Articles tagged as

Education

From the “Dragging him over the line” notebook – well, he’s got this Education point right.

In 2008, I was not the most thrilled to have John McCain to be the Republican nominee, at least until I was able to say “Yeah, I voted for Sarah Palin and the old white guy”.  At that time, however, I had a bad premonition about what an Obama Presidency would bring (yeah, I pretty much had it right as the future-now-history shows).  This time, it is Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee and once again, it’s back to “drag that candidate over the line” as the excitement for me for his candidacy just isn’t there.  It is back to the “vote against the other guy”, for if Obama is given a second term, the America that the Founders envisioned with respect to limited government and an emphasis on individual freedom may well be never seen again.

However, this from a speech that Romney gave today gave me a little smile:

First, I will expand parental choice in an unprecedented way.  Too many of our kids are trapped in schools that are failing or simply don’t meet their needs.  And for too long, we’ve merely talked about the virtues of school choice.

As President, I will give the parents of every low-income and special needs student the chance to choose where their child goes to school.  For the first time in history, federal education funds will be linked to a student, so that parents can send their child to any public or charter school, or to a private school, where permitted.  And I will make that choice meaningful by ensuring there are sufficient options to exercise it.

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Question with respect to the proposed state constitution educational amendment

Damn. There is one hell of a row going on at the excellent RLCNH email discussion list over the proposed state constitutional amendment regarding education—CACR12—which, one way or another, will put the responsibility

It's about educating the next generation, not expanding government....

for implementing and funding a “state system” of education in the hands of the state legislature, not the towns (where it has traditionally and historically resided).

More importantly, the battle is heating up amongst the best, smartest, and most activist political players in the state, i.e. the movement conservatives, the libertarians, the Tea Partiers, the Constitutionalists, the libertarian-conservatives, and others.

Some are….

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And the Teachers’ unions can’t understand why we don’t believe them?

In my opinion, public education has gone down a path of disaster in many ways – too many teaching methodologies that are not much more than somebody’s fad idea instead of being verifiably certified effective, teachers who believe their mission is to indoctrinate students with “a worldview” instead of teaching subject basics well, and unions that want you to simply believe that higher salaries and perks are an instant panacea to what they’ve been doing the last 30 years.

So, DO watch this of a high school student asking other students some simple, basic American Civics and geography questions.  Watch the utter cluelessness (with the exception of one young lady) and the blank stares of these high schoolers when the mic is offered in their general direction.

(H/T: The Blaze)

Well prepared and taught by their teachers, eh?  The problem for parents and taxpayers is…

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GrokTV Event: NH Speaker Bill O’Brien Town Hall – Questions!

Quite a bit of the Town Hall was taken up by questions (some pre-written and some from the floor):

  • On Voter ID
  • Would Gov Lynch actually support on a Voter ID bill?
  • How can the private sector assist in the cost of Education?
  • How about Consolidates SAUs (School Administrative Units)?
  • More on Voter Fraud
  • School Vouchers a possibility?
  • Special Education funding (Federal, State)
  • In 40 years, why is Education costing 3 X more but results are worse?
  • The 10 Health Agencies are not working
  • Some House Reps had conflicts over Right To Work – but didn’t recuse themselves!
  • Right To Work “positives”
  • On that “Stealing $499 from your employer is not a crime” bill…
  • Closed Primaries – possibility?

Videos after the jump:

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GrokTV Event: Ron Paul – Q6 & Q7: Abolishing the Dept. Education and will lowering corporate taxes bring jobs back to US?

Still trying to play catch up here: Intro Ceremonies and Question 1, Questions 2 & 3, and Questions 4 & 5.  Now, Questions 6 and 7!

Question 6 (which was asked by a young girl): you are going to abolish 3 Departments including the Department of Education; how are you going to replace them?  I believe the underlying “gotcha” question was “and how will I get a decent education if the Feds are not involved?” (an adult formulated question, I presume):

Question 7: How will lowering corporate taxes bring back jobs to the US where many corporations already don’t pay [income] taxes?

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A New Year for the RLCNH Report

Hot off the presses, it is the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire’s 2012 inaugural RLCNH Report. It’s a big one this time—here’s a quick overview of all the bills covered:


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Facebook Doodlings – Why is it the job of the Feds to rehab 35,000 schools?

Yet another instance of spending time writing somewhere else instead of writing here, so, am double purposing yet again.  This thread from FB was from Sept (yeah, catching up as always) when Obama wanted to spend $25 Billion (more of what we don’t have) to rehab up to 35,000.  Once again the question must be asked (yes, edited to be more bloggish):

Why is it the Federal Govt’s job to “rehab 35,000 schools”?

