Posted 10:45 AM by Susan Darst Williams

OUR ONLY HOPE:
TIE TAX RATES TO KIDS READING AT GRADE LEVEL

I volunteer once a week as a writing mentor in an Omaha-area school with 80% low-income students. These are fourth-graders. They are darling, and I love working with them. But . . . I have to tell the truth about their academic skills. They stink.

Almost none of them can write a single declarative sentence without making an error. Most of them have trouble getting more than a few words down on paper even if you give them 20 or 30 minutes. Their handwriting is atrocious and they don't even form their letters correctly on paper. So no wonder their reading skills stink: they literally don't know what to look for, when it comes to decoding. They read aloud slowly, in a monotone, stumbling and stuttering, like drones.

These kids obviously have not been taught proper language skills, and boy, does it show. Meanwhile, they have been in the government school system now for five years, at an average cost per year of over $8,000. So for $40,000 invested so far, we get . . . THIS?!?

Consequently, I'm not surprised to learn statistics such as the latest one that's shocking honest citizens everywhere: Arne Duncan of Chicago, the education "guru" that President-Elect Obama has selected to be U.S. education secretary, has presided over massive school failure just like I'm seeing, and is likely to spread that misery even deeper in U.S. schools.

In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.

According to news reports, Duncan, whom Obama termed a "reformer," said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I'm also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country," Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.

Well, here's some REFORM we should try:

Let's adjust our local, state and federal tax rates to the percentage of students who read at grade level. The more students who can read at grade level, the more taxes the government schools will collect. The FEWER students who are made academically competent, the LESS money the government schools will get.

Doesn't that make perfect sense?

Hey -- you get what you pay for. Do you like what we're getting under education "systems" such as the one that Arne Duncan will no doubt try to spread out all over the land?

I sure don't. It's just one more reason to support the development of private schools, especially for low-income kids who need good curriculum and instruction the most of all.

Labels: Arne Duncan, reading at grade level, school tax reform

Posted 11:45 AM by Susan Darst Williams

Nebraska's Big Brain Drain:
Talk Talkey to the Young'Uns About It Over the Holidays

Here's a well-researched story from the Platte Institute for Economic Research on the fact that Nebraska ranks 10th in the nation in a negative category: the percentage of young, single, college-educated people who move away from the state.

Usually, it's job-related, but the impact is massive in areas such as law and engineering, where about half of the graduates take their well-educated brains and move away. About one-third are moving to bordering states, including Colorado.

The implications for Nebraska colleges and universities are vast, since it is their mission to use Nebraska tax dollars to develop future Nebraska leadership in business, the arts, academia and the professions.

The implications for Nebraska businesses are serious, since our future workforce is crucial to our future, period. And the implications for K-12 education are vast, since if our smartest graduates are moving away, how can our future teachers and students be the best that they can be?

As the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays approach, and families gather, the brain drain ought to be discussed among grandparents, parents and students interested in keeping the future as bright as possible in the Cornhusker State.

Kudos to the Nebraska-based think tank, the Platte Institute, for bringing this issue front and center:

www.platteinstitute.org/publications/graduations-reunions-remind-us-of-nebraskas-brain-drain-issue

Labels: brain drain, Platte Institute for Economic Research

Posted 8:49 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ANTI-AMERICAN BIAS
CREEPING INTO KIDDIE SONGS

Used to be that in any school, even if the classroom teachers and curriculum had gone sour with leftist, anti-American content, at least the music department was still politically neutral, if not pro-American and at least not hostile to Christianity. And around Thanksgiving and Christmastime, at least there would usually be one or two songs about our heritage that would be fun and inspirational for the kids to sing.

Not any more. We're coming up on Thanksgiving, which is the typical time to cover why the pioneers came to this country and settled here in the first place. It's also a great time to cover Native American content as well. There are all kinds of great songs about these major themes.

But . . . the resident third-grader came home all frowny-faced yesterday and said that they sang this really boring, long song about how there USED to be buffalo roaming all over the Plains, but then . . . WE KILLED THEM ALL!!!!!

Heyyyyy! That doesn't sound like very much fun. That doesn't make it sound like Americans are very good environmentalists or animal lovers, either. And she's the sensitive type: the last thing she or any other child needs nowadays is to be focused on violence and killing . . . in music class!!!

Yes, I'm going to track down what she was talking about and see if I can get those lyrics and share them with you. In the meantime, here's the list of folk songs that I'm going to share with the music teacher, principal and school board, if I'm understanding what happened correctly. Took me two seconds to find this list on the Internet.

Here's the list of positive alternatives I hope the music teacher will choose from next time:

CHILDREN'S SONGS

A Tisket, A Tasket
All the Pretty Little Horses
Bought Me A Cat (the cat pleased me)
Bingo
Did You Ever See A Lassie
Eency, Weency Spider
Farmer in the Dell, The
Hickory, Dickory Dock
Hokey Pokey, The
Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s ...)
Rockaby Baby (in the treetops, when the wind...)
If You’re Happy and You Know It
Looby Loo
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Muffin Man
Mulberry Bush
Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow
Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be?
Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone
Old John the Rabbit
Old MacDonald
Polly Wolly Doodle
Pop! Goes the Weasel
Ring Around the Rosies
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
There’s a Hole in the Bucket
This Little Light of Mine
This Old Man
Three Blind Mice
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Wheels on the Bus, The

FOLK SONGS

All Night, All Day
Amazing Grace
Aura Lee
Away in a Manger
Billy Boy
Camptown Races
Cindy
Clementine
Columbia, Gem of the Ocean
Cotton-Eyed Joe
Crawdad Song
Dixie
Down by the Riverside
Down in the Valley
Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill!
Erie Canal, The
Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd
Frog Went A-Courtin’, A
Go Down, Moses
Go Tell Aunt Rhody
Go Tell it on the Mountain
God of our Fathers
Goober Peas
Goodbye, Old Paint
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
Home on the Range
I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray
I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad
Jim Along, Josie
Blue Tail Fly, The
Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho
Kum Ba Yah
Liza Jane
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Oh, Susanna
Old Chisholm Trail
Old Folks At Home (Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away)
Onward Christian Soldiers
Over the River and Through the Woods
Rock-A-My-Soul
Shenandoah
Shoo Fly
Shortnin’ Bread
Simple Gifts
Silent Night
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Susie, Little Susie
Sweet Betsy From Pike
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Water is Wide, The
We Gather Together
When the Saints Go Marching In
You Are My Sunshine

