Reporting on key Nebraska K-12 education issues on a daily basis from Susan Darst Williams, a writer who lives at the base of Mount Laundry, Nebraska. To subscribe to this blog's mailing list, and see a variety of other education features and information, visit the main education website, www.GoBigEd.com
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Monday, July 31, 2006
Posted
9:52 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
Sometimes you wonder why gay activists are so rabid and zealous about getting a pro-gay curriculum entrenched in public schools, down to the preschool level, when it's obvious that most parents, taxpayers and teachers don't want children exposed to that stuff.
The obvious answer is self-interest: the gay activists want to increase the "source of supply" for homosexual activity. The more pro-gay stuff we allow into schools, the more we put young people at risk. Is that cynical? Maybe not. Parents and taxpayers in Nebraska should take a clue from something that erupted in Massachusetts over the weekend:
According to the Massachusetts-based anti-gay rights website www.MassResistance.org, "the most visible male homosexual lobbyist in the Massachusetts State House was recently arrested for soliciting oral sex from college students at the University of Massachusetts, according to newspaper reports."
MassResistance continues: "William Conley works for the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus and has been the point man for coordinating legislative support for funding homosexual programs (including the new 'Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth') in the public schools, as well as same-sex 'marriage,' repeal of the sodomy laws, and other homosexual-related legislation.
"Conley has been a member of the 'Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth,' and has now become a member of the new, super-charged, independent 'Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth' just created by the Legislature. This new Commission has expanded powers to push homosexual programs in the public schools without normal governmental oversight. Also, Conley was instrumental in organizing legislative strong-arming to override the Governor's veto of that new Commission after the veto had been initially sustained.
"Conley has spent years at the State House coordinating support and funding for homosexual programs aimed at youth. At the same time, the Governor's Commission, of which he has been a member, has used that money for pushing homosexuality, cross-dressing, and other behaviors in schools across the Commonwealth."
The Boston Herald had a story about it on Saturday:
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=150406
Posted
9:44 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
Someone on an education bulletin board I belong to posted this news about a Tennessee grade school with some of the toughest demographics around, that is improving their low test scores by leaps and bounds with an old-fashioned academic emphasis.
My contact says Hardy Elementary has 90% black and 87% free and reduced lunch students. The school was honored at the state capitol this year by the Education Consumers Foundation as one of Tennessee's top schools for academic gains. Their gains were almost double the state average.
Check out their strategy. If only the powers that be in the Omaha Public Schools and elsewhere where low-income kids are failing would institute programs like these:
www.education-consumers.com/awards/1-hardy.html
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Thursday, July 20, 2006
(0) comments
Posted
11:40 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
THIS SATURDAY IN WEST OMAHA
The 6th annual summer conference of the Home Educators Network of Nebraska is planned from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Hope Presbyterian Church, 160th & Q in west Omaha.
There'll be speakers and an exhibit hall full of people who can tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about homeschooling.
It's a can't-miss opportunity for those thinking about this fast-growing, exciting education option. Admission is $20 per family.
See: www.OmahaHEN.org
Posted
9:05 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
ABOUT WHAT POOR KIDS NEED
THAT SOMEHOW, WE DON'T?
Did you notice that, last month, Iowa started a school-choice program for low-income families based on simple tax credits for individuals who want to help poor kids get into the schools of their choice, public or private? Gov. Tom Vilsack signed the Educational Opportunities Act (EOA), allowing thousands of low-income Iowa students the chance to receive scholarships to attend a school of their parents' choice.
If that isn't the answer to the Omaha Public Schools' embarrassing controversy, and to the Class I schools disaster in rural Nebraska, I don't know what is. Note that the bill got broad bipartisan support through the Iowa legislature and was signed by a Democratic governor -- usually a puppet of the state teachers' union, the major foe of school-choice initiatives nationwide.
