Republicans Reforming Education

Republicans Reforming Education

For years, the Democrats have held the edge with the public on the issue of education. This has been for a variety of reasons. But now that’s fading because GOP governors are actually changing the world of education with stunning success. And strangely, the credit belongs to Jeb Bush.

Between 1999 and 2007, Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. When he was elected, Florida’s schools were the worst in the nation. Against the total opposition of the Florida teachers unions, Bush instituted the following reforms:

● First, Florida began grading schools -- A through F -- based on student progress on proficiency tests. Students at schools which failed were allowed to transfer away.

● Secondly, they stopped “social promotion,” i.e. graduating kids to the next grade even though they were failing. (i.e. incentives for students)

● Third, they created a merit-pay system where teachers got bonuses if their students passed certain exams. (i.e. incentives for teachers)

● Fourth, parents got greater choice. They could use state vouchers to choose from public, private, charter and even on-line schools. (i.e. incentives for schools)

● Fifth, they changed the certification requirements to allow other professionals to become teachers even without having the noxious and useless “education” degree.

Each of these are things the teachers unions all over the country have been fighting for decades with the most ridiculous claims. Like how in Michigan, for example, the Michigan Education Association is whining how new reforms they are fighting would mean a 44-year-old teach who was hoping to retire in three years now would not be able to retire until she turns all of 60! The horror. They've also screamed racism, classism, and all the usual crappola.

So how did Bush’s plan work? Florida’s schools are now statistically among the best in the nation. That’s right, worst to near first in eight years. And black and Hispanic students have made the biggest gains. Moreover, Bush did all of this without massive increases in spending -- per pupil spending rose slightly, but not as much as in other states.

You would think this would open some eyes on the left, right? Hardly. Republican governors are now doing the exact same things in Nevada, New Mexico, Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, and a host of other Republican leaning states with Republican governors. And guess what? The unions and the Democrats continue to fight tooth and nail to stop these proven reforms. Isn’t it amazing that they simply don’t want things to get better?

Well, according to researchers at Stanford University, voters increasingly see the Democrats as servants of the teachers unions and the failing status quo. So maybe things are changing?

Of course, that won’t change any Democratic minds. I’ve mentioned before how it’s being proven that liberals are stupider than conservatives, are less well-informed, and are more likely to avoid people who disagree with them (LINK, LINK). Well, it also turns out that liberals distort their beliefs to help their own side. Indeed, consider this fact from the liberal Washington Post: while 73% of liberals said the White House could control gas prices when Bush was in office, only 33% claimed to believe that with Obama in the White House. That means two out of three liberals either changed their beliefs or lied about their beliefs to help the Democrats. Imagine that! So don’t expect them to recognize the improvements in the world of education.

But others are waking up. And little by little, the Democrats are losing their association with being the party of education. And that will benefit the nation's children.

For years, the Democrats have held the edge with the public on the issue of education. This has been for a variety of reasons. But now that’s fading because GOP governors are actually changing the world of education with stunning success. And strangely, the credit belongs to Jeb Bush.

Between 1999 and 2007, Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. When he was elected, Florida’s schools were the worst in the nation. Against the total opposition of the Florida teachers unions, Bush instituted the following reforms:

● First, Florida began grading schools -- A through F -- based on student progress on proficiency tests. Students at schools which failed were allowed to transfer away.

● Secondly, they stopped “social promotion,” i.e. graduating kids to the next grade even though they were failing. (i.e. incentives for students)

● Third, they created a merit-pay system where teachers got bonuses if their students passed certain exams. (i.e. incentives for teachers)

● Fourth, parents got greater choice. They could use state vouchers to choose from public, private, charter and even on-line schools. (i.e. incentives for schools)

● Fifth, they changed the certification requirements to allow other professionals to become teachers even without having the noxious and useless “education” degree.

Each of these are things the teachers unions all over the country have been fighting for decades with the most ridiculous claims. Like how in Michigan, for example, the Michigan Education Association is whining how new reforms they are fighting would mean a 44-year-old teach who was hoping to retire in three years now would not be able to retire until she turns all of 60! The horror. They've also screamed racism, classism, and all the usual crappola.

So how did Bush’s plan work? Florida’s schools are now statistically among the best in the nation. That’s right, worst to near first in eight years. And black and Hispanic students have made the biggest gains. Moreover, Bush did all of this without massive increases in spending -- per pupil spending rose slightly, but not as much as in other states.

You would think this would open some eyes on the left, right? Hardly. Republican governors are now doing the exact same things in Nevada, New Mexico, Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, and a host of other Republican leaning states with Republican governors. And guess what? The unions and the Democrats continue to fight tooth and nail to stop these proven reforms. Isn’t it amazing that they simply don’t want things to get better?

Well, according to researchers at Stanford University, voters increasingly see the Democrats as servants of the teachers unions and the failing status quo. So maybe things are changing?

Of course, that won’t change any Democratic minds. I’ve mentioned before how it’s being proven that liberals are stupider than conservatives, are less well-informed, and are more likely to avoid people who disagree with them (LINK, LINK). Well, it also turns out that liberals distort their beliefs to help their own side. Indeed, consider this fact from the liberal Washington Post: while 73% of liberals said the White House could control gas prices when Bush was in office, only 33% claimed to believe that with Obama in the White House. That means two out of three liberals either changed their beliefs or lied about their beliefs to help the Democrats. Imagine that! So don’t expect them to recognize the improvements in the world of education.

But others are waking up. And little by little, the Democrats are losing their association with being the party of education. And that will benefit the nation's children.