If the local communities have so bungled their OWN infrastructure so badly, why is it that the rest of us have responsibility to fund it just because Obama says so? Where’s the accountability in that?

And the last part of that is couched in those terms because education has generally been a local activity and not a federal one.  Here in NH, it IS local – every year for the last six years, I have reviewed my town’s school budget as part of my hamlet’s Budget Committee (which actually prepares the budgets that all of the town’s voters vote up or down).  As part of doing that, I have learned the hardware that tax monies get sucked out of the local scene, filter through the DC bureaucracy, get strings attached, and then a relatively small percentage comes back to the folks that forked it out in the first place.   You can be sure that this “free money” as everyone else is kowtowing to get (under the rubric of blatant greed of “if we don’t take it, someone else will” – just like kindergarteners who are afraid they won’t get their Twinkie snack).

Well, it seemed to one commenter that the right answer was “Sure!”;  after all “because nobody else wants to do it”?  In other words, if the locals decide to do nothing, then his implicit answer is the Feds must do it by default.  My retort was:

You think the Feds should because the locals won’t? Shouldn’t the Feds be smart enough not to fall for that Tom Sawyer fence whitewash trick?

Yes, I started to get a bit hot under the collar as I have with others – it seems with folks like the commenter, their expectation is that the Feds are supposed to right all ills – when the locals are judged to have not done the job, it has to be made right by spending other folks money.  Wrong answer, as it penalizes those communities that ARE doing the right things.

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Guest post by JR Hoell: Let’s Send Every Child to a Good School

According to the U.S. Department of Education, almost 27% of children  in America already have access to the school of their choice.  As recently as 2007 (the most recent year of available data from the National Center for Education Statistics), 16% of students attended a public school other than the assigned school in their district, 9% went to faith-oriented private schools while the remaining 3% went to  private secular schools.   The numbers listed above do not include the 3% that are home-schooled, an additional form of school choice.

Clearly, parents want to be involved in the selection of the school for their children.  In fact, there is a growing percentage of families that choose to relocate to a new neighborhood or town so their child can attend a particular school.  If parents are willing to pick up and move for a better school, then clearly our system of rigid geographic school districts is failing and a new system based on school choice needs to be implemented.

As student test results indicate, parents, on the average, do a better job of making educational choices for their children than bureaucracies do, which is yet another reason  the expansion of school choice. The real question is, “Can we afford to let more children have school choice?” or “Can a system be put in place to still support the public schools while allowing parents to have this choice?”   Actually, a well implemented school choice program saves the state money, without down shifting the cost to the local school districts.

According to the New Hampshire Department of Education,

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That Rich Bastard Who Is Screwing The Teachers Over Is Actually…

There is a graphic going around, no doubt becasue of the OWS class-warfare hippy-fest, that asks why we wold cut teachers pay 20% instead of asking millionaires to give a little more.    This is of course dishonest on several levels.

A few quick observations. No one is asking teachers to give up 20% of their wages and I challenge anyone who pays school taxes to find me an example of it.  The job creators already front 70% of all taxes from which teachers are paid so if anyone needs to pony up it is the rest of us.  And most importantly, the problem isn’t the wealthy it is the federal government.  Since Obama took office the Department of Education’s budget has gone from 35 Billion a year (That’s BILLION), to 70 Billion. ($70,000,000,000.00).  That’s 389 million per school day if you run on a 180 day calendar.

The rich bastard that is screwing teachers is not on Wall Street.  The richest bastard of all is the US Government’s Department of Education.

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“Applicant must have college degree”; overblown need?

If you walk around the Right blogosphere, you will see a lot of folks talking about the "education bubble" – lots of folks who were told to go to college, took on lots of debt, and now are either unemployed or underemployed.  The overriding problem seems to be the overemphasis on the credentials to do … Read more

UBIQUITOUS (AND SNEAKY) FORMS OF THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL DISTRICT

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies“—Honoré de Balzac, French novelist and playwright 1799 –1850

EDUCRATS_AT_WORK_small.jpg

The beginning of the School year, brings the plethora of forms home from school with the kids for parents to fill out and return. A physical health form must be signed by the family physician. Conversely, I find such forms to be intrusive, asking for health insurance provider information, group numbers, policy numbers and a bunch of other information generally outside my personal comfort zone for the submission to local government bureaucrats. When I ask about it, my kid responds, “we must have this information in by (date certain) or else we’ll get into trouble…” Get into “trouble?” When bureaucrats say, “do this or else!” it is part of my personality to ask, “or else what?” What kind of bureaucracy punishes kids because of what the parent ‘might not’ do? What if a parent is English challenged? What if the parent is on crack?