PATRIOTIC SONGS

America
America, the Beautiful
Battle Hymn of the Republic
God Bless America
Marines’ Hymn (From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
Star-Spangled Banner, The
Caissons Song
This Land is Your Land
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Yankee Doodle
You’re A Grand Old Flag

RECOMMENDED SONG LIST

1. A Tisket, A Tasket (a green and yellow basket)
2. All Night, All Day (angels watchin’ over me, my Lord)
3. All The Pretty Little Horses (Hushaby, don’t you cry, go to sleep little baby,when you wake, you shall have )
4. Amazing Grace (how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me)
5. America (my country ‘tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty)
6. America, the Beautiful (Oh beautiful for spacious skies)
7. Away in a Manger (no crib for a bed)
8. Battle Hymn of the Republic (glory, glory hallelujah, His truth is marching on)
9. Billy Boy (Oh where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy)
10. Bingo (there was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o)
11. Blue Tail Fly, The (Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, my master’s gone away)
12. Caissons Go Rolling Along, The (over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail, as those)
13. Camptown Races, The (camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah)
14. Cindy (Get along home, Cindy Cindy, I’ll marry you some day)
15. Clementine (Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine)
16. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean (when born by the red, white, and blue, thy banners make tyranny tremble)
17. Crawdad Song (You get a line, and I’ll get a pole honey)
18. Did You Ever See A Lassie? (a lassie, a lassie, did you ever see a lassie go this way and that)19. Dixie (I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton)
20. Down By the Riverside (and study war no more)
21. Down in the Valley (valley so low, hang your head over)
22. Eency, Weency Spider (went up the water spout)23. Farmer in the Dell, The (hi-ho the dairy-o, the farmer in the dell)
24. Frog Went Courtin’, A (he did ride, with sword and pistol by his side aha, ho-ho)
25. Go Down, Moses (way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, let my people go)
26. Go Tell Aunt Rhody (the old gray goose is dead)
27. Go Tell it on the Mountain (over the hill and everywhere)
28. God Bless America (land that I love, stand beside her and guide her)
29. God of our Fathers (whose almighty hand)
30. Goober Peas (goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas)
31. Goodbye, Old Paint (I’m a-leaving Cheyenne)
32. He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands
33. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (so early in the morning)
34. Hickory Dickory Dock (the mouse ran up the clock)
35. Hokey Pokey, The (you put your right foot in, you put your right foot out)
36. Home on the Range (where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word)
37. Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird)
38. Rock-a-by Baby (in the treetops, when the wind blows the cradle will rock)
39. I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad (all the live long day)
40. If You’re Happy and You Know It (clap your hands)
41. Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho (and the walls came tumblin’ down)
42. Kum Ba Yah (my Lord, Kum Ba Yah)
43. Liza Jane (O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane, O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane)
44. Looby Loo (here we go looby loo, here we go looby light)
45. Marines Hymn (From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
46. Mary Had a Little Lamb (it’s fleece was white as snow)
47. Michael Row the Boat Ashore (hallelujah)
48. Muffin Man, The (oh do you know the muffin man)
49. Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow (do you or I or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow)
50. Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be? (Johnny’s so long at the fair)
51. Oh, Susanna! (oh don’t you cry for me)
52. Oh, Where has My Little Dog Gone? (oh where, oh where can he be)
53. Old Chisholm Trail (well come along boys and listen to my tale, let me tell you ‘bout my troubles on the)
54. Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swannee River, far, far away)
55. Old MacDonald (had a farm, e-i-e-i-o)
56. Onward Christian Soldiers (marching as to war)
57. Over the River and Through the Woods (to grandmother’s house we go)
58. Polly Wolly Doodle (oh I went down south for to see my Sal, singin’ polly wolly doodle all the day)
59. Pop, Goes the Weasel! (all around the cobbler’s bench the monkey chased the weasel)
60. Ring Around the Rosies (pocket full of posies)
61. Rock-A My Soul (in the bosom of Abraham)
62. Row, Row, Row Your Boat (gently down the sea)
63. She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain (when she comes)
64. Shenandoah (oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, away, you rolling river)
65. Shoo Fly (don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me for I belong to somebody)
66. Shortnin-Bread (mammy’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’)
67. Silent Night (holy night, all is calm, all is bright)
68. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (a long way from home)
69. Star-Spangled Banner, The (Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light)
70. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (comin’ for to carry me home)
71. Take Me Out to the Ballgame (buy me some peanuts and crackerjack, I don’t care if I ever get back)
72. There’s A Hole in the Bucket (dear Liza, dear Liza)
73. This Land is Your Land (this land is my land)
74. This Little Light of Mine (I’m gonna let it shine)
75. This Old Man (he played one, he played knick-knack on my drum)
76. Three Blind Mice (see how they run)
77. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (how I wonder what you are)
78. We Gather Together (to ask the Lord’s blessing)
79. Wheels on the Bus, The (go round and round)
80. When Johnny Comes Marching Home (again, hurrah, hurrah, we’ll give him a hearty welcome then, hurrah, hurrah)
81. When the Saints Go Marching In (oh how I want to be in that number)
82. Yankee Doodle (went to town riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap)
83. You are my Sunshine (my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray)
84. You’re A Grand Old Flag (you’re a high flying flag)

Labels: anti-American songs, environmentalism in school, song selection in schools

Posted 4:48 PM by Susan Darst Williams

WRITER HAS BILL AYERS PEGGED:
NOT A SCHOOL REFORMER,
BUT A 'SCHOOL DESTROYER'

Writer Sol Stern had a good Wall Street Journal article on the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad, radical education policies of William Ayers, the uninvited speaker at the University of Nebraska College of Education, in CASE there is any doubt left that Ayers should never be listened to by anyone who wants to improve the academic achievement of disadvantaged kids:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122411943821339043.html

Glad to learn that Stern has a book coming out on Ayers and his "social justice" philosophies. That'll be a good read. Here's hoping some Nebraskan will get a copy in the hands of each N.U. College of Ed poohbah who wanted him to come and speak. They'll rue the day!

Labels: social justice education, University of Nebraska, William Ayers

Posted 9:42 AM by Susan Darst Williams

Three-Item Agenda to End-Run Ayers, Ed Schools,
And Others Who Would Radicalize Our Kids

1. Get rid of the U.S. Department of Education before it radicalizes our schools a la William Ayers' philosophies.

2. Get rid of the teaching certificate as a prerequisite to getting a teaching job in a K-12 school, since it is a sort of litmus test for kowtowing to Marxist principles of "bash the past and The Three C's -- Constitution, Capitalism and the Church."