Republicans Reforming Education

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Leftists In Paradise

Leftists In Paradise

California taxpayers pony up just under three billion dollars a year to support the 230,000 students attending the various campuses of the University of California. And that doesn’t cover the even-larger California State Universities and Colleges System. Recently, the UC faculty was criticized for serious bias toward liberal and leftist causes by the National Association of Scholars. There was an immediate professorial backlash.

This tale relates to the UC system but could just as easily be applied to almost any other other state university system as well as the entire Ivy League. The National Association of Scholars (NSA) was not soft in its criticism of the university. It spoke plainly in its report. “The UC system does not help students to learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think.” After twelve years of indoctrination in the public schools, far too many students are perfectly willing to accept whatever their professors tell them at face value. Academic inquiry beyond the most basic of questioning is treated as a sort of mental illness.

The report goes on to say that the lockstep professors have “turned UC campuses into a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas.” In 1999, a report by political science professor showed that nationwide, Democrats outnumbered Republicans nearly five to one. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. In some departments, the ratio was staggering. In the English departments, the margin was eighty-eight to three, and in social science departments eighty-one to two.

By 2007, a new study using the same criteria found that the overall ratio had increased to eight to one in favor of liberals. No longer feeling any obligation to hide their specific political leanings, twenty percent of social sciences professors and twenty-five percent of sociology professors readily identified themselves as “Marxist.” And as genetics has proven that incest produces idiot children, so the inbreeding older leftist professors have produced young professors leaning even farther left. When the teaching assistants, assistant professors and associate professors move in to replace the older full professors, the 2011 NSA study (A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California) concludes that the ratio is likely to go to fifty to one.

The California head of the NSA, professor John Ellis, became the front man for deflecting the inevitable denials and accusations coming from the leftist professors. His major critic was Berkeley professor Robert Anderson. Anderson called the report short on facts but long on innuendo and anecdotes. Professor Ellis minced no words after receiving the criticism: “I don’t know any polite way of putting this—but he’s lying.” Ellis cited not only verifiable statistics, but examples of how academia continues to move left and create “victim” majors which perpetuate their agenda.

Professor Ellis’s primary example is a required Berkeley history course for those who pursue a major in history. The course is entitled The United States from Settlement to the Civil War. That hasn’t changed since I was a bright-eyed freshman at Berkeley in 1962. So what has changed? It’s the description of the goal of the course: “To understand how democratic political institutions emerged in the United States in this period in the context of an economy that depended on slave labor and violent land acquisition.” Nothing about freedom, abolitionism, the Constitution, the Enlightenment, or anything neutral or positive. Just the usual slavery and oppression.

No longer expected to look at issues, realities, time-frames, varying views, logic, economics, historical perspective, or comparative governments, the UC student now has the course predigested for him or her, and has been told the proper conclusion. Many will never know that all their course materials will now contain only those things which support the leftist view. They will finish their courses thinking they have been educated rather than indoctrinated.

According to the leftist professors, who the studies have shown to be a heavy majority, America was born, grew, and perpetuates itself on fundamentally evil racism, slavery and economic exploitation of what today are referred to as minorities. Having indoctrinated the students into thinking that America has been evil from the get-go, it’s easy to move on to today’s victimology--the sufferers from gender discrimination, homophobia, ethnic exploitation, sexism, speciesism, lookism, and the whole panoply of “isms.” Hovering over it all is the greatest criminal ism of all—capitalism.

California taxpayers pony up just under three billion dollars a year to support the 230,000 students attending the various campuses of the University of California. And that doesn’t cover the even-larger California State Universities and Colleges System. Recently, the UC faculty was criticized for serious bias toward liberal and leftist causes by the National Association of Scholars. There was an immediate professorial backlash.

This tale relates to the UC system but could just as easily be applied to almost any other other state university system as well as the entire Ivy League. The National Association of Scholars (NSA) was not soft in its criticism of the university. It spoke plainly in its report. “The UC system does not help students to learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think.” After twelve years of indoctrination in the public schools, far too many students are perfectly willing to accept whatever their professors tell them at face value. Academic inquiry beyond the most basic of questioning is treated as a sort of mental illness.

The report goes on to say that the lockstep professors have “turned UC campuses into a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas.” In 1999, a report by political science professor showed that nationwide, Democrats outnumbered Republicans nearly five to one. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. In some departments, the ratio was staggering. In the English departments, the margin was eighty-eight to three, and in social science departments eighty-one to two.

By 2007, a new study using the same criteria found that the overall ratio had increased to eight to one in favor of liberals. No longer feeling any obligation to hide their specific political leanings, twenty percent of social sciences professors and twenty-five percent of sociology professors readily identified themselves as “Marxist.” And as genetics has proven that incest produces idiot children, so the inbreeding older leftist professors have produced young professors leaning even farther left. When the teaching assistants, assistant professors and associate professors move in to replace the older full professors, the 2011 NSA study (A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California) concludes that the ratio is likely to go to fifty to one.

The California head of the NSA, professor John Ellis, became the front man for deflecting the inevitable denials and accusations coming from the leftist professors. His major critic was Berkeley professor Robert Anderson. Anderson called the report short on facts but long on innuendo and anecdotes. Professor Ellis minced no words after receiving the criticism: “I don’t know any polite way of putting this—but he’s lying.” Ellis cited not only verifiable statistics, but examples of how academia continues to move left and create “victim” majors which perpetuate their agenda.

Professor Ellis’s primary example is a required Berkeley history course for those who pursue a major in history. The course is entitled The United States from Settlement to the Civil War. That hasn’t changed since I was a bright-eyed freshman at Berkeley in 1962. So what has changed? It’s the description of the goal of the course: “To understand how democratic political institutions emerged in the United States in this period in the context of an economy that depended on slave labor and violent land acquisition.” Nothing about freedom, abolitionism, the Constitution, the Enlightenment, or anything neutral or positive. Just the usual slavery and oppression.