Meanwhile, if you whisper the phrase "school choice" in the Nebraska Unicam, everybody faints from hostility attacks, and yet we supposedly have a populist/conservative set of lawmakers with a Republican governor. Why? Because, paradoxically, they are all the puppets of our state teachers' union, which in turn is operating on irrational fear instead of taking the bold, public-spirited problem-solving stance that it should be taking. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Organizations such as the Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education worked with national school-choice groups to draft a law that allows a 65 percent tax credit for individuals who make contributions to approved school tuition organizations (STOs). They then distribute scholarships to families to be used at a school of their choice.
Families must have an income that is at 300 percent or below of the federal poverty level. STOs must spend 90% of funds raised on scholarships, and scholarships may not exceed tuition at the child’s private school.
The program will be capped at $2.5 million for 2006 and will rise to $5 million later.
You can read more about it on www.friedmanfoundation.org
Note this quote: “We’re seeing an important shift in the support for school choice,” said Robert C. Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. “More and more legislators, parents and opinion makers from all sides of the political spectrum are realizing that the ability to choose a school is a fundamental freedom and that there are immense moral implications that come from denying families educational choice.”
No kidding.
Posted
8:44 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
'WEIGHTED STUDENT FUNDING' PROGRAM
SOLVE PROBLEMS IN NEBRASKA?
We already "weight" state aid based on a few factors related to differences in learning challenges among students: low-income kids whose family incomes qualify for Title I federal education funding and free or subsidized lunch in school get more in state aid under the presumption that their learning needs are more complex.
That's debatable on its face: it could be that "weighted funding" distracts educators from their basic mission and mires them in all kinds of social experimentation because the money's there. Many wise people believe kids in poverty need fewer "services" from their schools, and more straightforward delivery of academics -- along the model of what inner-city parochial schools do. It's called "stickin' to one's knittin'."
Comes now a very respected organization, the Fordham Foundation, pushing "weighted funding" similar to Nebraska's system, only more fine-tuned. It's confusing, since Fordham usually is spot on in its school reform recommendations. But maybe it could help some of Nebraska's school financing problems. Take a look:
http://www.100percentsolution.org/fundthechild/index.cfm
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Posted
9:08 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
Found out today that Nebraska's newest teachers' college at Grace University in downtown Omaha already has 100 education majors enrolled after just one year in fully-accredited operation. They will be well-prepared to face some of the challenges in the classrooms of tomorrow better than most neophytes, because they are getting a faith-based college education. It's exciting! Hats off to the creative, up-to-date ed profs who are making it happen.
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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Posted
5:51 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
NATURALLY, IT'S A PRIVATE SCHOOL!
Footnote to my lament about how hard it is to get public school English departments to "get it" about the difference between schlock and good books: take a look at the summer reading selections by Omaha's Duchesne Academy. Wow! I love it! Wish more high schools would get kids hooked on books like these:
http://www.duchesneacademy.org/studentlife/summerread.php
Posted
10:55 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
Nebraska’s state education commissioner, Doug Christensen, is radiating a lot of angst these days. As our state ed department’s chief compliance officer, he’s in a fit over the U.S. Department of Education’s recent rebuke. The feds are saying that, under his leadership, Nebraska is not in compliance with federal education regulations on school quality, and it’s going to cost us some of our Title I federal funding.
The brouhaha all stems from the goofy accountability system that Christensen designed and railroaded across the state, and its inability to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind.
See www.nde.state.ne.us/documents/NCLBASSMTMRDMO70506.pdf for Christensen’s response to the feds, and their letter on www.nde.state.ne.us/documents/USDEASSMTLTR070506.pdf
Christensen has planted his feet and locked Nebraska in to his vision of what accountability should be. It doesn’t matter that the feds, plus most objective observers whose salaries are not paid by public schools, disagree that his system is the best. He has the power, and that’s that. Meanwhile, the public will, and the fortunes of the low-income children whose educations Title I funding is supposed to be helping, don’t matter one bit.
