February 27, 2012
I am for school choice. Putting choice into the hands of parents is a good thing. The federal government needs to get out the education business and put it back to the states and local communities where it belongs. The quicker we do this, the better off our students will be. Check out some of the good things that getting done with school choice. What Research Says About School ChoiceJanuary 29, 2012
Our schools are in trouble and Walter Williams points out a major factor in Schools of Education. Another major factor is parental responsibility. Many parents want the freedom to choose which school they want their children to attend. Some states are addressing this issue and making progress.December 27, 2011
I have written on this site many times about the need to get the education of anybody out of the hands of central control of the Federal Government. It must be returned to the states and the states return control and oversight to the local cities, towns, communities, et al. The national teachers unions have done nothing to improve the education of anyone; on the contrary, they have steadily made it worse. Much money has poured down a black hole with little to no results. The money has enriched some administrators and teachers as the children suffer with incompetent teachers and staff. The following is an article written by the Heritage Foundation called the Morning Bell. It discusses the Top 10 Education Stories of 2011. Some good, some bad. It is worth the read, if you have any interest in the condition of our education.October 24, 2011
The following two posts by Judson Phillips, Tea Party Nation, illustrate the need to cut the Department of Education (DoED) completely out of existence. The DoED was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in Oct. 1979. President Ronald Reagan promised during the 1980 presidential election to eliminate the Department of Education as a cabinet post, but this was not to be. The job of the DoED and the unions is not the education of our children. Their job is filling the union coffers and protecting incompetent teachers and administrators. The DoED has been a huge black hole for tax dollars with almost nothing to show for it. The federal government must get out of the education business and allow the educators to compete for their business in a free market. There is a trend in this direction all around the country, but someone has to step up and accelerate the process. Eliminating the DoED will accomplish this. Liberalism at work again! Posted by Judson Phillips on October 24, 2011 at 10:04am in Tea Party Nation Forum While access to education has made America a first world country, liberals and Union thugs have used public education as their own private piggy bank. How would you like this gig? Work one day as a substitute teacher and earn a pension of over $100,000 a year! Sounds unbelievable? From the Chicago Tribune: Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found. Steven Preckwinkle, the political director for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and fellow union lobbyist David Piccioli were the only people who took advantage of a small window opened by lawmakers a few months earlier. The legislation enabled union officials to get into the state teachers pension fund and count their previous years as union employees after quickly obtaining teaching certificates and working in a classroom. They just had to do it before the bill was signed into law. Preckwinkle's one day of subbing qualified him to become a participant in the state teachers pension fund, allowing him to pick up 16 years of previous union work and nearly five more years since he joined. He's 59, and at age 60 he'll be eligible for a state pension based on the four-highest consecutive years of his last 10 years of work. His paycheck fluctuates as a union lobbyist, but pension records show his earnings in the last school year were at least $245,000. Based on his salary history so far, he could earn a pension of about $108,000 a year, more than double what the average teacher receives. His pay for one day as a substitute was $93, according to records of the Illinois Teachers Retirement System. Over the course of their lifetimes, both men stand to receive more than a million dollars each from a state pension fund that has less than half of the assets it needs to cover promises made to tens of thousands of public school teachers. With billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, which serves public school teachers outside of Chicago, is one of several pension plans that are in debt as state government reels in a fiscal crisis. A spokesman for the Illinois Federation of Teachers emphasized that the lobbyists' actions were legal and that they made "individual decisions." Even so, union President Dan Montgomery said the deal Preckwinkle and Piccioli landed "should never be allowed again." But the union, which provides its employees with a private 401(k)-type plan, is standing by the lobbyists' right to have access to the public pension. "They entered TRS under the law and are participating members of TRS. As a TRS employer, the IFT is required to make the payments to TRS," the union said in a statement. This is Chicago at work. This is Democrat politics at its finest. These two gamed the system and will most likely collect millions from the taxpayers over the remainder