No longer expected to look at issues, realities, time-frames, varying views, logic, economics, historical perspective, or comparative governments, the UC student now has the course predigested for him or her, and has been told the proper conclusion. Many will never know that all their course materials will now contain only those things which support the leftist view. They will finish their courses thinking they have been educated rather than indoctrinated.

According to the leftist professors, who the studies have shown to be a heavy majority, America was born, grew, and perpetuates itself on fundamentally evil racism, slavery and economic exploitation of what today are referred to as minorities. Having indoctrinated the students into thinking that America has been evil from the get-go, it’s easy to move on to today’s victimology--the sufferers from gender discrimination, homophobia, ethnic exploitation, sexism, speciesism, lookism, and the whole panoply of “isms.” Hovering over it all is the greatest criminal ism of all—capitalism.

Leftists In Paradise

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College Board Suppresses Minority Admissions

College Board Suppresses Minority Admissions

The angry left which hates voter ID laws now has something to hate even more. It’s not bad enough that certain states want to suppress the votes of minorities, but now the Scholastic Aptitude/Assessment Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) administered by the College Board are implementing student suppression even more effectively than the states are implementing voter suppression.

At this rate, only qualified students will be admitted to college. In the wake of a major scandal involving really bright students who score well on tests being paid to take the SAT or ACT for less bright students, the College Board will now require photo ID standards more stringent than those required of voters in voter photo ID states. Just as voter ID suppresses the votes of innocent minorities, the requirement of the College Board will suppress the college entrance of innocent minorities, the poor, the lowly, and the not-too-bright. How dare they?

So how are the requirements for taking the College Boards different from voter ID? Well, just let me tell you how these racist/fascists are keeping non-white folks down even more obviously than the states. For voter ID, if the oppressed minority doesn’t have a photo ID or can’t afford one, the state will provide one for free, and still allow the person to cast a provisional ballot pending verification of the photo ID. Not so with the oppressive College Board.

First, the oppressed high school student who wants to take the test(s) must upload a photo when registering for one of the two tests. If too poor or too stupid to have a computer, he can mail in a photo which the testing agency will then scan into its computers. But (oh, the horror of it) if the student can’t afford to upload or mail a photo, he’s out of luck. The College Boards make no provision for paying for the photo or taking a “provisional test.”

Then the bastards raise more roadblocks. The photo is then verified, a photo ID relating solely to the test(s) is sent to the student, while at the same time the testing service will have a duplicate photo ID at the test site which can be checked against the one the test-taker provides at the time of the test. Not oppressive enough? Wait, there’s more! The IDs will be checked when the student enters the test site, and each time the student exits and re-enters the site. And to add insult to injury, the monitors will be empowered to check IDs during the tests, particularly if there is any suspicion of cheating.

Is it possible that the requirements don’t actually single out the poor and lowly? The New York Nassau District Attorney who is prosecuting the cheaters in the cheating scandal noted that at least twenty miscreants paid other miscreants to take the test for them, paying as much as $3,500 to do so. I don’t know a lot of poor people who have $3,500 laying around for paying surrogates to take tests for them. But I may be looking at this with the jaundiced eye of a privileged white person, so I need to turn on my white guilt genes.

Proponents of the new requirements scurrilously argue that this isn’t about the poor, minorities, or the underprivileged, but rather about the integrity of the system and protecting the millions of students who don’t cheat and need to have confidence in the overall college entrance examination system. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? What they’re not telling you is that the new security procedures were developed by a security firm headed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh. And we all know he’s a racist fascist who wants to deny a higher education to the non-privileged, non-white population. Don’t we?

The angry left which hates voter ID laws now has something to hate even more. It’s not bad enough that certain states want to suppress the votes of minorities, but now the Scholastic Aptitude/Assessment Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) administered by the College Board are implementing student suppression even more effectively than the states are implementing voter suppression.

At this rate, only qualified students will be admitted to college. In the wake of a major scandal involving really bright students who score well on tests being paid to take the SAT or ACT for less bright students, the College Board will now require photo ID standards more stringent than those required of voters in voter photo ID states. Just as voter ID suppresses the votes of innocent minorities, the requirement of the College Board will suppress the college entrance of innocent minorities, the poor, the lowly, and the not-too-bright. How dare they?

So how are the requirements for taking the College Boards different from voter ID? Well, just let me tell you how these racist/fascists are keeping non-white folks down even more obviously than the states. For voter ID, if the oppressed minority doesn’t have a photo ID or can’t afford one, the state will provide one for free, and still allow the person to cast a provisional ballot pending verification of the photo ID. Not so with the oppressive College Board.

First, the oppressed high school student who wants to take the test(s) must upload a photo when registering for one of the two tests. If too poor or too stupid to have a computer, he can mail in a photo which the testing agency will then scan into its computers. But (oh, the horror of it) if the student can’t afford to upload or mail a photo, he’s out of luck. The College Boards make no provision for paying for the photo or taking a “provisional test.”

Then the bastards raise more roadblocks. The photo is then verified, a photo ID relating solely to the test(s) is sent to the student, while at the same time the testing service will have a duplicate photo ID at the test site which can be checked against the one the test-taker provides at the time of the test. Not oppressive enough? Wait, there’s more! The IDs will be checked when the student enters the test site, and each time the student exits and re-enters the site. And to add insult to injury, the monitors will be empowered to check IDs during the tests, particularly if there is any suspicion of cheating.

