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 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