So what do we do now? There’s a simple answer: give him a nice buyout contract equal to the money the feds are withholding, and reorganize the way we govern K-12 education in Nebraska. That’s a cool $126,741 for Christensen, free and clear, plus his pension, which will be sizeable. He’s at retirement age. I bet he’d take it.
And in the long run, having an elected state schools chief would save us many, many times that amount. So we’d all be better off.
In a perfect world, we’d also withdraw from federal funding and get out from under the feducrats entirely . . . but let’s take one constructive step at a time.
We need to elect our state schools chief, pay him (or her) less money than we do now, and put him (or her) on an equal footing with the State Board of Education, instead of having an appointed state schools chief cracking the whip over the elected state board members, rendering them mere rubber stamps for whatever policies he (or she) would like to impose. That’s how we got into this embarrassing mess with our wacky assessment scandal.
It’s an opportune time: Nebraska has a black eye over our noncompliance with NCLB, the mess over OPS, the embarrassment over the Class I schools educratic terrorism, the shame of the equity lawsuits, the decades of a persistent and despicable chasm between educational attainment based on skin color and family income, and ongoing woes regarding escalating school spending and tax increases.
The natives are restless. Change is in the air. The best way to restore power to the people is to make their officials accountable to them, by making those officials elected, not appointed.
Last time I checked, Christensen’s salary was the highest among state government employees except for a few state psychiatrists – which paints a picture in itself. I think he was making around $125,000, but that was a few years ago. Plenty of people would be delighted to have his job for half as much. It would still be far more than most teachers make in this state, and certainly, the state schools chief should be making less than the governor and other constitutional officers, instead of so much more.
Most of all, instead of having an appointed state schools chief, we really need to be electing that person from now on. It’s long past time. All we’ve had in the last 25 years is more and more tangential regulation and more and more nonacademic mumbo-jumbo, because people who are insulated from the public – such as appointed educrats – can’t help but O.D. on compliance issues instead of education issues.
That’s what educrats do – obsess over regs and compliance.
But what we NEED is someone who will obsess over why poor kids aren’t doing as well in school and what we can do for them, and how we can save our priceless country schools, and how we can get more bang for the bucks that Nebraska taxpayers are forking over to our schools.
Those are huge issues, of crucial importance to the public, that Christensen hasn’t addressed. Why? Because he’s been so busy arm-wrestling with the feds over NCLB, and his own ego trip over his own weird design for Nebraska’s “study your own navel” assessment system.
No offense to Christensen, but if we want elected citizens to maintain control over our schools, we need someone who’s accountable to us in that job, instead of someone whose job description calls for him (or her) to just think up more regs and schmooze with other educrats and union wonks, with no need to give a rip what the people who pay his (or her) salary really want from our schools.
It’s unclear whether Christensen knows that the concerns he communicates to Nebraskans – standards, assessments, all-day kindergarten, globalism, increasing loss of privacy and increasing data collection on individual students and teachers – are all boilerplate for a nationalized school system. They’re the same issues being parroted all across the country. They’re not addressing Nebraska’s unique school needs, or the real challenges we face, at all. That’s what we get for having a state schools chief whose allegiances are to other state schools chiefs and feducrats, rather than listening to what Nebraska policymakers and the public want and need.
Christensen is in a no-win situation; we need to create a system of school leadership in which we all can win. We elect the governor; we elect the state treasurer; we elect all kinds of people to do all kinds of jobs on state, county and local levels. Why, oh why, wouldn’t we elect the person in charge of what may be our important governmental function, which is to preside over K-12 education?
We really need to elect the person who monitors and regulates our schools, because Big Government and special-interest groups, notably the labor unions, have stolen away local control from our school boards, local teachers and, most regrettably, local parents, taxpayers and voters.
Are we going to stand for that? Or do we have the guts to give Christensen a well-earned gold watch and a very nice retirement nest egg . . . and go back to the books on what we really want in the way of school leadership?