Is it possible that the requirements don’t actually single out the poor and lowly? The New York Nassau District Attorney who is prosecuting the cheaters in the cheating scandal noted that at least twenty miscreants paid other miscreants to take the test for them, paying as much as $3,500 to do so. I don’t know a lot of poor people who have $3,500 laying around for paying surrogates to take tests for them. But I may be looking at this with the jaundiced eye of a privileged white person, so I need to turn on my white guilt genes.

Proponents of the new requirements scurrilously argue that this isn’t about the poor, minorities, or the underprivileged, but rather about the integrity of the system and protecting the millions of students who don’t cheat and need to have confidence in the overall college entrance examination system. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? What they’re not telling you is that the new security procedures were developed by a security firm headed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh. And we all know he’s a racist fascist who wants to deny a higher education to the non-privileged, non-white population. Don’t we?

College Board Suppresses Minority Admissions

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Lousyana Teachers Protest Reform

Lousyana Teachers Protest Reform

My favorite governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, has been cleaning up his state for several years now, cutting costs and making the entire government more efficient. His early training as a management consultant has served the public well as he applied his methods to the government. He brought Louisiana out of the dark ages in medical coverage and instituted severe ethical reforms.

Now, Governor Jindal is being attacked by union and public school teachers who fear his education reforms.

Today, the state’s education committee will act on Jindal’s proposed reforms. He has taken on all the public school teachers’ favorite perks and privileges. The unions don’t like that. His proposal includes a complete revamping of the tenure program (a redundancy in union schools), enhanced monetary compensation based on performance rather than longevity, and expansion of school choice and voucher programs. He also included some tinkering around the edges of pensions, having already made a substantial change in them through an omnibus reform bill which encompassed all government employees, teachers included.

Jindal's own extensive educational accomplishments aside, the teachers cannot validly claim that he “doesn’t understand education and teachers.” One of his major reform positions in government was in the field of education. At age 28, he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana system, the sixteenth largest such system in the United States. During his tenure, formerly skyrocketing tuition fees were stabilized, duplication of effort was cut back, topheavy administration was slashed, instructor hiring was modified in order to include objective standards beyond mere diplomas, and academic standing increased dramatically.

He now proposes to institute the same reforms for elementary and secondary education. Louisiana resembles a great many other states in that huge numbers of teachers are overpaid, underworked, and often unqualified to teach much of anything. But since they are being paid for their terrible performance, the least they could do is show up for school and make a half-hearted attempt at pretending to teach.

Instead, teachers throughout the state, and particularly union members have convinced weak-spined school administrations to cancel classes so that the “teachers” can go to Baton Rouge to protest the proposed changes. This essentially means that public employees are being converted into temporary lobbyists to advance their own miserable cause while stealing time from the students and taxpayers.

How well have they done their jobs as teachers? On national standards, one-third of Louisiana public schools scored below grade-level. Nearly half of public schools in Louisiana scored a D or F even using National Education Association standards. 4th and 8th graders were in the bottom 15% of American students in math and English. Still, these space-wasters are unable to comprehend that they are lucky to have any job at all, let alone one with a near-guarantee of a job for life and disproportionately high pay and benefits for no discernible accomplishment.

Jindal’s education spokesman Aaron Baer said the following: “When one-third of all students are below grade level, the last thing public school employees should be doing is using class time to lobby the state legislature to prevent much-needed reforms. But instead they are joining the education unions who are descending upon Baton Rouge in full force.”

Although I agree with Baer, I also have the horrible thought that the only thing worse than these useless public school teachers being away from their classes is their being in their classes, filling those young minds with lots of nonsense and very little education. I will add that I do indeed know there are some very fine public school teachers, perhaps even many such. But they do not comprise even a strong minority. Jindal’s proposed reforms are being offered precisely to protect and reward those good teachers and to cease rewarding all those bad ones.

My favorite governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, has been cleaning up his state for several years now, cutting costs and making the entire government more efficient. His early training as a management consultant has served the public well as he applied his methods to the government. He brought Louisiana out of the dark ages in medical coverage and instituted severe ethical reforms.

Now, Governor Jindal is being attacked by union and public school teachers who fear his education reforms.

Today, the state’s education committee will act on Jindal’s proposed reforms. He has taken on all the public school teachers’ favorite perks and privileges. The unions don’t like that. His proposal includes a complete revamping of the tenure program (a redundancy in union schools), enhanced monetary compensation based on performance rather than longevity, and expansion of school choice and voucher programs. He also included some tinkering around the edges of pensions, having already made a substantial change in them through an omnibus reform bill which encompassed all government employees, teachers included.

Jindal's own extensive educational accomplishments aside, the teachers cannot validly claim that he “doesn’t understand education and teachers.” One of his major reform positions in government was in the field of education. At age 28, he was appointed president of the University of Louisiana system, the sixteenth largest such system in the United States. During his tenure, formerly skyrocketing tuition fees were stabilized, duplication of effort was cut back, topheavy administration was slashed, instructor hiring was modified in order to include objective standards beyond mere diplomas, and academic standing increased dramatically.

He now proposes to institute the same reforms for elementary and secondary education. Louisiana resembles a great many other states in that huge numbers of teachers are overpaid, underworked, and often unqualified to teach much of anything. But since they are being paid for their terrible performance, the least they could do is show up for school and make a half-hearted attempt at pretending to teach.

Instead, teachers throughout the state, and particularly union members have convinced weak-spined school administrations to cancel classes so that the “teachers” can go to Baton Rouge to protest the proposed changes. This essentially means that public employees are being converted into temporary lobbyists to advance their own miserable cause while stealing time from the students and taxpayers.