I fully understand why educrats ask for such information. However,  I question what happens to the information beyond the stated purpose. Often times other uses come into play, never intended. Seems to me only physicians and health care providers need insurance information, not the school.  The educrats require a medical permission slip for just about everything to include a plastic back-scratcher, so given that layer, why must they have the insurance information? I assert, they don’t…

Next is the free or reduced lunch program. My family does not even come close to being eligible. Yet the educrats send home a form for us to fill out, directing the disclosure of our income and earnings. don’t think so! Summarily, I just put one red line through the whole stinking form and wrote on it that we do not meet the current eligibility requirements and I initialed it. If they don’t like it, SCREW EM! They’ll get over it with time and counseling.

Then today, we get this Middle School opt out form. There is a disclosure at the top which reads as follows:

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Arriving at the door: “Don’t Let The Kids Drink The Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom”

New book in from Regnery Press by Marybeth Hicks: "Many people assume that this generation of young Americans is much like any other. But thanks to the radical Left, they’re not even close. So says columnist and author Marybeth Hicks in her shocking new exposé, Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s … Read more

A “Walking School Bus”? A “Rolling Bike Train”? Good grief….

Leave it to the combination of Big Government and Edu-babble to make things FAR more complicated, FAR more expensive, and FAR more devoid of common sense.  I found this AP report over at the Concord Monitor:

NH gets $1 million for Safe Route to School

Ten New Hampshire communities are splitting almost $1 million to encourage children to walk and ride their bicycles to and from school.

The money comes from the Safe Routes to School Program and will be used for sidewalk construction, traffic calming measures and education programs.

Yeah: "to encourage children to walk and ride their bicycles to and from school." OK, my hair is grey which means that I’m old enough to remember walking to school – rode the bus for first elementary school (Huntington Elementary, through third grade), then walked or biked to the "new" elementary school (John F Kennedy Elementary in Brockton, MA) through sixth grade.  Then walked to South Jr. High (a mile) which was a stone’s throw from the first elementary school that I was bussed to, and then walked to Brockton High (almost a mile) until I got my license. Sun, rain, snow – unless it was REALLY bad, I walked.  Period.  That was how it was done (and no, it was not uphill both ways).  On sidewalks where possible, on the shoulder of roads where they were not.  And some trails through the woods that established themselves as kids figured out faster way to school / back home.

Yet, today we have to encourage our kids? 

Sidebar: This is the same malarky as it seems that some parents have no spine when their kids come home from school, plop themselves in front of the PC or game console, and the parents have no idea what to do.  The solution is easy: shut off the power, tell them to put their play clothes on and stay outside until supper time.  "GO PLAY!" were the last words I …

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Liberals Buzz Over Take Down Of Obama

White Tower Liberal take down of obamaByron York in, Liberals Buzz over brutal take down of Obama, shares with us the thoughts of uber liberal (and very disappointed) professor, Drew Westen:

Perhaps Obama "is simply not up to the task" of being president.  Perhaps the Democrats who were so dazzled by his campaign speeches should have noticed "some disquieting aspects of his biography."  Among those disquieting aspects: "that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted ‘present’ (instead of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues."

This is posted in the Washington Examiner, where this psychology professors disagreements with Obama are not just grist for the right wing blogosphere.  When you read it you get a frightening reminder of how the institutional elites on the left think.

But instead of keeping Republicans under his heel, Obama negotiated with them.  The "truly decisive move" that showed Obama to be a failure, Westen writes, was the president’s decision to settle for an $800 billion economic stimulus bill that was far smaller than many liberals wanted.  Accepting a "half stimulus" instead of pushing for an even larger FDR-like program was a dismaying sign of "the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of [Obama’s] presidency."

This is supposed to be a smart guy.  Has he forgotten that during the stimulus debate Obama had a virtual mandate from his political capital and momentum alone and a legislature completely controlled by his party?  The were no Republicans to keep on any length leash. And compromise? There was none. The democrats won. Obama Won. He said it himself. It was a party talking point.   Yet this whit tower socialsit still insists the left (and Obama) failed to keep Republicans under heel and that this is a significant part of Obama’s failure? He is a failure–He really cannot lead. But Republicans have nothing to do with that. That would be the democrats who are to balme. Not that any of you would come out of the Kool Aid long enough to realize.

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If You Are Not Following Me On Twitter….