of their lives. Those millions could have gone to hire more teachers and educate students. Of course, the unions do not care about that. All they want is for the gravy train to keep rolling. This is just another reason why public employee unions should be sent to the ash heap of history and why public employees should never be allowed to unionize. Did Ron Paul steal my idea? Posted by Judson Phillips on October 24, 2011 at 12:55pm in Tea Party Nation Forum Did Ron Paul really steal my idea? I posted something a few days ago, and suddenly Ron Paul has adopted it. What was the idea and did Ron Paul really steal it? The idea was to do away with guaranteed student loans because those loans have the effect of making college more expensive. In truth, I doubt Ron Paul stole the idea, but even if he did, so what. There is nothing new under the sun or in politics and good ideas should be stolen as often as possible. Education is a field the Republicans and conservatives have ceded to the left. What has been the result? Our schools and Universities get worse and worse every year. They cost more and more every year. What is the solution? Access to quality education is the hallmark of an advanced society. And that is the point. It should be access to education, not government provided education. So how do we correct this problem? We need to privatize education. How? First, our local boards of education need to become accreditation agencies, not education providers. Allow educators to form companies to provide education to children and use the school infrastructure. Why not instead of the city, county and sometimes the state governments paying massive education bureaucracy, they figure out how much money it costs to educate a student and each student in the county or city gets a voucher that will allow them to pay a certain amount of tuition. For some schools, that will cover all of the costs of tuition and for some students it will cover part of the tuition. The beauty of this system is it will create competition between schools to be the best school. No longer will students be forced to go to a lousy school, just because they happen to live in a neighborhood and the government education monopoly only offers one choice. Instead, with choice parents will have the option to send their children to a good school that is near by. What happens to bad schools? They will go out of business. No parent, liberal mythology not withstanding, wants their children to go to a bad school. Parents, not education bureaucrats are the best ones to determine which school a child should go to. By using the market to force bad schools out of business, we can break the chains of poverty. The legacy of the liberal education monopoly is poverty. To keep America a superpower, we must have an educated population. We cannot do that with a liberal education structure that exists only to throw more money into a black hole that produces inferior results. Education under liberal control has been nothing short of a disaster. The attitude of liberals towards education was probably best summed up Albert Shanker, long time head of the American Federation of Teachers who said, "I'll worry about the kids when they become union members." For far too long, conservatives have ceded education to liberals. No more. We need to take apart the liberal education establishment and let a free market education establishment take over that will provide children with a good education. We need a system that is not just a milk cow for public employee unions. We need a system that puts the children first and does not simply use them as props, like the liberals so often do.June 28, 2011
Does the Constitution of these United States matter, is it still relevant today? I think so, as does Tom Sowell.
The following was posted by Dara on June 28, 2011 at 12:46pm in Tea Party Nation Forum and I felt is very important
to also post here.
Fomenting For Marxist Revolution on July 4th
This coming July 4th weekend, the Marxists, are holding a rally in Chicago. Mercifully, deader than the proverbial door nail, Karl Marx will be dug up for Socialism (Marxist) 2011 Revolution In The Air. Just look at the breakout sessions and videos of past conferences. They are trying to soften there message by referring to it as Socialism and/or Social Justice, but in reality giving the ABC's of Marxism, makes it Communism they are after.
Despite the differences between the stages of Communism and Socialism, no wall of any kind exists between them..... Communism grows from Socialism and it's direct continuation. - Nikita Khruschev
You are being forewarned of the event. Make no mistake about it, these people are planning a "Revolution" to put in place their Marxist ideals. They want to destroy anything and everything that we American Conservatives have built. This country has been built on the principles that our founding fathers gave us, and the Capitalist system that has made our country the "Greatest Country" in modern times. If we do not want these type of groups continuing to take over our children and our Country, we must fight back with education and facts.
As a result we are posting educational items, everyone can use to educate those around them and action items we can all use to take back our Government at all levels. Below are a few links that you can share with those who really don't understand our form of government.