How well have they done their jobs as teachers? On national standards, one-third of Louisiana public schools scored below grade-level. Nearly half of public schools in Louisiana scored a D or F even using National Education Association standards. 4th and 8th graders were in the bottom 15% of American students in math and English. Still, these space-wasters are unable to comprehend that they are lucky to have any job at all, let alone one with a near-guarantee of a job for life and disproportionately high pay and benefits for no discernible accomplishment.

Jindal’s education spokesman Aaron Baer said the following: “When one-third of all students are below grade level, the last thing public school employees should be doing is using class time to lobby the state legislature to prevent much-needed reforms. But instead they are joining the education unions who are descending upon Baton Rouge in full force.”

Although I agree with Baer, I also have the horrible thought that the only thing worse than these useless public school teachers being away from their classes is their being in their classes, filling those young minds with lots of nonsense and very little education. I will add that I do indeed know there are some very fine public school teachers, perhaps even many such. But they do not comprise even a strong minority. Jindal’s proposed reforms are being offered precisely to protect and reward those good teachers and to cease rewarding all those bad ones.

Lousyana Teachers Protest Reform

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The Best Things In Life Are Free

The Best Things In Life Are Free

If legislators in Michigan have their way, that will include a college education. The proponents of the proposition say that high school graduates in the state could simply go on to college without paying for the education and without it costing the taxpayers a dime. After all, they say, the high school education didn’t cost anything, so why should college?

This comes from genius legislators in a state with fiscal problems that make California look downright frugal. It seems obvious that the legislators putting this proposal on the table do not have an elementary school education about finance and how things get paid for, so they are probably college grads themselves. As my parents used to tell me when I asked them to get me something extremely expensive and somewhat useless, the Michigan legislators probably plan on going out into the back yard and picking some cash off the money tree. Or perhaps they actually think that public education doesn’t cost anything because it is essentially free for the students.

Michigan’s unemployment rate is so high that they might think that schools get built by unemployed construction workers who are volunteering their services. The actual construction materials appear magically in the middle of the night. The schoolbooks are printed by education philanthropists because nobody, not even the schools themselves, should have to pay for educational materials. They also assume that the beneficent unions are paying the teachers out of the proceeds of union charity programs.

If you can do that with primary and secondary education, why not with college? Look at the savings to the students (no more college loans). Look at the savings to the taxpayers. How could anyone oppose such a good deal that benefits everyone and costs nobody anything?

Oh, sure, there are the detractors. On Fox Business, Tracy Byrnes asked: “Where’s the drive and the incentive to want to graduate to get into a good school?” Byrnes continued, “Not every kid should be in college. We need people to do other things … it is a silly silly idea and we cannot afford it.” Obviously, Byrnes is an elitist. Former M.A.S.H. cast member and current financial pundit Wayne Rogers said: “Smart students always find a way to get financial aid or scholarships.” Then, to add insult to injury, Rogers closed with “We have free educations in secondary schools today, and look what a mess that is.”

Even before this proposal can kick in, Michigan already faces the problem of college graduates who can’t read their own diplomas. But it’s a great opportunity for the secondary level school teachers to pass on the blame for certified ignorance to the college instructors. “We prepared them for college, how did they unlearn so much in the next four years?”

I’ve complained for years that I can find a dozen PhD’s who can’t find their way to the bathroom, but I can’t find a good auto mechanic. This proposal, if successful, would go a long way toward explaining why.

If legislators in Michigan have their way, that will include a college education. The proponents of the proposition say that high school graduates in the state could simply go on to college without paying for the education and without it costing the taxpayers a dime. After all, they say, the high school education didn’t cost anything, so why should college?

This comes from genius legislators in a state with fiscal problems that make California look downright frugal. It seems obvious that the legislators putting this proposal on the table do not have an elementary school education about finance and how things get paid for, so they are probably college grads themselves. As my parents used to tell me when I asked them to get me something extremely expensive and somewhat useless, the Michigan legislators probably plan on going out into the back yard and picking some cash off the money tree. Or perhaps they actually think that public education doesn’t cost anything because it is essentially free for the students.

Michigan’s unemployment rate is so high that they might think that schools get built by unemployed construction workers who are volunteering their services. The actual construction materials appear magically in the middle of the night. The schoolbooks are printed by education philanthropists because nobody, not even the schools themselves, should have to pay for educational materials. They also assume that the beneficent unions are paying the teachers out of the proceeds of union charity programs.

If you can do that with primary and secondary education, why not with college? Look at the savings to the students (no more college loans). Look at the savings to the taxpayers. How could anyone oppose such a good deal that benefits everyone and costs nobody anything?

Oh, sure, there are the detractors. On Fox Business, Tracy Byrnes asked: “Where’s the drive and the incentive to want to graduate to get into a good school?” Byrnes continued, “Not every kid should be in college. We need people to do other things … it is a silly silly idea and we cannot afford it.” Obviously, Byrnes is an elitist. Former M.A.S.H. cast member and current financial pundit Wayne Rogers said: “Smart students always find a way to get financial aid or scholarships.” Then, to add insult to injury, Rogers closed with “We have free educations in secondary schools today, and look what a mess that is.”

Even before this proposal can kick in, Michigan already faces the problem of college graduates who can’t read their own diplomas. But it’s a great opportunity for the secondary level school teachers to pass on the blame for certified ignorance to the college instructors. “We prepared them for college, how did they unlearn so much in the next four years?”

I’ve complained for years that I can find a dozen PhD’s who can’t find their way to the bathroom, but I can’t find a good auto mechanic. This proposal, if successful, would go a long way toward explaining why.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

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That’s The Answer. More Teachers.

That’s The Answer. More Teachers.

