the money he received from Young although the IRS says he owes them $60,000 on the income while Lang swears he has no money left having given much of it to the player’s family.

If the story ended here we’d use it to teach kids right from wrong. But Tennessee’s State Board of Education has a different lesson plan in mind.

Go read the rest

Posted by Skip at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gilford Superintendent of Schools Dr. Paul DeMinico and HS Principal Mr. Ken Wiswell joined the MTNP crew today.  While we were supposed to talk about NCLB AND the "International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme", it turned out to be just the former (we've promised to do it again!).

Anyways, the talk centered around accountability, standardized testing (pro and con), and competition in the educational arena and in the "rest" of the world.  Frankly, I did say that the educational established tries to down play the need for competition at the same time that the world is ramping it up more.

Well, here's another case of trying to paper over the bad news - gee, another stab at redefining failure?  From Joanne Jacobs (who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite educational bloggers, emphasis mine):

Kinder, gentler ‘failure’

There will be no “underperforming” schools in Massachusetts, if education officials get their way.

To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure.

Instead of calling these schools “underperforming,” the Board of Education is considering labeling them as “Commonwealth priority,” to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.

Schools in the direst straits, now known as “chronically underperforming,” would get the more urgent but still vague label of “priority one.”

They must think their administrators, teachers and students aren’t very bright.

After all, we cannot harm their easily bruised sense of self-esteem, even if their results are of no esteem at all. 

Posted by Skip at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have long despared when Liberals and those in the Educational establishment begin to walk down the slippery slope of "pay for grades".  Sure, let's let Government (parents - their call; but Government tax money??) start conditioning it's citizens-in-waiting by bribing them to either to just show up or earn decent grades.

Which they should be doing in the first place!  And if not, let's hold the parents responsible (which, legally, they are) for truant or failure behavior.  And for the former, I am totally against Government covering up for bad parental behavior in getting their kids to school ('"her philosophy is to be "positive" rather than "punitive"')

Thus, I thought this was COOL!  Who WOULDN'T want to take a tank drive with the Governator:

Posted by Skip at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

..

Educating for the New World Order?

It all sounded so good when we first heard it... Late in the fall, as a member of my local town's budget committee here in Central NH, we heard the superintendent of schools allude to a new program that he claimed was geared towards academics that would challenge our students in ways designed to help them compete against their peers in other countries. Knowing how we lag in certain areas like math and science when compared to the performance we see in other industrialized nations, who wouldn't be excited when hearing that something called the International Baccalaureate Programme is coming to our schools? Finally-- they're going to do something about ACADEMICS in school for a change!

Not so fast... Some two months after first hearing the lovely proposal for this great new educational method soon to be arriving in our tiny hamlet nestled in the mountains and Lakes Region of New Hampshire, we now have the rest of the story. The first inkling we had that there was something amiss with the program came from a post by former teacher Jane Aitken at NH Insider...

on the school side, there may be propositions to investigate expensive "international education" curriculae in the form of something called "IB".

So far so good, right? Other than the cost, who could be opposed to such a thing in the new global economy? Well that depends. How do you feel about the UN reaching into your child's classroom and "instructing" them? Jane provides some detail that might not be well known in the five (wealthy) school districts (including mine) that are looking into this latest fad:

Continue reading "Coming soon to a school near you-- the UN!?" »

Posted by Doug at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Dumb down class," asks principal memo 

And they (the Educational - Industrial Complex - "EIC") wonder why many of us support the ideals of NCLB (setting a standard for learning)?  And this shows why many of us believe that the current system cannot reform itself 

[snip]

And then the Dems and the Ed. Unions have their knicker all in a knot over this:

A sharply divided state Board of Education today elected as chairman a Clemson mother who homeschools her four children and supports public funding for private school choice.

Sounds like a Mom who wants the best for kids rather than the EIC. We can't have that now, can we?  Or can we?

One of my favorite statements is "A child deserves a publicly funded education".  I just don't demand where that funding is spent....which drives teachers crazy.  But then again, they're not all that crazy about having to compete either.... 

Continue reading "Principal asks Teachers to "stupid down" the lessons" »

Posted by Skip at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Didn't get the chance to mention these items that all seemed to speak to a single issue.  The first was a letter by a Laura Grafton from Michigan in USA Today (yesterday).  While it's message was about lowering the drinking age, I caught this:

* Although the United States grants all the other rights and responsibilities of citizenship to 18- to 20-year-olds, it denies them the right to drink. Should the government have a right to pick and choose citizens' rights?