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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Posted
8:53 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
KILLING 'KILLING MR. GRIFFIN'
In the fall of our daughter’s seventh-grade year at the award-winning Westside Middle School in Omaha, Neb., I noticed a paperback book on top of her backpack. The title: “Killing Mr. Griffin,” by Lois Duncan.
Hunh. This must be what she’s reading for English class. Let’s take a look.
It flipped open to: “He’s an asshole.” (p. 50)
Whoops! I slammed it shut. Must be an aberration.
I flipped it open again. This time, my eyes beheld, “You’re sure in a shitty mood.” (p. 137)
WHAAAT?!? This is literature class for 12-year-olds? My tax dollars at work?
I speed-read the book, which was about a plot by nasty, sociopathic high-school kids to kidnap and kill a strict teacher, and the murder-arson coverup that followed. I recorded numerous objectionable phrases:
“Plan to kill the bastard” (p. 17)
“Oh, Christ” (p. 72, the first of several usages of “Christ” as a swear word)
“(O)n the way over here I got stopped by a pig cop” (p. 72)
“(N)ow, you shit, we’re going to make you crawl” (p. 82)
“(I)t’s just that Mark would be so pissed off” (p. 88)
“I will be burned alive” (p. 215)
Turns out it was one of four assigned novels for seventh-grade English that year. She wasn’t supposed to bring the book home; wonder why? Her class was almost done reading it. But I had to squawk.
Lousy, vicious, antisocial curriculum is the last thing today’s kids need in this day of increasing crime and violence. I had no idea how much the coarsened speech and dumbed-down content of TV had infected their schoolwork. We parents had to be vigilant about keeping our young teens away from violent and smutty movies, MTV and video games . . . and now we had to police their schoolwork, too?
Bottom line: what was educational, constructive, uplifting or enlightening about this book? Nothing. Who picked this book, and why?
I was very disappointed in Westside. I’d grown up in the same district and had enjoyed a fabulous literary education, studying many of the classics of American and world literature. English classes in that district had prepared me well to earn my bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Missouri and to conduct a career as a newspaper reporter and free-lance writer.
We had moved back into the same district expecting our children to get the same quality education; I had poured myself in to volunteering for the schools, raising money, and supporting the teachers and administrators with faithful service.
But it was gradually dawning on me that the excellence I had enjoyed as a kid was fading fast, despite skyrocketing expenditures, bond issue after bond issue, and glitzy facilities.
However, I held out hope. I was a “rah-rah.” They liked me. I’d bring this book to their attention, and surely they’d slap their foreheads, throw it out, and substitute – you know – Austen, Wordsworth, Browning, Twain, Dickens, Poe. . . .
But as the raven quoth, nevermore.
First the teacher, then the principal, looked at me saucer-eyed. “What’s WRONG with this book? That’s the kids’ world today. You’re just behind the times. We have to teach what’s relevant. They don’t have the vocabulary for the classics any more, and anyway, the classics aren’t meaningful to today’s seventh-graders. You’re the only one who’s ever complained. You’re a nasty censor. You’re attacking us! WAH! GO AWAY!!!”
I just kept asking, “Who picked this book, and why?”
I found out later that there was a Berkeley graduate with radical politics, new to the English department, with powerful relatives, who’d suggested it. Other staffers meekly went along with her. My query had exposed the unprofessional way curriculum wound up in front of students at that school. They were embarrassed.
So they stonewalled me. Their shields were up. It was groupthink, bigtime.
Advised to keep my concerns under the radar so as to not embarrass them any further, I went to the library and researched “Griffin” and the three other novels on the assigned reading list, which were just as bad. All four were written by women in the past 20 years; all four had “victimization” themes on genocide, suicide, euthanasia, racial violence and bigotry.