What is the best thing to do during a weak economy? Hire more public employees. Or so Barack Obama thinks. But he isn’t just talking about those illiterate file clerks or surly bureaucrats who are there to make sure you don’t try to slip anything past the government. He is talking about those molders of our youth—public school teachers. This week, the president called on the nation’s governors to stop cutting education and hire more public school teachers.

And he was willing to sweeten the pot with $25 billion in federal gifts. His litany was heart-rending. “We’ve just got to get more teachers into our classrooms. Over the past four years, school districts across America have lost over 250,000 teachers, educators have been lost. A quarter million educators responsible for millions of our students, all laid off when America has never needed them more.”

Of course anyone who has actually followed the news about public schools over the past few decades knows that what Obama is saying is a combination of wishful thinking, purposeful deception, and pandering to one of his largest campaign contribution groups. Public school teachers are a huge constituency for liberal politicians, and unionized public school teachers are even stronger for the left. But if they were really teaching our kids the things they need to know, there would be little room for complaint.

The school cutbacks have indeed been numerous, but hardly draconian. “Educators” seem to think the proper student-teacher ration is 1:1. For decades before the unions and self-serving educators got into power, student-teacher ratios of 1:15 and even 1:20 were common and somehow students got fine educations. Today, a classroom with 15 students, one teacher and two teacher’s assistants is considered barebones. 250,000 teachers laid off nationwide isn’t even a very significant number.

But Obama would like the public to think that by balancing budgets, laying off teachers and putting teacher-administrators back in the classroom and out of the bloated offices American students will fall into education deficiency disorder. I hate to tell The One, but even before the cuts, American public schools had become a laughingstock in the western world. Overall, our public school students are among the worst educated in the industrialized West (and yes, I know there are exceptions).

Now before anyone jumps on me for being down on teachers, I want to make it clear that I am not. A good teacher is one of civilization’s most valuable assets. And even in our miserable public schools (particularly the urban and near-urban suburban schools), there are teachers struggling against a system which has stacked the deck against them. But when the money runs out, belts have to be tightened and some people have to go. If the system provided for getting rid of the worst teachers based on objective standards, reduction in the number of teachers would actually be a boon.

But it doesn’t. Given unionization, tenure, and an overabundance of labor lawyers, the system is designed to retain the teachers with the longest history of employment at a particular school or school district. Many of them should not have been allowed to teach from day one, but are now nearly untouchable. Obama figures that a good teacher “can increase the income of a classroom by $250,000.” Where he got that figure I haven’t a clue, particularly since it depends in large part on how populous each classroom is. But rather than quibble, I’ll just say he has the right idea, but the wrong facts. The operative word is “good,” and far too many are barely able to attain minimal teaching efficiency.


Last hired, first fired has its merits. But it should be far from the only criterion. A bad teacher with twenty-five years on the job should not be retained over a good teacher with proven objective results who has only been on the job for a year or two. For a frighteningly large number of retained teachers, this includes teachers who are so bad both academically and morally that they are serving out their tenure in “rubber rooms.” Unions and civil rights/labor lawyers have managed to retain the jobs of sexual predators, but can’t see why we should retain good teachers who don’t molest their students.

Says Obama, “other countries are doubling down on education and increasing their investment in teachers.” But the failing American pubic schools already spend more per pupil/per teacher than most of those “other countries” anyway. And that’s before you start counting the crippling burden of teacher pensions. Good teachers are indeed underpaid, but far more bad teachers are overpaid and destructive of true education.

Unlike the federal government, the states cannot balance their budgets and retain expensive deadwood by printing money. Obama knows this, and he keeps holding out those magic wads of cash he’ll give to the states if they’ll just rehire laid-off losers while recruiting new ones. The idea of attaching strings, like teacher competency, termination of bad teachers and reduction of benefits to general public levels before rehiring or newly employing teachers is simply not part of the Obama equation.

And here’s at least part of the reason why: The National Education Association gave $1.2 million to Democratic candidates in 2010, though that was down from the $1.8 million it contributed to Democrats in 2008. In 2012, very early in the election cycle, the NEA has already contributed nearly $250,000 to Democratic candidates (that magic number keeps reappearing, doesn’t it?). Not to be outdone, the American Federation of Teachers has already contributed $637,000 for Democrats in 2012. In 2010, it was $2.3 million, outdoing its 2008 contributions of $2.2 million. Any questions? I’m sure there’s a union public school teacher available to answer them.

What is the best thing to do during a weak economy? Hire more public employees. Or so Barack Obama thinks. But he isn’t just talking about those illiterate file clerks or surly bureaucrats who are there to make sure you don’t try to slip anything past the government. He is talking about those molders of our youth—public school teachers. This week, the president called on the nation’s governors to stop cutting education and hire more public school teachers.

And he was willing to sweeten the pot with $25 billion in federal gifts. His litany was heart-rending. “We’ve just got to get more teachers into our classrooms. Over the past four years, school districts across America have lost over 250,000 teachers, educators have been lost. A quarter million educators responsible for millions of our students, all laid off when America has never needed them more.”

Of course anyone who has actually followed the news about public schools over the past few decades knows that what Obama is saying is a combination of wishful thinking, purposeful deception, and pandering to one of his largest campaign contribution groups. Public school teachers are a huge constituency for liberal politicians, and unionized public school teachers are even stronger for the left. But if they were really teaching our kids the things they need to know, there would be little room for complaint.

The school cutbacks have indeed been numerous, but hardly draconian. “Educators” seem to think the proper student-teacher ration is 1:1. For decades before the unions and self-serving educators got into power, student-teacher ratios of 1:15 and even 1:20 were common and somehow students got fine educations. Today, a classroom with 15 students, one teacher and two teacher’s assistants is considered barebones. 250,000 teachers laid off nationwide isn’t even a very significant number.