3. Get rid of the education major at the University of Nebraska and other big crank-'em-out teachers' colleges. Instead of indoctrinating future teachers in left-wing philosophies that will end up radicalizing schools to the point where they teach our kids nothing but politics, we can have English majors and math majors and science majors and child psychology majors in classrooms teaching . . . gasp! dare I say it? . . . actual, quality content instead of politicized mush.

Why are these three simple steps so necessary? Because the University of Nebraska College of Education isn't the only teachers' college in the land having an unbelievably stupid, self-defeating romance with the cultural Marxism of William Ayers.

Thanks to Regent Randy Ferlic and other leaders with common sense, Ayers' invitation to speak at the N.U. ed school's big event this weekend was rescinded. But Ayers and others are still protesting that he is an important guru with good ideas for K-12 education.

HAH!

According to reports about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers and President-elect Obama were supposed to employ ($150 million or thereabouts) to help the academic progress of inner-city Chicago kids in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but which improved their academic progress not a whit, here's what the money DID do:

-- Formed "site-based management councils" in inner-city Chicago schools, composed mostly of parents, negating the policy power of an elected school board or the college-trained staff in the central office. Therefore, the rabble got in charge of the decision-making and how the money was spent. Can you spell C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N? It was supposed to transfer power to the parents, which could be a good thing, if the parents deserved that power. But few, if any, of them had any leadership ability, much less knowledge of how to teach kids reading, writing and 'rithmetic. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism.

-- Got rid of most of the Caucasian principals in those troubled schools and replaced them with principals who were by and large African-American. The only reason the white principals were canned is that they were white. That might not be so bad, if only the new principals were better-skilled than the old ones. But they were not. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism.

-- Instead of teaching the teachers the ideas of content-based, politically-neutral education leaders such as E.D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch and others, the only education "thinkers" that the Ayers group permitted to be heeded were "constructivists" who don't believe in teaching kids anything directly, but just allowing them to hang out at school and soak up the knowledge and skills by hook or by crook -- to "construct" their own knowledge bases. Which, of course, doesn't work worth a dang. The ed "thinkers" that Ayers and others promulgate on unsuspecting teachers include Paola Freire, Henry Giroux and Jonathan Kozol, all of whom say that traditional America hates and oppresses people of color, that capitalism and our constitutional republic need to be overthrown, and that little kids in school ought to write nasty letters criticizing state senators and members of Congress telling them what they should do, or else. And THIS is what the teachers are getting trained to believe, instead of the rules of spelling, how to teach rounding, how classic American literature of hundreds of years ago covered the same hot topics as our TV shows today, and THAT kind of stuff. Noooo. All the "old" stuff had to go. In its place: political propaganda. No wonder the schools made no progress. This is Marxism!

Here's a pretty good article on this whole "social justice" curriculum, bringing in the element of multiculturalism, which also is part of the Ayers radicalization, and is infecting our schools in a bad way:

www.the-two-malcontents.com/2008/10/23/beyond-%E2%80%98taco-night%E2%80%99-barack-obama-and-the-frightening-future-of-critical-multicultural-education/

Posted 4:57 PM by Susan Darst Williams

Charters: 12/15 Best Schools Serving Poor in California;
KIPP Schools: Even Leftist Educators Concede Kids Do Better In Them;
So WHY Are Nebraskans Or Anybody Else Still Talking About Bill Ayers?!?

I reported several times this past month that the reason the University of Nebraska College of Education should never have invited unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers to speak at its big wingding is that he isn't really an educator. Can you spell L - O - S - E - R?!?!

His multi-million dollar "education" program that he and President-Elect Barack Obama both participated in, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was just another kind of . . . well . . . bomb. According to its own final report, published in 2003, it had "little impact on student outcomes." Total spent: $150 million. But it didn't help kids. Sheesh. See:

www.ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf

But the Ayers invitation / disinvitation is still making news in Nebraska. Why, oh why?

Note what the N.U. College of Education, the Education Committee of the Unicameral, the State Board of Education, and the Omaha Public Schools STILL don't seem to grasp:

CHARTER SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL CHOICE ARE THE ANSWER FOR POOR KIDS!

Comes now a Los Angeles Times story dated Nov. 11 by Mitchell Landsberg that reports that 12 of the top 15 public schools in California serving poor kids are charter schools. That's based on standardized test results, and poverty levels reflected by a minimum of 70% of the student body having low enough family incomes to be on free or reduced-price lunch programs.

How could this be? The charter school officials quoted said that the kids are motivated to succeed because the public schools they were in before were failing them. And distractions were at a minimum, because unlike those former public schools, the charter schools focused on math and language arts, and not all that social engineering stuff like Bill Ayers likes to teach.

Also note another new report that's out from education policy wonks Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, Columbia University, and Kevin Welner, University of Colorado-Boulder -- both left-wing strongholds -- but these two concede that the charter schools and private schools run by the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) are doing a better job with the same tough-to-teach disadvantaged students as the traditional public schools.

Detractors of KIPP say that they "cream" the best students from local low-income schools in order to look good on paper. But these left-wing wonks didn't find that. In fact, they said KIPP kids are more likely to have done WORSE in their former schools than average, and were more likely to be of color than Caucasian. Also, the wonks reported, if a student gets into KIPP and stays in KIPP, the student will have a better outcome, than if the student stays in the more-expensive traditional public school.

The only problems they cite are high student and teacher turnover, but those are problems overall in the low-income neighborhoods and nothing to do with KIPP per se.

Read about it on:

www.epicpolicy.org/publication/outcomes-of-KIPP-Schools

What don't we have in Nebraska?

Charter schools and KIPP schools.

We don't have Bill Ayers, either, which is a start. But let's hope the ed bigwigs begin to grasp some of these concepts soon, before we lose a whole 'nother generation to educational malpractice.

Labels: Bill Ayers, charter schools, KIPP

Posted 5:13 PM by Susan Darst Williams

Labels: Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Teacher bullies child over McCain

Posted 1:06 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GERING: 80% REDUCTION IN SPECIAL ED REFERRALS:
AND ALL IT TOOK WAS TO TEACH READING RIGHT!