This lady just has not been given an adequate educational background.  By definition, a right cannot be either given or taken away by government.  Our Founding Fathers understood that, and created the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that enumerated basic, fundamental set of rights; emanating from God, they are not to be violated or abridged.

Once again, a citizen gets it wrong, confusing rights with privileges.  Free Speech is a right, Freedom of Assembly is a right; Driving is a privilege and so is drinking.  Last I knew, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is rather silent on the issues of either of the two.

Why do I bring up this nit-picking?  This is yet another case of poor civics training; trying to make a case of which is what amongst the general public does not make for good policy understakings.  Not understanding fundamentals of how our society is structured and ordered is a recipe for disaster.  Yet, early to mid-last century, this would not be much of an issue as Civics was taught. 

And we hear from the Dems that all kinds of things are a right - healthcare being the latest  national one in the news and college for all (if one is to believe Edwards) another.  One would have thought that if it were that important, wouldn't the Founding Fathers have written about both?

And this doesn't help much either in making me feel that our educational system is working all that well either:

U.S. students do worse in science and math

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. students are lagging behind their peers in other countries in science and math, test results out Tuesday show.

Continue reading "Education and knowledge of civics" »

Posted by Skip at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We don't need no edgukashun!

.

Doug, 

.

Another great article on how schools are training kids to fail in the world that works. The source is Education News.

.
This is the introduction:

For many urban youth in poverty moving from school to work is about as likely as having a career in the NBA. While urban schools struggle and fail at teaching basic skills they are extremely effective at teaching skills which predispose youth to fail in the world of work. The urban school environment spreads a dangerous contagion in the form of behaviors and beliefs which form an ideology. This ideology "works" for youngsters by getting them through urban middle and secondary schools. But the very ideology that helps youth slip and slide through school becomes the source of their subsequent failure. It is an ideology that is easily learned, readily implemented, rewarded by teachers and principals, and supporting by school policies. It is an ideology which schools promulgate because it is easier to accede to the students' street values than it is to shape them into more gentle human beings. The latter requires a great deal of persistent effort not unlike a dike working against an unyielding sea. It is much easier for urban schools to lower their expectations and simply survive with youth than it is to try to change them.

The “ideology” taught in these urban schools is:

• Nowness.(What is the unit of school learning time?)
• Showing Up.(What is the minimum standard of satisfactory work?)
• Make Me.(Who is accountable for what students learn?)
• Excuses.(How often can you be late or absent and still be passing?)

Continue reading "From Jorge: "Training kids to fail in the world that works."" »

Posted by Doug at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Found this little snippet in the local paper, The Citizen (not online yet):

New Hampshire Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy said he is considering a proposal for a statewide teacher contract.

"The deputy commissioner, Mary Heath, and I have been talking about what can we do to maximize our professional development opportunities for teachers," Tracy said in an interview Friday with WMOU-AM radio in Berlin.

"Even though we have great professional development activity that is coming out of our state, there still is a discrepancy in salaries across the state, and the schools that offer the largest salaries are the ones that sometimes attract the very best teachers and they stay the longest, " Tracy said.

"We've at least thrown out the idea of what would happen if we considered a statewide teacher contract with some support from the stte for some of these rural communities and would we attract more and better teeachers.  I don't know, that is something to think about."

Tracy said he and Heath are planning to meet with Gov. John Lynch next week about the matter.  They've also met with legislative leaders.

OK, let's see what's what with this"

Once again, the larger governmental body wishes to horn in on the smaller one all in the guise of "we here to help you."  Local School Boards lose control of the majority of what they are supposed to oversee.  Local Budget Committees lose the oversight of one of the largest parts of a town or cities outlays.  Mainly, local voters and taxpayers see their right to control their local towns as they see fit slither away...all under the guise of "we know better, and we have more money".  After all, that IS one of the marks of this snippet....where the larger salaries are located, and where they are not.

This would lead down the road to a state wide Unified School District.  I watch what happens with these....and no, quality of student achievement is not one of them.

And that is the second thing.  Perhaps it is implied here, but is certainly not explicitly stated - what about the kids?  This is presented as all about the teachers, not the quality of the product produced by those teachers.   

Second, notice the emphasis of this snippet - teacher salaries, teacher opportunities.  Who in the teacher's union wouldn't love this?  No more of the union having to deal with multiple bargaining sessions or School Boards (or the "divisive" Budget Committees that oversee the contracts). 