But Obama would like the public to think that by balancing budgets, laying off teachers and putting teacher-administrators back in the classroom and out of the bloated offices American students will fall into education deficiency disorder. I hate to tell The One, but even before the cuts, American public schools had become a laughingstock in the western world. Overall, our public school students are among the worst educated in the industrialized West (and yes, I know there are exceptions).

Now before anyone jumps on me for being down on teachers, I want to make it clear that I am not. A good teacher is one of civilization’s most valuable assets. And even in our miserable public schools (particularly the urban and near-urban suburban schools), there are teachers struggling against a system which has stacked the deck against them. But when the money runs out, belts have to be tightened and some people have to go. If the system provided for getting rid of the worst teachers based on objective standards, reduction in the number of teachers would actually be a boon.

But it doesn’t. Given unionization, tenure, and an overabundance of labor lawyers, the system is designed to retain the teachers with the longest history of employment at a particular school or school district. Many of them should not have been allowed to teach from day one, but are now nearly untouchable. Obama figures that a good teacher “can increase the income of a classroom by $250,000.” Where he got that figure I haven’t a clue, particularly since it depends in large part on how populous each classroom is. But rather than quibble, I’ll just say he has the right idea, but the wrong facts. The operative word is “good,” and far too many are barely able to attain minimal teaching efficiency.


Last hired, first fired has its merits. But it should be far from the only criterion. A bad teacher with twenty-five years on the job should not be retained over a good teacher with proven objective results who has only been on the job for a year or two. For a frighteningly large number of retained teachers, this includes teachers who are so bad both academically and morally that they are serving out their tenure in “rubber rooms.” Unions and civil rights/labor lawyers have managed to retain the jobs of sexual predators, but can’t see why we should retain good teachers who don’t molest their students.

Says Obama, “other countries are doubling down on education and increasing their investment in teachers.” But the failing American pubic schools already spend more per pupil/per teacher than most of those “other countries” anyway. And that’s before you start counting the crippling burden of teacher pensions. Good teachers are indeed underpaid, but far more bad teachers are overpaid and destructive of true education.

Unlike the federal government, the states cannot balance their budgets and retain expensive deadwood by printing money. Obama knows this, and he keeps holding out those magic wads of cash he’ll give to the states if they’ll just rehire laid-off losers while recruiting new ones. The idea of attaching strings, like teacher competency, termination of bad teachers and reduction of benefits to general public levels before rehiring or newly employing teachers is simply not part of the Obama equation.

And here’s at least part of the reason why: The National Education Association gave $1.2 million to Democratic candidates in 2010, though that was down from the $1.8 million it contributed to Democrats in 2008. In 2012, very early in the election cycle, the NEA has already contributed nearly $250,000 to Democratic candidates (that magic number keeps reappearing, doesn’t it?). Not to be outdone, the American Federation of Teachers has already contributed $637,000 for Democrats in 2012. In 2010, it was $2.3 million, outdoing its 2008 contributions of $2.2 million. Any questions? I’m sure there’s a union public school teacher available to answer them.

That’s The Answer. More Teachers.

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Bye Bye, Western Civilization

Bye Bye, Western Civilization

I’ve mentioned the decline of the liberal arts in our universities on these pages in the past. Lately, I have noticed that articles from The American Scholar to The New Republic to the blogosphere have been focusing on the same subject. Each year, more universities dump entirely the lower division undergraduate requirement of the core study most often called “Western Civilization.”

Stanford dumped it years ago. UC Berkeley makes it one part of many in the history department. The Ivies, and now most mid-level public and private universities are following suit. Hanging their hats on multiculturalism and the “melting pot” of today’s America, the schools have followed the course set by radical leftists, sociologists, race-baiters and one-worlders. In doing so, the universities have made it nearly impossible for students to comprehend or embrace the concept of American exceptionalism. Barack Obama, the leader of America and the West, is a product of that type of ignorance.

Back in 1987, Rev. Jesse Jackson led protestors at Stanford University demanding the end of “ethnocentric” Western Civilization instruction to be replaced with that god of the divisive left—diversity. No accommodation or modification was going to be allowed. Jackson led the chants of “hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go.” The Stanford administration complied without complaint. That’s the same administration which had earlier dropped the appellation for the school’s sports teams, the Stanford Indians, and changed it to the meaningless Stanford Cardinal (it refers to the color, not the bird).

It seems that proudly naming your teams after the iconic Native Americans is mysteriously racist and insensitive. That same year, Esquire Magazine ran a cover with a picture of the aged Indian who had served as the school’s emblem sitting in the stands at Stanford Field. He was the only one in the stands, wearing full warrior headdress, with a barely visible tear falling from one eye. In the article, he asked “what did I do wrong?” He didn’t realize he had done nothing wrong, it was those oppressive white administrators who were exploiting him who were doing wrong.

The National Association of Scholars recently released a formal paper entitled The Vanishing West: 1964 to 2010.” The paper lays out the rapid disappearance of the Western Civilization curriculum from nearly every major higher education institution. And the scholars aren’t happy about it. The Black Power movement of the 60s had obtained its own Black Studies curriculum (starting with San Francisco State University), and it quickly became time for every other racial and ethnic movement to have its own department. Suddenly, the study of obscure tribes in Africa or Asia became as important as the study of the Greek scholars, or the writers of the Renaissance, or the Humanists, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or (particularly) America’s Enlightenment Founders.

What pieces of the Western Civilization core curriculum remained were taken over by flower children and former members of the Weather Underground, resulting in a rump Western Civ discipline which became “grim and gloomy” as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Lynne Cheney of the National Endowment for the Humanities has a long record of damning the whole misplaced emphasis on everything except the successes (and failures) of Western culture. Said Cheney in 1994: “Imagine an outline for teaching American history [within today’s academic parameters] in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first President. Or in which the founding of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the US Congress is not.”