Look at the fantastic success that the Gering, Neb., schools have enjoyed in improved reading achievement! New special education cases have been reduced by 80% because, at long last, the kiddies are being taught to read correctly. This is since Gering started a phonics-ONLY reading instructional program in elementary schools:

www.sraonline.com/download/DI/EfficacyReports/GeringSchools_DI.pdf

Can you imagine how much money the Omaha Public Schools would save by reducing its enormous special education rolls by 80%? Special education is the most expensive way to educate kids, and the fastest-growing educational spending category. Wouldn't it be great to reverse that disturbing trend?

This proves what I've been saying for years, that the vast majority of the students who are labeled "special ed" or "learning disabled" simply were not taught to read properly.

There is nothing wrong with their brains -- or there WASN'T, until they were literally addle-pated by Whole Language reading instruction. That's what most schools in Nebraska are still using, despite great news like this about phonics-ONLY instruction.

That's the bad news. The GOOD news is, even current special ed students can be brought up to speed in a relatively short amount of time with good curriculum like Gering selected . . . saving taxpayers countless millions of dollars, since costly remediation, re-remediation, and re-re-remediation won't be needed any more.

And in the future, kids won't be stigmatized and depressed with a bogus special ed label, which is the best news of all.

Wake up, educators, and give kids what they need in those early grades: PHONICS!

Labels: Gering, phonics, reduce special ed

Posted 12:57 PM by Susan Darst Williams

KUDOS TO JIM ENRIGHT:
FINALLY, A CONSERVATIVE ON THE OPS BOARD

What a breath of fresh air! Someone whose lips can actually form the words "cut school spending" has been elected to the board of the Omaha Public Schools.

Jim Enright will do a great job of pointing out ways that the state's largest school district could cut spending on programs that are not cost-effective. He's a fan of charter schools, and of making much-needed nonclassroom spending cuts. He's wise, soft-spoken and determined, a great combination for a school board member.

Here's hoping his success and leadership will inspire other good people with common sense to run for school boards across the state. We need more Jim Enrights, who can balance the legitimate needs of the schools with the best interests of taxpayers.

Labels: Jim Enright, Omaha Public Schools board

Posted 11:11 AM by Susan Darst Williams

OMAHA ED STATS POINT TO
A BETTER CHANCE FOR KIDS WITH
A PRESIDENT McCAIN

A teacher friend shared some statistics in the Community Action Plan developed by Building Bright Futures. That's a nonprofit education organization that plans to use grants to fight poverty and support inner-city schools in their efforts to keep at-risk students in school.

The statistics are pretty alarming, and they point to a key fact with next Tuesday's election coming up:

Presidential candidate John McCain is for school choice and other fresh, new ways of meeting the educational needs of low-income students bubbling up from the private sector.

His opponent, Barack Obama, would route all his suggested interventions through the federal government. And that's even though the federal government has a terrible track record on education (Head Start has wasted billions, Title I has wasted billions, the racial achievement gap has widened since the 1960s, etc.). Plus, according to the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government isn't even supposed to be INVOLVED in education.

My teacher friend said that the challenges she faces every day in her inner-city classroom would stun a horse. Now, she's a very sharp person and a very good teacher. If she feels that way, I don't see any way possible that public schools are going to be able to make anything close to improvement for most kids, given how ineffective they appear to be now.

It's obvious there needs to be diversity in our schooling approaches, the same way we have diversity in restaurant choices: big? little? locally-owned? part of a national chain? ethnic specialties? casual or formal? Why shouldn't parents be able to make those same kinds of choices when they decide where to place their child for school? It's a good question.

That makes sense to me, and it shows more and more how the socialistic Learning Community that we're moving toward -- if it remains in place and isn't knocked out by the courts -- would create a whole bunch of McSchools. They would all be on the same too-long school calendar, using the same no-good school curriculum and instructional methods, failing the same at-risk kids. And they would be giving us the same disappointing statistics like these for the $10,000+ per pupil per year that we taxpayers spend . . . because it's the SYSTEM that's the problem, not the kids.

But, anyway . . . you decide. Here are the stats on low-income students in Douglas and Sarpy Counties. This is what we have. Decide for yourself how likely we are to be able to change these stats by staying with the system we now have. Decide whether to vote for more of the same system (Obama), or real change through school choice (McCain):

-- One-third of low-income students cannot read or do math at grade level by mid-elementary school.

-- Half will drop out.

-- Of the 1,131 African-American students who entered kindergarten in a recent year, only 99 will go on to graduate from college, and far fewer than half of those are males.

-- Of 1,045 Latino students entering kindergarten, only 76 will go on to graduate from college.

-- Nearly one in three Omaha Public Schools 9th graders, 29%, are off track for graduation because they have failed core courses.

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, Omaha education statistics

Posted 1:39 PM by Susan Darst Williams

Who SHOULD the N.U. Educators Invite to Speak?
Here Are Five Great School Reformers Who Deserve the Mike

The N.U. College of Education and Human Sciences leaders were not the brightest lights in the candelabra when they invited unrepentant terrorist William Ayers to be keynote speaker at the N.U. Teachers College's upcoming 100th anniversary celebration.

Now they have to come up with somebody else, quick. And it'd better be somebody good.

Considering that Nebraska has one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation, ideas for how to plug it might be a pretty focus for that speaker. Ayers and Obama proved totally impotent on that, even armed with $150 million of other people’s money to throw around in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which did nothing.

So who else could N.U. invite? Is there anybody out there who has proven how to help disadvantaged kids do better in school . . . without setting bombs, committing treason against the United States, or trying to kill anybody? Well, let’s see:

-- Another Chicagoan, only a REAL educational hero, Marva Collins. She started a private school for inner-city Chicago kids in 1975 with $5,000 of her own money. At the end of her first year, every single student tested at least five grade levels higher. Almost all of her students, who come from the lowest socioeconomic groups, manage to go on to college, including the Ivy League. Mrs. Collins has inner-city fourth-graders reading (and understanding!) Plato. And she speaks all over the country about how schools could cut the baloney, and start TEACHING again, to make a huge difference for kids. So she's pro-American, her educational style is very inexpensive, and she gets results. What a concept!