Let's see if the Republican leadership stands up to this power grab by the state.

After all, San Diego City / County has done this.....and look at the trouble they are in! 

More later, but time to run to do the Meet The New Press Radio show! 

Posted by Skip at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

New Hampshire Republican State Chairman Fergus Cullen explains Gov. John Lynch’s failure to steward a constitutional amendment on education funding through the legislature this way in a press release:

“Governor John Lynch’s weakness as a leader has finally caught up with him.  A leader cannot punt on issue after issue and expect people to follow him when the clock is ticking down.  For two and a half years Gov. Lynch has not led on issues great or small.  He offered no leadership on civil unions.  He offered no leadership on mandatory seatbelts.  It should surprise no one that when Gov. Lynch finally showed up saying, ‘Follow me!’ he was ignored.”

He makes a valid point.

But to my way of thinking, this has more to do with the governor’s priorities—and those of his allies in the state legislature. As I have written before, the Democrats were elected with a mandate in 2006 to clean up the ethical mess the Republicans made in Concord and to hash out a permanent solution to the school funding mess.  What have they given us instead?  Well, they wasted no time in pushing gay civil marriage through, even though none of them campaigned on it and the bill discriminates against heterosexuals. And Democrats in the Senate managed to get a $2 million appropriation for adult diapers taken care of, so that's a relief.

Over in the House, Democrats have placed things like a fine for losing your balloon, seatbelt laws, and a vote condemning the Iraq War ahead of fixing our school funding problems.

In the coming weeks the Senate will pass—and the governor will sign—a measure repealing a law that allows parents to know if their minor daughter is going to have an abortion.

I believe the reason why we have no solutions to our school funding problems is because our leaders in Concord don’t care about our school funding problems.  Instead, they are fixated on imposing a radical agenda, for which there is very little public support and on which they were not elected.

BY PAT H 

Posted by Pat H at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You know, it seems to be that the majority of folks who are upset over the No Child Left Behind law are the professional education folks - you know, administrators, staff, and the Teachers Unions. Vehemently! The decry that they have to teach to “the test” (gee, teachers are giving tests – just not theirs). That the subject material is is defined for them, that they have lost control, unfunded mandates, special groups of kids destroy the averages, the competition is unfair....you get the idea.

IMHO, they have not yet figured out that they should be judged by their product - educated kids.  Or, at least it is supposed to be that way.  And because there has been a failure to do so, some states have put into place standardized testing at certain levels to ensure that kids are learning to a given standard. It seems that some have problems with this – especially the kids who believe it is unfair when they fail. They get upset when they don't get a diploma at the end of senior year.

What the educational system has failed to do is to get a simple idea across – you earn things, you are not entitled to them. I've written about this before (here and here) about standards becoming more and more lax and thus legislators having to step into the mix.

This story? More of the same. Kids not being allowed to graduate because they cannot pass the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). Note: the kids are complaining!

Crystal Martinez complained that while she finished at the top of her class with a 3.5 grade point average, she is now blocked from graduation by failing the TAKS test.

"We know we're not going to get our diplomas, but we just want to walk across the stage," Martinez said. "That's all we ask for right now."

Classmate Chloe Walker agreed. "I believe that I have at least the right to walk the stage with all my friends," she said. "I made it this far, and I have all my credits I need. I deserve to get my certificate of completion."

At the top of the class and can't pass a test? Now, who is at fault here? That's right, not the kids – the teachers and staff. Call it grade inflation or outright fraud (in my opinion) of services. How can a 3.5 GPA result in failing a standardized test? It shouldn't.  And this notion of rights is just going too far - why didn't the teachers inform the students that standards have to be met (and that there is no "right" to believe that they deserve anything?).

But dig the picture.....look at the closest sign "LET ARE KIDS WALK"...shouldn't one of the responsible teachers clued in the clueless?

Naw, we'll let it speak for itself.  School vouchers anyone?

(H/T: Captain's Quarters) Read the whole article here

Posted by Skip at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Have you ever lived in a communist country? Well I have..."

<YouTube here>

Posted by Doug at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What was the motive behind 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui's killing of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech? Why was he consumed with hate, resentment and bitterness?

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Cho was an English Department major and senior. As a frequent lecturer on college campuses, I have discovered that the English Departments are often the weirdest and/or the most leftwing.

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A look at the websites of Virginia Tech's English Department and of its professors reveals their mindset. We don't yet know which courses Cho took, but it could have been any of these.

 

 H/T: Jorge

Posted by Doug at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)