Texas Governor Rick Perry Says No To Obama Education Department's "Race to the Top" Initiative

When it comes to the creeping socialism stretching from President Barack Obama’s Washington, D.C., Texas Governor Rick Perry has a three word response, “No, thank you.” On January 13, Perry announced that Texas would not participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” competition....(Read the rest at Center for Individual Freedom)

Geoffrey Canada - A True Educator

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Geoffrey Canada
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I came across this Colbert Report video interviewing an interesting man that is passionate about educating poor children - listen to Mr Geoffrey present his Harlem program for educating children and how successful he has been. If this is all true then we need more programs like this to replace our lousy public schools and not just in Harlem!

Mr. Canada, a 57-year-old social worker, calls his strategy the "conveyor belt," because it aims to give children an intensive experience in a succession of programs until they graduate from college. Children in pre-kindergarten are taught foreign languages, for instance. From there, children enter Mr. Canada's charter schools with longer school days and a calendar lasting until the first week of August.

The approach is starting to deliver results. Last year, nearly all the third-graders in Mr. Canada's charter schools scored at or above grade-level in math, better than recent citywide averages. Eighth-graders outperformed the average New York student in math, according to New York state data.

"The math thing is just so far above anything I've ever seen," says Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist who heads a new education lab. "The real hard work is to figure out why it's working and whether that kind of thing can be exported so we can help more kids."

The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell

I listened to an interview of Thomas Sowell, the noted economist, on Fora.tv and was awed by his ability to see through the quackery that abounds in so much of American politics. The interviewer was asking him questions and to comment on his new book "Economic Facts and Fallacies".

One observation by Mr. Sowell that I particularly liked is his answer to the following sentence, which he could not include in his book:

"No book can cover all the utter nonsense that politicians speak in an election year". Mr Sowell goes on to give an example of one of these utter nonsenses.

"The notion that what we cannot afford in terms of medical care for 300 million Americans we can somehow afford by sending it through the government and paying for a government bureaucracy on top of all the other costs of medical care."

The interviewer asks Mr. Sowell if he still felt pessimistic about the future and he answers more so!

He continues: "Let's start with Obama, Hillary and McCain."

This interview is WELL worth a listen to. (Listen here).

When Will We Demand Government To Stop Spending Binge?

When will we rise up and demand that our government live within it's means and stop spending on pork barrel stuff that has nothing to do with the original mandate of government which is to protect us against internal crime and external enemies? Why are these people taking from one group of citizens and distributing to other groups in a never ending game of Russian roulette?

1. Congress approved a $300 billion farm bill - subsidies at a time farmers are doing very well. Two thirds of this money goes to the top 10% richest farmers producing corn, cotton, wheat, rice and sugar. Because of the elections in November both parties are vying for first place for the party that can give away the most money from taxpayers. Pelosi is fighting "big corporate greed" but yet hands over billions to rich farmers! Where's the sense in that except that it's an election year.

2. There is a hiring binge going on in our sweet land and it ain't in the private sector which in fact has seen a loss of 286,000 jobs. Nope, the public Sector is the one on a hiring binge with a total of 77,000 new government workers on the payroll - which breaks down to : 14,000 hired in the Federal level, 16,000 hired at the state level and New York City alone has hired 14,000 new teachers. Government bloating continues and continues with no end in sight..

3. Talking about teachers...An analysis of some National survey data on what US citizens think are the costs of our public education finds that Americans underestimate what we shell out for this depressingly abysmal public education that we have. For example, teacher salary is underestimated by $14,000/yr and Americans think we spend $4,200/pupil but it's really more than $10,000/pupil a year! That's TEN THOUSAND dollars a year for each child being spent on education! I can send my kid to a private school for less and get a better educated child at the end. (Watch video WSJ).

A Nation of Uneducated Adults

We have been talking about our lousy public schools now for some 30 years and to date nothing of much substance has been done to produce EDUCATED KIDS ready to work and think in the work force. What we are producing in many cases are young adults who have never grown up and worse cannot read, write and think properly. The following are excerpts from an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by William McGurn (WSJ READ).

"When Barack Obama's pastor was caught on tape accusing the government of inventing HIV for "genocide against people of color," it was dismissed as another crazy conspiracy theory – which of course it was. But what if the Rev. Wright had used his pulpit to direct a little fire-and-brimstone against a very real outrage: a public-school system that's depriving millions of children of the education they need to compete in the 21st century economy?"

"Scarcely half of American children in our 50 largest cities will leave their public schools with a high-school diploma in hand, according to a study released by America's Promise Alliance. These children are disproportionately African-American. Their homes are disproportionately located in our largest public school districts. And the failure is a scar on this great land of opportunity.

"...And of course, the teachers unions devote their considerable resources to fighting any measure that increases accountability or gives parents more options."

The Democrats won't fight for better schools - it's up to McCain. But is he up to the task to finally get our kids a first class K-12 education? The doctor's still out on this one. A nation filled with dummies who can't decide science from fiction as in the evolution or Creationism "debate", can't do math, or read Shakespeare, or write an essay will eventually see the twilight.