After about 20 hours of work, I turned in a report to school officials and a sympathetic school board member, including:
-- Detailed requests for reconsideration of educational materials on forms provided by the school;
-- Author biographies;
-- Critical reviews;
-- Photocopies of objectionable passages;
-- A list of classic books which covered the same basic themes with better writing, no profanity, no graphic violence, higher-level vocabulary, better plots and more vivid characterizations -- quality alternatives to each of the four books;
-- A list of the great books I had read at about that same age in the same district (including Aesop, Hawthorne, Tolstoy, Wilde, Stevenson, Kipling, etc.);
-- A list of 30 excellent literary classics available in inexpensive paperback at a nearby bookstore;
-- A summary of the “menu-driven” reading programs of other area middle schools that I hoped ours could emulate;
-- A copy of the orientation materials given to parents on Curriculum Night, which did not list the four assigned novels;
-- Suggestions such as giving parents a syllabus at the start of the school year so that it didn’t appear they were hiding what they were teaching;
-- A copy of the middle school’s “Summer Reading List” for the year before, which included two of the four assigned novels, meaning that some kids were reading the same books twice;
-- An article by a children’s literature professor about the connection between violence in the media – including school media -- and real-life violence;
-- I rented the most shocking movie of the past, “A Clockwork Orange,” and compared its profanity – six curse words – to the 27 in “Killing Mr. Griffin.”
After all that . . . nothing happened.
I finally took the matter public, which I probably should have done from the first. I ratcheted up the pressure by handing out a one-page fact sheet about these books at Open House. Finally, with other parents complaining, too, school officials set up a study committee. It was composed of all insiders who were financially dependent on the district’s good graces. I knew it was a sham, but at least it was better than nothing.
Five months later, the committee finally issued a brief, weak, poorly-worded report. They agreed that “Killing Mr. Griffin” was “inappropriate,” and should be removed from the curriculum. The other three bad books, however, they thought were dandy. The implication was: here, we’ll throw you a bone; now, go away.
So we did; we moved away. Our daughter and I had taken a lot of abuse, been subjected to rumors and gossip – including one howler, that I didn’t believe the Holocaust had ever happened (?) -- and had been mistreated and patronized by a school district we had supported and brought honor to.
We moved to a better district. I got along fine with the new English department, who miraculously know a real book from schlock.
Our three older kids graduated with honors and got bigtime college scholarships. The youngest is in a private Christian school; book selection is great, and life is rosy.
For years, I ran into parents and educators who thanked me for standing up to the powers that be. We agreed that parents need to be as careful with what schools are putting into our children’s hearts and minds as we are with the food we’re putting into their bodies. And if schools try to feed ‘em junk in the form of lousy books, you’ve got to squawk.
If enough of us do, we’ll prevail. Together, we can steer schools back to teaching kids the great stories of the ages . . . and we can all live happily ever after.
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Saturday, July 08, 2006
Posted
1:55 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
THE ANSWER TO NEBRASKA'S TWIN CONTROVERSIES
IN OPS AND CLASS I COUNTRY GRADE SCHOOLS
(from www.EducationNews.org)
School Choice Spreads with State Tax Credits
Saturday, July 8, 2006
By Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg
In 2001, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge battled with Democratic state legislators to create a corporate scholarship tax credit program to bring the state's families school choice. Five years later, Ridge's tax credit has strong bipartisan support and is a model for other states. And just this week, Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding the program.
The 2001 school choice law offers corporations tax incentives to fund private school scholarships and "school improvement" projects at public schools. Under the law, corporations can claim a tax credit of up to 75 cents per dollar for a one-year contribution and 90 cents for a two-year contribution.
Initially, the tax credit was capped at $20 million for private school scholarship donations and $10 million for public school donations. Since 2001, it has been has expanded, reaching an annual cap of $44 million in 2005.
Businesses have been eager to participate. Last year, contributions hit the cap for private school scholarships just days after tax credits became available, raising $44 million to help 27,000 students attend private schools.
But many more children could receive scholarships if more tax credits were available. In 2005, more than 500 companies were unable to participate because of the cap. Responding to this strong demand, this week Gov. Rendell agreed to support legislation that expands the tax credit program-with a new annual cap of $54 million, the expanded tax credit will pay for thousands of additional scholarships.