-- Former Chicago school superintendent Paul Vallas, who has acknowledged that the Obama-Ayers ed project in Chicago was an utter failure, is now trying to patch up the absolute mess that the lefties and Hurricane Katrina made of the New Orleans school system. He got there to find 97% African-American populations in the public schools, and 75% poor and on free or reduced-price lunch. What he has developed is so exciting and creative, it would be a slam-dunk to fix the failing schools within the Omaha Public Schools. Instead of a top-down, command-and-control structure like OPS now has, with no room for educational entrepreneurship, New Orleans is using a "Diverse Providers Strategy." There’s school choice, charter schools, magnet schools, plenty of freedom for principals of schools that are doing great or OK, and increasing focus and control over principals of schools that are still failing. There are tons of sharp young teachers from Teach For America, too – another fantastic school reform that’s in 1,000 schools across the country but not a single one in Nebraska. Why not get that going -- try what's working elsewhere? Again, what a concept!

-- Florida education commissioner Eric J. Smith is an expert in using quality curriculum to improve the academic achievement of all student groups, especially the disadvantaged. In 10 years, using back-to-the-basics curriculum, Florida has lifted the quality of its educational delivery so high that Florida Hispanic students now score higher on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than the mostly-white, overall, total student populations of 15 other states. And all it took was good curriculum?!? What a concept!

-- Lance Izumi is a California researcher who found that low-income students could still be high-achieving with inexpensive, cost-effective educational practices. Examples: learning to read with phonics, and concentrating on computation mastery to get ready for algebra instead of way-out “rainforest math” activities in grade school such as most public schools use today. His report, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools in California, documented that there is no correlation between higher student achievement, and higher spending and higher teacher salaries. It's not the money; it's the curriculum and the expectations! We don’t need mountains of more money?!? What a concept!

-- Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin are teachers who started the KIPP Academy (Knowledge is Power Program) in inner-city Houston in 1994, got funding from Doris and Don Fisher of Gap Inc., and by 2007, their inexpensive, common-sense methods have spread to 66 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving 16,000 students, almost all low-income and minorities. While only 20% from that sociodemographic group typically go on to college, among KIPP students, the percentage is 80%. Wow! Of course, we desperately need programs like KIPP in Nebraska, and don't have a single one. N.U. could pave the way by inviting them here to speak. What? Invite GOOD guys, who have succeeded in real life? Not washed-up, educationally bankrupt terrorists? Educators who've actually helped people, not hurt them, to come and speak and inspire? What a concept!!!

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Dave Levin, Eric J. Smith, KIPP, Lance Izumi, Marva Collins, Mike Feinberg, Paul Vallas

Posted 12:28 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW MUCH WAS HILLARY PAID?
WAS IT A NET GAIN, OR NET LOSS, FOR LOW-INCOME KIDS?

I always cringe when local reporters fail to report how much a political big shot is paid to come to Omaha to speak, ostensibly for "charity." Hillary Clinton was in town for the major fund-raiser of the year for Girls Inc., followed immediately by a rally for Barack Obama, both at the Qwest, and yet she still didn't really draw all that many people and I'm afraid Girls Inc. didn't make all that much money.

Who paid Mrs. Clinton's speaking fee? How much? And did Mrs. Clinton donate any of it back to Girls Inc.? That's not private information. There's a tax deduction involved, so we should know.

I reported yesterday that only a tiny percentage of African-American kids in Nebraska can read at grade level, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Obviously, we have a huge, huge problem, and we need to focus on it, bigtime. Think what a nice infusion of cash aimed right at phonics instruction would do for inner-city kids right now.

But noooo. The big bucks went to Hillary. I bet Susie Buffett picked up the tab for Hillary, and I bet it was more than the reported $150,000 that Sarah Palin has spent on campaign clothing. Susie's father, Warren, is on board the Obamamobile and reportedly Susie B. has given money to Clinton funds in the past, as well as having had an Obama sticker on her gorgeous car for a long, long time.

So this one feels a little bit like a political payback or, if you will, polite society's equivalent of "hush money."

But who knows? Maybe Hillary spoke for free. Too bad the reporter didn't demand to know. These Girls Inc. speakers in recent years have been so politicized, heavily along leftist / U.N. lines, which is disappointing. We can make a very good case that it is the leftists and the anti-American crowd whose policies have kept low-income people in dire straits, dependent on big government and lousy schools. Yet Girls Inc. keeps giving the leftist leadership the bully pulpit. It's all very confusing.

Another reason we, the people, have a right to know how much Hillary got: whoever underwrote the speech got a tax deduction for giving the money to Girls Inc., to pay the speaking fee. That technically takes revenue out of taxpayers' pockets and gives it to Hillary Clinton. That's how the big shots launder money, and wind up with a tax deduction for what is essentially a political action. Perfectly legal, but let's say the speaking fee was $250,000: how many books and teacher work-hours could that have given inner-city kids in Omaha?

Well, hmm. According to the IRS Form 990 of Girls Inc., Susie Buffett gave that agency $699,362 last year, but you can't tell how much of it was to underwrite the main fund-raiser last year. I'd guess a lot. So I'm guessing the Hillary fee was well upwards of $100,000. But just don't know.

Now, I'm the first to applaud Susie Buffett for helping fund good after-school programs for middle school kids in inner-city Omaha. We share that conviction: see my other website, www.AfterSchoolTreats.com But I'm dismayed by her early childhood ed initiatives, since the research shows that government-provided early childhood ed is a colossal waste of money, and believe a big reason kids are struggling academically in OPS is because our Head Start and early childhood programs, such as she funds, have failed to focus on early literacy, and instead have slipped into wasteful, politicized social engineering.

Anyway . . . in the past, Girls Inc. has had Desmond Tutu and former President Clinton; Clinton's going rate for a speaking fee has been reported at $280,000, with a topper of $450,000 at a London charity event for Renu Mehta in 2006, if you remember that debacle.

The whole thing just reminds me of the unbelievable amount of money that Vin Gupta lavished on the Clintons, when there are so many starving mouths to feed, and starving brains to nourish, too, right here in our old hometown. It's just so sad.

You can see the IRS Form 990 of Girls Inc. at http://girlsincomaha.org/pdf/51_2007%20Form%20990.pdf

Anyway . . . just wondering.

Labels: Girls Inc., Hillary Clinton, speaking fee

Posted 9:39 AM by Susan Darst Williams

AHA! FORMER CHICAGO SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT VALLAS
CONFIRMS THAT THE OBAMA-AYERS ED PROJECT BOMBED

Paul Vallas, now the superintendent of "recovery" schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, was the chief ed guy in Chicago when Bill Ayers wrote the grant to establish the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Barack Obama ended up as board chairman, presiding over the distribution of the eventual $150 million or so that was supposed to help inner-city Chicago kids learn better.