The problem is that you don’t have to imagine it anymore. Take a look at the current nonsense that has replaced Western Civilization in higher learning. Most of the courses replace traditional Western Civ courses previously required at major universities and old-fashioned liberal arts colleges. The operative word is “replace” rather than “augment.” I won’t even try to list the silliness. Just grab the catalog from your favorite university and check out the wealth of non-Western Civilization courses being offered in place of traditional studies of Greece, Rome, Great Britain, France, and of course, the United States. The Civil War must now compete with the Cultural Phenomenon of Lady Gaga, the Zen of Keanu Reeves, and urban/hip hop culture, and the Civil War is losing.

No wonder ignorant “Occupiers” think that the Constitution is an obsolete document written by old white men impeding social progress. Without a basic understanding of the workings of Western culture and its evolution into modernity, they can’t possibly comprehend the exquisite balancing act done by the Founding Fathers in creating a unique form of government with checks and balances, a voice for the people, and the protection of ordered liberty.

Without that study of the Western development of democratic institutions, self-government, art, science and universal education, the “Occupiers” can’t possibly understand the reasons behind the American Revolution. Most of them claim to understand, but in fact just get everything wrong. Instead of a Revolution for freedom and self-government, they judge the appropriate reason to oppose the powers-that-be in terms of what Abbie Hoffman called “revolution for the hell of it.”

I’ve mentioned the decline of the liberal arts in our universities on these pages in the past. Lately, I have noticed that articles from The American Scholar to The New Republic to the blogosphere have been focusing on the same subject. Each year, more universities dump entirely the lower division undergraduate requirement of the core study most often called “Western Civilization.”

Stanford dumped it years ago. UC Berkeley makes it one part of many in the history department. The Ivies, and now most mid-level public and private universities are following suit. Hanging their hats on multiculturalism and the “melting pot” of today’s America, the schools have followed the course set by radical leftists, sociologists, race-baiters and one-worlders. In doing so, the universities have made it nearly impossible for students to comprehend or embrace the concept of American exceptionalism. Barack Obama, the leader of America and the West, is a product of that type of ignorance.

Back in 1987, Rev. Jesse Jackson led protestors at Stanford University demanding the end of “ethnocentric” Western Civilization instruction to be replaced with that god of the divisive left—diversity. No accommodation or modification was going to be allowed. Jackson led the chants of “hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go.” The Stanford administration complied without complaint. That’s the same administration which had earlier dropped the appellation for the school’s sports teams, the Stanford Indians, and changed it to the meaningless Stanford Cardinal (it refers to the color, not the bird).

It seems that proudly naming your teams after the iconic Native Americans is mysteriously racist and insensitive. That same year, Esquire Magazine ran a cover with a picture of the aged Indian who had served as the school’s emblem sitting in the stands at Stanford Field. He was the only one in the stands, wearing full warrior headdress, with a barely visible tear falling from one eye. In the article, he asked “what did I do wrong?” He didn’t realize he had done nothing wrong, it was those oppressive white administrators who were exploiting him who were doing wrong.

The National Association of Scholars recently released a formal paper entitled The Vanishing West: 1964 to 2010.” The paper lays out the rapid disappearance of the Western Civilization curriculum from nearly every major higher education institution. And the scholars aren’t happy about it. The Black Power movement of the 60s had obtained its own Black Studies curriculum (starting with San Francisco State University), and it quickly became time for every other racial and ethnic movement to have its own department. Suddenly, the study of obscure tribes in Africa or Asia became as important as the study of the Greek scholars, or the writers of the Renaissance, or the Humanists, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or (particularly) America’s Enlightenment Founders.

What pieces of the Western Civilization core curriculum remained were taken over by flower children and former members of the Weather Underground, resulting in a rump Western Civ discipline which became “grim and gloomy” as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Lynne Cheney of the National Endowment for the Humanities has a long record of damning the whole misplaced emphasis on everything except the successes (and failures) of Western culture. Said Cheney in 1994: “Imagine an outline for teaching American history [within today’s academic parameters] in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first President. Or in which the founding of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the US Congress is not.”

The problem is that you don’t have to imagine it anymore. Take a look at the current nonsense that has replaced Western Civilization in higher learning. Most of the courses replace traditional Western Civ courses previously required at major universities and old-fashioned liberal arts colleges. The operative word is “replace” rather than “augment.” I won’t even try to list the silliness. Just grab the catalog from your favorite university and check out the wealth of non-Western Civilization courses being offered in place of traditional studies of Greece, Rome, Great Britain, France, and of course, the United States. The Civil War must now compete with the Cultural Phenomenon of Lady Gaga, the Zen of Keanu Reeves, and urban/hip hop culture, and the Civil War is losing.

No wonder ignorant “Occupiers” think that the Constitution is an obsolete document written by old white men impeding social progress. Without a basic understanding of the workings of Western culture and its evolution into modernity, they can’t possibly comprehend the exquisite balancing act done by the Founding Fathers in creating a unique form of government with checks and balances, a voice for the people, and the protection of ordered liberty.

Without that study of the Western development of democratic institutions, self-government, art, science and universal education, the “Occupiers” can’t possibly understand the reasons behind the American Revolution. Most of them claim to understand, but in fact just get everything wrong. Instead of a Revolution for freedom and self-government, they judge the appropriate reason to oppose the powers-that-be in terms of what Abbie Hoffman called “revolution for the hell of it.”

Bye Bye, Western Civilization

View Detail