Gov. Rendell's support demonstrates growing bipartisan support for tax credit-based scholarships. Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann proposed doubling the cap for corporate contributions to Pennsylvania's scholarship program. Gov. Rendell's office responded by pointing to the governor's record of raising the cap in 2003 and 2005.
Across the country, corporate scholarship tax credits have become a popular way to expand school choice. The pioneer for this model was of Florida, which in 2001 was the first state to create a corporate tax credit for private school scholarship donations. Last year, the program helped 13,000 low-income students attend private schools. Following the success of Florida's and Pennsylvania's programs, states across the country are rushing to enact corporate scholarship tax credits.
This year, Arizona became the third state to create a corporate tax credit for scholarship donations. The Arizona law will allow $10 million in corporate scholarship tax credits this year and $21 million by 2010. And just last week, Rhode Island enacted a corporate scholarship tax credit, which, capped at $1 million annually, will offer businesses the same partial tax credits that are available in Pennsylvania. The Rhode Island legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
In the guise of tax credits, school choice is now gaining support among Democratic legislators, despite their party's resistance to most school choice measures. In New Jersey, Assemblywoman Nilsa Cruz-Perez, a Democrat from Camden, joined four other Democrat legislators to sponsor a corporate scholarship tax credit that would create private school scholarships for 4,000 low-income children in Camden, Newark, Orange, and Trenton. In Maryland, Sen. James E. DeGrange, a Democrat, joined with 19 bipartisan cosponsors to propose a corporate tax credit modeled after Pennsylvania's.
Next year, corporate scholarship tax credits will give nearly 50,000 children school choice scholarships. But millions more American children could benefit from the chance to attend better schools. In Philadelphia alone, an estimated 63,000 students attend persistently failing public schools.
When Gov. Ridge first proposed school choice for Pennsylvania, he envisioned school vouchers to help lower-income students attend private schools. While corporate tax credits have proven to be a successful path for expanding school choice, additional reforms-including vouchers, tuition tax credits, and education savings accounts-are needed to give all families the freedom to choose the best schools for their children. And as bipartisan support for corporate tax credits grows, these more ambitious school choice proposals may become possible. After all, all children deserve the opportunity to attend a high quality school that best meets their needs.
Dan Lips is an Education Analyst and Evan Feinberg is a Research Assistant at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org.
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Thursday, July 06, 2006
Posted
11:47 AM
by Susan Darst Williams
Nebraska just got another black eye by joining Maine as the only two states that have failed to comply with the testing requirements of the federal education law, No Child Left Behind (born as America 2000 some 20 years ago, renamed Goals 2000 in its teenage years under President Clinton, and now in its adult form as NCLB).
The ed feds have threatened to withhold $126,741 in administrative funding for the State Education Department if we don't toe the line and make the changes they demand.
Unlike most states, Nebraska has devised its own assessment system by letting individual school districts write their own tests. Also in an unusual move, Nebraska does not require graduating seniors to pass a statewide competency exam, nor does it compare how younger students are doing at various grade levels to each other, since every district's test is a little different.
It doesn't seem to matter to the feds that Nebraska students do OK on nationally standardized tests such as the ACT and the Stanford 9.
State Education Commissioner Doug Christensen sounds hopping mad about the way the feds have handled this, although it could be said that because of the unique, convoluted way Nebraska has gone about this, which is Christensen's baby, this embarrassment is kind of his fault.
The only happy ending? Withdraw Nebraska from all federal education funding for K-12 schools. Levels of federal funding have crept up from 0% to almost 9% in recent years. But we all know the feds aren't supposed to be involved in K-12 education in the first place, according to the U.S. Constitution (see the 10th Amendment).
Would it hurt too much to lose 9% of school funding overnight? Ironically, no -- because most federal funding is going for counterproductive, wacky stuff anyway.