In a Monday story in the New York Post, though, Vallas confirmed that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a complete failure that did nothing for kids. Read the story here:

www.nypost.com/seven/10202008/news/politics/f_for_baracks_school_fix_134391.htm

Read the final report of the Challenge, too, which I posted last Friday. It concludes on p. 1 of the executive summary that the project had "little impact on student outcomes." THAT'S the best face they could put on it?!?

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf

For an eye-opening look at how radical Ayers' education philosophies really are, spend some time on the following blog as well. Author: Steve Diamond. Don't know him, but his research looks good.

It details how the millions in the Challenge in Chicago were sidetracked away from schools, and into community activist groups such as ACORN and others. The goal was to build political capital and favors for Obama, instead of doing what was necessary to improve the students' reading, writing and arithmetic skills:

http://globallabor.blogspot.com

Apparently, Obama funded Ayers' Small Schools Workshop project, whose main goal was to strip elected school boards of any semblance of power in Chicago, and instead set up "site-based management councils."

These are eerily like the "soviets" that ran the former Soviet Union -- little collectives where groupthink and "consensus" overruled professional practice and intelligent decisionmaking.

In Chicago, the distressed inner-city schools were run by "councils" that had a majority of inner-city parents. They thus could outmuscle principals and teachers on every issue. Indeed, reportedly almost all white principals wound up fired in inner-city Chicago, because of these "mini-soviets" that the Ayers plan set up. Elected school boards, and longtime professional educators, were pushed out of the loop. And the schools got even WORSE.

That's what Ayers means by "community empowerment." Not a dollar of it went for instruction and educational improvement. The power shifted to the rabble, whose favor was bought with someone else's money.

It was educational communism in action. And Chicago's inner-city schools are doing even worse today than they did before.

Ohhhh! THAT'S where we get the expression "The Little RED Schoolhouse"!!!

Again, we salute University of Nebraska Regent Randy Ferlic for blowing the whistle on the invitation from N.U.'s College of Education and Human Sciences to Ayers to come and speak at the 100th anniversary celebration next month. Hope everybody else wakes up about the Obama connections to Ayers and others like him, before Election Day.

Labels: Ayers, Ayers Barack Obama N.U. College of Education queer studies, Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Vallas

Posted 3:19 PM by Susan Darst Williams

TEACHER MAGAZINE BLOG POSTER
SAYS NEBRASKA'S COVERING UP BAD ED FOR MINORITY KIDS;
DO 75% OF OUR AFRICAN-AMERICAN KIDS READ WELL?
OR 9%? WHAT A CREDIBILITY GAP!!!

I was trying to watch a video of the debate yesterday between the education advisors of the two Presidential candidates (Lisa Graham Keegan for John McCain, and Linda Darling-Hammond for Barack Obama).

Somehow, I got put onto a blog by a teacher, Anthony Cody, that's attached to Education Week. I can't post it because you have to be a paid subscriber to read it. But the statistics it reveals points out the urgent need to elect McCain -- because his administration will permit school choice -- rather than Obama, whose policies would continue to trap disadvantaged children in a hopeless cycle of failure.

This blogger carried an article about Nebraska's ex-commissioner of education, Doug Christensen, and in reading the comments attached to that article, I got my consciousness raised, bigtime, about education in Nebraska:

One of the commenters after the story, "Judy," says that the Nebraska assessment system, STARS, "has been used to cover up the serious educational neglect of poor and minority students."

She pointed out that, according to the assessments prepared and given by Nebraska teachers, 75% of Nebraska's African American students were scored as reading on grade level in 4th grade. That sounds great!

But on the same kinds of tests on the same age of students, given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, for which the questions are prepared by professional test-writers, NOT local Nebraska teachers, just 9% of African American students were actually reading on grade level.

Holy schmoly! Our local teachers say 75% are doing great, but an objective, national measurement says only 9%.

For Latinos in the same age group, the poster continued, the same incredible gap showed up: 80% of Latino fourth-graders were said by Nebraska teachers to be reading A-OK, while on the NAEP, just 12% of the Latino readers were judged to be working at grade level in reading.

This is unbelievable! This is unconscionable! I've written about the gap between statewide and nationally-derived test scores before, but I guess I've never seen them laid side by side in such stark contrast.

She concluded, "The long term consequences of this neglect is reflected in the fact that in Nebraska only 39% of African American students graduate from high school on time as opposed to 83% of white students."

It's so terrible, and so terribly embarrassing, I really can't stand it. Either our teachers and curricula are so racist and biased against children of color that they simply can't learn in our school systems . . . or our Nebraska teachers are so poorly trained, mostly by the University of Nebraska system, that they can't assess their students' academic abilities with any accuracy, even in the all-important area of reading.

This kind of stuff is why I truly believe we need to vote AGAINST every single incumbent this election cycle who has had anything to do with education of significant numbers of children of color, and start over with some honest, fresh faces.

That means don't vote for any incumbent for the school boards at OPS or LPS, and probably don't vote for the state senators who have been incumbents over the past many years and have stood for this travesty.

And it's just one more good reason to vote for McCain, who is a big proponent of school choice (Obama is totally against it), to let parents of children suffering from this incredible disparity of achievement to get out of the public schools that are failing them, and into the private schools where they stand a better chance of getting educated.

Labels: NAEP, Nebraska STARS, Racial achievement gap

Posted 8:31 PM by Susan Darst Williams

N.U.'s Bruce Johansen Gets Egg on Face
With a Twisted Defense of Bill Ayers

Point of order in the attempted defense of Bill Ayers by University of Nebraska at Omaha communications professor, my one-time colleague, Bruce Johansen. Sigh! When are these university employees EVER going to learn to research first, and THEN write? Sheesh.

In The World-Herald today, Johansen pleaded for Ayers' "free-speech rights," painting him as a brave warrior for truth and justice who just happened to have an unpopular view, and the "far right" threw its money around to shut him up.

Wrongaroni. Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist and mad bomber, and the final report of the biggest education project he ever embarked upon, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, admits that the $150 million project had NO EFFECT on student outcomes (see last weekend's posting on this). It was, in other words, another bomb.

But then Johansen threw a bomb of his own, attempting to defend Ayers by dropping the name of fired University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill as another "hate object" of the right. Yeah! Like Ayers, he was a great guy and brave liberal who just happened to have a different opinion about things than they do.