Twitter inspires the opportunity to aggravate the leftists who insist on following conservatives there. Not every witticism will fit on Twitter. Sometimes you have to write a blog and post a link. And then there are the thoughts that are too short to blog and too long to tweet. (Some things can’t be said in under 140 characters.)

Third Circuit – Online speech by students cannot be treated the same as on campuss – NH & Federal Bullying laws at risk?

I do hope so.  I have had great concerns as School Administrations have incrementally increased their reach and control far from the schools from years ago to the point where it seems that the Edu-Industrial Complex believes it is responsible for their students (vs Parents for their own children).  Witness the growth of pre-school day-care, post-school day-care, breakfast / lunch / dinners provided 365/year, health clinics, abortions when needed, and daycare for the kids’ kids.  With the advent of the Bullying laws, that reach was extended to any speech any where in real space and cyberspace.

In effect, Parents were being stripped of control and responsibility in one action after another.  Who knew it would be the First Amendment and the Third District Court that may have broken that lock that was rusting shut on parents?

From FIRE, the "money line" and great Executive Summary:

Is there a place where a student can go that’s far enough away from school grounds to allow that student to speak freely online? Every single one of the 14 judges on that court said ‘yes.’

Background:  

Yesterday, the full court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued two simultaneous opinions to resolve how much control grade schools and high schools may exercise over their students’ off-campus, online speech. In Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, the 14-judge court delivered two landmark victories for free speech, holding that school officials cannot "reach into a child’s home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities." In the cases, two students had been disciplined for creating parody MySpace profiles mocking their respective principals. The Third Circuit held that schools cannot punish students’ online speech simply because it is vulgar, lewd, or offensive.

Excerpts:

The full Third Circuit convened en banc to resolve this conflicting in-circuit precedent. Yesterday, the court decided in both cases that schools may not punish online, off-campus speech to the same extent that they may when dealing with in-school speech. The court thus concluded that the Supreme Court decision in Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986), which held that a high school may suspend a student for "lewd, indecent, or offensive speech and conduct" when such behavior conflicts with "essential lessons of civil, mature conduct," is inapplicable to online speech created off campus…

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Guest post by NH State Representative Bruce MacMohan on Education

SB67 (passed 273*-100): A bill to establish a committee to study school vouchers and school choice. Although, I voted for this bill, I wouldn’t mind seeing, as an alternative to more studies and committees, a resolution urging all members of the House and Senate to go down to their school district offices and apply to become a substitute teacher.

A lot of people like to talk about education reform, but unless you’ve spent some time in a classroom environment in New Hampshire (down in the trenches), you really can’t get a feel for what things are like. Are there problems with our state and federal education systems? Yes. Are they problems that can be fixed by shoveling more taxpayer dollars into the bucket? It’s been my experience that more spending is definitely not the solution.

How is it that in some public schools in New Hampshire, high school students taking high school level geometry and second year algebra classes can’t do simple multiplication without a calculator? In a nearby high school where 11th graders can’t divide 35 by 7 in their heads, I saw a lot of notices concerning our recent votes on the state budget, but not a lot of concern expressed over the fact that there are students a year away from graduating, who that lack the basic math skills that my daughters (Swasey School third-graders) have mastered at the age of eight?

Frankly, I don’t know what …

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Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire School near you?

Competency Based Education, coming to a New Hampshire school near you?

Bedford started using Competency Based Education a few years ago after the grand opening of their new high school. One of the first things parents noticed was the number of students failing their competencies and then were required to take summer school.

I think parents support a rigorous academic education for their children. If that means students cannot advance to the next grade or must attend summer school that might be a needed consequence. The question is, does Competency Based Eduction provide that academic rigorous course of study?

First, let’s look at where Competency Based Ed. came from. Competency Based Education is Outcome Based Education. Outcome Based Education is yet another attempt to reform a failing public education system. Outcome Based Ed. focuses on “learning outcomes”. But what are learning outcomes? I would suspect parents would automatically assume outcomes meant their children would master the academic content presented in a lesson. The parents would be wrong to make that assumption.

Some of the most vocal opponents to OBE point to a reform method that shifts focus away from academic content to one that focuses on attitudes, behaviors and values. In other words, the outcome may not always be that a student master long division. The outcome may require a student to alter their value system.

Two of the ten competencies that New Hampshire school officials now want students to master, and which the teachers are supposed to promote and measure, are the “ability to get along with others” and “self-management.” Many New Hampshire students are entering college in need of remedial education and now teachers have to focus on non-academic skills. It’s no wonder that many teachers will tell you privately, this is a waste of time and effort.

While these skills may be worthwhile in some classes,…

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