Would it be worth it, to get out from under federal regs, except for basic health, safety and non-discrimination, of course?
In this corner, the answer is a resounding "yes."
Do I think the powers that be have the guts to do it? Well, let's just say it would be great to be pleasantly surprised!
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Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Posted
3:20 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
----------
Is the ‘Learning Community’
Just a Smokescreen For Higher Spending?
There’s a telling sentence in an article in the July / August American Enterprise magazine that should give pause to anyone who’s positive or neutral about the new “learning community” that’s being forged in the metropolitan Omaha area.
It makes a good case that the push toward centralized school management and school infrastructure that’s more removed from the voting public is a ruse to hide increasingly out-of-control school spending. That spending is caused by collusion -- so-called “middle-class racketeering” -- between educrats and self-serving parents and politicians on school boards and other decision-making bodies.
Written by Lewis M. Andrews, executive director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy in Hartford, Conn., the article contends that spending for special nonacademic programs in schools crowds out time for the 3 R’s in an era in which property tax collections nationwide have increased 23% from 2000 to 2004. It’s the old story: spending more . . . getting less.
The rationale for the “learning community” in Omaha is supposedly to be to achieve “racial equity” in schools. None of those involved in crafting the way the funding and management structures will work has promised that academic achievement of inner-city and minority kids will become equalized with white suburban kids. All they’re saying is that resources will be more “equitable.”
Translation: it’s a shell game . . . salaries and benefits will rise for educrats . . . the tax bite will get deeper and more painful . . . it’ll be much more difficult for voters and taxpayers to discern waste, fraud, mismanagement and corruption or force spending cuts . . . and poor kids will be no better off.
The article states: “The true costs of suburban education are obscured in many parts of the country by regionalized school systems, which tap a labyrinth of funding sources, including state income taxes, state and local sales taxes, casino gaming licenses, and lottery profits.”
The article, “A Coming Crisis in Suburban Schooling?” contends that schools are creating a shell game of complicated funding structures and redefining “quality education” as an increasingly broad array of nonacademic activities for both kids and families: subsidized day care, sports, subsidized summer camps, food courts, stadiums, observatories and computers and video equipment much costlier than private-sector adults are using.
The purpose: not to produce better-educated kids, but to “groom” local parents and politicians to keep the gravy train flowing for the educrats.
What’s the answer? On this Fourth of July, you’ll be happy to hear that it’s the same answer that’s always been true in these United States. Grassroots activism: shedding the light of day on reality to wake up the public. To arms! Or, in this case, to computer terminals and the Internet.
According to the article, taxpayer groups in Maine, Ohio, New Jersey and Texas have gotten property-tax reduction measures on the ballot, and forced politicians in Nevada, Iowa and Indiana to establish commissions on tax reductions.
Meanwhile, the legislatures in South Carolina and Virginia are considered annual levy caps, and in Connecticut, less than half of the school district budgets put before the public in referenda have been approved on the first vote. Note that in that state, the number of town taxpayer groups doubled from 25 to 50 in recent years, with increasingly sophisticated and effective websites, spreadsheets, policy papers and PR expertise.
Interestingly, the article suggests that an electorate with more taxpayers who don’t have school-age children is much harder to manipulate into overspending than a more “captive” audience, whose children are enrolled in the public schools and supposedly will benefit from the increased spending. So ironically, the “learning community” in Omaha might shift the balance of power away from suburban educators and their “insider parent” partners in a way that might benefit children as a whole. But that’s doubtful: the “learning community” is being designed to be well-insulated from accountability and influence from the general public, regardless of what that public might want. The only answer appears to be to stop it in its tracks.
Is it too late to stop the “learning community”? Not at all. Will anyone come forward and lead the charge to stop it? Doubtful, unless articles like this one are sent to every decision-maker and voter in the state. Otherwise, the “fix” appears to be on . . . and this is one that not even Ernie Chambers saw coming.
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