Also wrongaroni. Ward Churchill was fired for fabricating research, falsifying sources, and plagiarizing other researchers. Like Ayers, he has a total goose egg in the credibility department. Read about it here. He sued, and the case is expected to come to trial next March. Hardly anybody thinks he has a chance. But we'll see.

I remember this, because someone once told me that Churchill reported that the U.S. Army killed hundreds of thousands of Native Americans by giving them smallpox-infected blankets on purpose in the 1800s. I believed that for years, and felt terrible. When Churchill’s horrendous charge came out after 9/11, that the people killed in the Towers deserved to die because they were somehow "little Eichmanns," a big academic investigation about him ensued. And it came out that he had MADE UP the small story. His plagiarisms and fabrications went on and on. I was really mad to have been deceived. Hell hath no fury like a researcher who's been lied to.

But Johansen, who's not such a bad guy, really, apparently didn't know all this. So he laid an egg with his attempted defense of one bad egg by pointing to another bad egg. Which just makes N.U. professors look even WORSE, sad to say. And one more thing about your defense of Ayers and his "free speech rights," Mr. Johansen: there are many, many ways to exercise one's free-speech rights WITHOUT hurting anyone or anybody's property. Violence is never right. Hatred and selfish deception are always wrong. Can we agree?

Ayers is a loser, a hater and a criminal. Churchill is a loser, a hater and a cheater. In the marketplace of ideas, Mr. Johansen, I'd say you let yourself get robbed. As for those two creeps: NO SALE!

Labels: Bill Ayers, University of Nebraska, Ward Churchill

Posted 9:52 AM by Susan Darst Williams

N.U./AYERS FLAP:
TWO MORE POINTS

So Barack Obama says a few weeks ago that he didn't really know murderous Marxist terrorist Bill Ayers, but that he was "just a guy in my neighborhood."

How inconvenient that a blogger has turned up a review of a book by Ayers, written by one Barack Obama in 1997, and published in the Chicago Tribune.

Note that the Ayers book also mentioned Obama, along with Louis Farrakhan and other jolly pals. Oh, what a tangled web we weave! Here's the World Net Daily link:

www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78640

Also inconvenient, for the N.U. College of Education staff who selected and then hurriedly de-selected Ayers, now an education professor for the University of Illinois at Chicago, to be the keynote speaker at the Teachers College 100th anniversary, is that Ayers also is a big hustler for "queer studies" for little kids.

According to radio talk show host Jan Mickelson of Des Moines' WHO (www.whoradio.com), Ayers is one of the back-cover endorsers of the book The Queering of Elementary Education, a how-to book for homosexual activism in grade schools.

Subversion . . . perversion . . . it's all the same thing, eh?

Labels: Ayers Barack Obama N.U. College of Education queer studies

Posted 6:10 PM by Susan Darst Williams

OBAMA-AYERS-ACORN SYSTEM
OF 'RADICALIZING' EDUCATION

Ooh. Here's a good backgrounder to read if you want to know what is meant by "radicalizing" education in America.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is in the thick of things with his associate, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, recently ix-nayed from giving a speech at the University of Nebraska College of Education, thank goodness.

Ayers as grantwriter and Obama as board chairman "radicalized" schools in Chicago using the $150 million of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (the original $49.2 million grant that Ayers got was a 2:1 challenge match, enlarging the overall take). It was supposed to help disadvantaged kids do better in school. Instead, the money was sprinkled around to individuals and groups -- including to Ayers for "teacher training" -- who would then come under Obama's spell as a "community organizer."

This is how radical ideas get pushed on teachers and students, such as "military budgets snatch food from the mouths of poor children," and "homelessness is the fault of corporate America."

This is how we get charts in math textbooks and on standardized tests that supposedly are about how to read a bar chart, but look closer: they show a slanted take on income distribution in America, with an eye toward fomenting political pressure to force a "fairer" distribution of material and human resources -- i.e., stirring up class warfare with a direct goal of instilling communism, through school curricula and activities.

If Obama is elected, this is what schools from coast to coast will be doing.

Read this and share it, please:

www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html

Labels: Ayers, Barack Obama, radicalizing education, University of Nebraska

Posted 4:34 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ANOTHER PIECE OF PROOF
THAT THE AYERS/OBAMA PROJECT
WAS AN EDUCATIONAL BOMB

Here's an Investor's Business Daily article that reiterates how bad the Bill Ayers / Barack Obama Chicago Annenberg Challenge was.

The same publication described Ayers' office door at his teachers' college in Illinois, with pictures of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, Che Guevera, and Malcolm X. Nice group of role models for children there. Sheesh.

But the utter failure of the $49.2 million Annenberg Challenge in inner-city Chicago schools is an even better reason to exclude Bill Ayers from speaking at the University of Nebraska College of Education than his past as a traitorous, murderous terrorist:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308875824685359

Labels: Ayers, Barack Obama, Chicago Annenberg Challenge, University of Nebraska

Posted 11:00 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HAS UNL'S EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
LOST OUR TRUST?

Over the weekend on this blog, I pointed out that the final report of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is online and states that it did nothing -- NOTHING! -- to help low-income Chicago kids read, write and figure, after $49.2 million in extra cash donated from the estate of the late Walter Annenberg.

You'll recall that, former Weatherman murderous terrorist and now education professor Bill Ayers, and Presidential candidate Barack Obama, were both intricately involved in that project. Ayers wrote the grant, and Obama was the chairman of the board gaining political capital aplenty as all those millions were steered to community groups, and vanished in the cesspool of gutter politics. What a boondoggle.

Someone has since pointed out that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a 2:1 match. That means donations from others -- more than likely, conservative Republicans, since they're by far the most generous demographic group in the nation -- added to the $49.2 million. So the actual waste of money was closer to $150 million, for no help to student academic outcomes. That's colossal!

It just makes the decision by the University of Nebraska's College of Education to give Ayers the bully pulpit at its upcoming 100th anniversary celebration look even worse.

Look: the final report of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was dated August 2003. That was PLENTY of time for the UNL education professors to find out that Ayers' radical schtick was and is a cynical disappointment in the classroom, and doesn't do a thing to help kids. I mean, it took me about 3 minutes to find it online.

Why didn't they KNOW that? Or maybe they don't CARE?

So they're either incompetent, or uncaring. Nice.

You put that with the dismal fact that Nebraska has one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation, and that N.U. trained most of our teachers who apparently don't know how to lift low-income kids up and over, with solid academics. That's not the fault of the teachers themselves: that's the fault of whoever supposedly trained them.

I have to say it: N.U. Teachers' College has lost our trust.

They like radical? Let's give them radical:

Let's abolish the N.U. College of Education entirely. Let our future teachers major in content areas, such as math, science and English. Let schools hire them on merit, and train them in pedagogy -- the art of teaching. That way, they'll be shielded from all this ineffective, radical philosophy such as Ayers spouts, and will know how to stick to their knittin' . . . and TEACH.

It would make our future teachers the best in the nation, bar none.

It would help our kids like nothin' before.

It would be . . . the bomb!

Labels: Ayers, Barack Obama, N.U. College of Education

Posted 4:26 PM by Susan Darst Williams

DID AYERS GHOST-WRITE OBAMA'S BOOK?

I read an email that was supposedly written by Barack Obama, copied on one of those "swift boat" blogging sites. So it could have been a fake. But I wasn't noticing the political content: I was noticing the bad writing style. It wasn't quite grammatically correct, and it sure didn't flow. It didn't jibe well at all with the smooth rhetoric Obama uses on the campaign trail. My Baloney Antennae went up.

Comes now an author who claims to have linguistic evidence that Obama had Chicago Weatherman mad bomber William Ayers, his political mentor, ghost-write the book that vaulted him into national prominence. Or if he didn't ghost-write it, he at least gave Obama a lot of help.

If that were true, it would sure show a close relationship between the two, and would expose Obama's remark that Ayers was "just a guy in my neighborhood" as the bald-faced lie it apparently is.

Sigh: Ayers is an education professor, and Obama is an attorney -- two jobs in America that should sure be standing up for the truth and avoiding deceit at all costs. Meanwhile, teachers across the country are tearing their hair out about academic dishonesty. What a contrast.

The claims is that there are striking similarities in a lot of the language and anecdotes between books that Ayers has written, and the Obama memoir. See:

http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/evidence_mounts.htm

This, added to Democratic VP hopeful Joe Biden's record of plagiarism . . . hmm. Stay tuned on this one. As a writer, I hate deceit. And as a citizen, I really hate it when a President gains the White House through stuff like that.

Labels: Barack Obama, ghost-writer Ayers

Posted 9:22 AM by Susan Darst Williams

OBAMA, OPS BOTH WANT MORE GOVERNMENT PRESCHOOL,
BUT THE RECORD SHOWS IT'S ANOTHER COLOSSAL MISTAKE

Here's a good one from the San Francisco Chronicle detailing how "universal preschool," which is taxpayer-supplied "free" preschool for all, and which Presidential candidate Barack Obama is pushing, actually pulls kids down:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/17/EDQC13ISN1.DTL&type=education

Even though the Omaha Public Schools and its chief benefactor, Susan Buffett, may have the best of intentions with their early childhood ed plans, it is hoped that a hard look is given to these stats before we go any further down this rabbit trail. Here, as everywhere, no doubt the Buffett donations will get things started, but after that, the foundation's funding will be withdrawn and Nebraska taxpayers will be left trying to pay for this colossal waste of money.

Head Start, overall, is a waste of time, the follow-up studies have shown. Even the liberal Brookings Institution has chimed in, noting that any gains by children who attended the "free" government preschool vanish by second or third grade, compared to kids of the same demographic background who had no out-of-home preschool at all.

This report points out that the three states most famous for universal preschool -- Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee -- all have reported test scores that show no improvement after years of the service, or that test scores have actually gone down.

That's incredible, considering the untold billions that the nation would be investing in widespread government preschool should Obama win the White House.

Labels: Barack Obama, Omaha Public Schools, universal preschool

Posted 11:35 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GO BIG ED BLOG BACK FULL STRENGTH!

WHY DID UNL TRY TO GIVE A MAD BOMBER THE PULPIT,
INSTEAD OF A REAL EDUCATOR FROM CHICAGO?

So glad the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is backing out of its boneheaded plan to host mad bomber Bill Ayers to come speak to educators. That move really exposes the utter lack of common sense in our teachers' colleges today. Sheesh Louishe.

Might be different if Ayers actually had ever done anything GOOD for education. But he hasn't. The verdict is in: his worldview is atrociously anti-American, his "reforms" are Marxist hogwash, and that $50 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge that he and Barack Obama cooked up that was supposed to help Chicago's inner-city poor was instead a colossal waste of money, according to the project's own final report.

Here it is, and note the line where it admits that "the Challenge had little impact on student outcomes" in the executive summary:

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf


The $50 million went down a rathole of political "capital" that was being built for Obama, according to Ayers' cynical design. Instead of kids learning to read, write and figure, "social justice" groups such as ACORN, now mixed up in that horrible voter fraud mess, got the money, and the collectivist "site-based management councils" set up in the schools frittered it away.

Then many of those who got enriched at the children's expense returned the favor to Obama with political help, contributions and muscle power as he launched his formal political career. And Ayers, who learned from Saul Alinsky (and his book, Rules for Radicals), set it all up.

Yeah, here are Ayers' 3 R's: radicalism, revolution and riots.

I'll tell you a Chicago educator who SHOULD be invited to speak at UNL, and to educators across the land: Marva Collins (www.marvacollins.com). Remember? She started a private school for the poorest of the poor out of her house in inner-city Chicago, Westside Prep. She accepted literally pennies per week from the parents, whatever they could pay.

She taught them the 3 R's, with firm but kind discipline and respect thrown in for good measure. She taught them the classics of western civilization; observers I've talked to have been amazed at the young inncer-city children reciting lines from Shakespeare, Plato and Homer without any problem handling the complex vocabulary. Now, THAT'S how you build a child's self-esteem: by teaching him or her to be COMPETENT!

Years after Marva Collins got started, 60 Minutes followed up on her first 33 graduates. Demographically speaking, quite a few of them "should" have been dead, in prison, on welfare, in gangs, and so forth, based on the tough neighborhood from which they began life. But all 33 were employed and doing well! Some of her grads went on to Harvard, Yale, Stanford . . . and not a mad bomber in the bunch.

Now, THAT'S a miracle, and THAT'S what our educators need to be hearing about.

De-politicizing teachers' colleges and public schools, and giving disadvantaged children basic academics again, the way our schools USED to before Ayers and his ilk seized control of our teachers' colleges, is what we really need to do. It would be . . . THE BOMB!

Labels: Ayers, education, Marva Collins, UNL

Posted 8:42 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GREETINGS! Be sure to visit www.GoBigEd.com for coverage of Nebraska education issues.

See you there!