"Basic forms of government and what they mean"
"Here is an article taken from "The Basic Project" Basics Project Organization
"Three critical issues - directly related to our nation's survival - are coming together to present one of the greatest challenges the United States will ever face. Internally, forces antithetical to the American philosophy, to our true Judeo-Christian roots, are using our own system of government - and our electoral process - to move our nation incrementally away from it's charter as a Constitutional Republic; fundamentally transforming the United States of America from a Constitutional Republic to a Democracy, of which our Founders and Framers warned, then to a Democratic Socialism. Externally, the threat comes in the form of a violent and intolerant poli-theocratic ideology that quests to rule the world, violently expunging or making subservient all other religious and moral dogmas known to man. Yet these threats are not new to our country. We have faced them down before. We have, in the past, stared into the violent and deceptive eyes of evil and come out stronger for the experience. So, why are these forces so potent today? What makes this moment in time so different than in the past? Simple. Today, We the People are complicit in our own demise. We the People, through apathy, through ignorance, through constitutional illiteracy, have created our destiny. We have created, The Perfect Storm. Please watch the clip. You can make the call for yourself."
What can you as one lone person do to help correct this problem? Here are a few things that you can do:
| 1. Learn who the enemy is: | The Fifth Column |
| 2. Understand the Constitution: | Constitutional Literacy Program |
| 3. Know and Understand Islamist: | Islamist Terrorisism |
| 4. Defend the Constitution: | Defending the Constitution Project |
September 17, 2011
Is college for everyone? Some may say it is, but maybe it is not. Colleges, in general, encourage anyone to attend whether ready or not. Many are not ready. Do I smell a profit motive here instead of doing what is right? Too Much Higher Education, Walter E. WilliamsThese are useful for educating yourselves or your groups. However, there is much more we need to do. Start by contacting your local precinct and other political offices, also contact your federal and state representative's offices. Ask what you can do to help.
June 10, 2011
How a Teachers’ Rally Made Me Anti-Education. - Zombie, Jun 8, 2011May 31, 2011
Obnoxious Classroom Curricula - Phyllis Schlafly, May 31, 2011The state of our public school system is atrocious. Children are graduating from high schools barely able to read, write and do math. Many of these children (and adults) will end up on the wagon, because they will not be able to get a job and take care of themselves. Employers will simply not hire them. They do not have the basic skills to push a broom, let alone anything more advanced. We are spending more money per student than most countries in the world, yet our performance is one of the worse. Throwing more money at the problem simply is not going to fix this. The following is what I present as at least a partial solution.
A case for parental control and responsibility in educating their children.
Who should have the responsibility for where, when and how education is administered to our children, a bureaucrat or the parent?
A big question: Who knows the child best, a bureaucrat or the parent? This is not to imply that teachers and administrators in our public school system don't know how to teach our children or have the skills necessary to complete their tasks. There are many fine, dedicated teachers and administrators that do a very good job teaching and providing a good environment for learning. But one size does not fit all.
The parent must take responsibility for their child's education. Skeptics will ask; what do we do with parents who do not take the responsibility? I believe, given the opportunity, many more parents will do the right thing than not. Ok, what do we do with the children of parents that will not take responsibility? There are parents that will not take responsibility no matter what we do. There are many classes that are disrupted by a small minority of individuals that make learning difficult for the rest. Should we allow the small minority of parents not accepting responsibility and children disrupting classes control the education of the majority? No! Responsible parents must have choice and control over where and how the child should be educated.
Much time and energy has been given to the discussion of the voucher system. Many critics have said taking money away from public schools will only harm or worse, destroy the system. I strongly disagree with this assumption. If parents are allowed to use the voucher at any school they choose, will all parents go running to parochial or private schools? I doubt it. There are simply not enough of these schools available. Will more pop up? Probably. What will parents do until maybe there are enough schools they may want? My guess is they will look around their local community and find another public school that may do a better job of educating their child. Ok, what happens to the school that is not doing a good job and everybody leaves?
First, I don't believe everyone will leave the bad school. There are too many factors to enumerate here why someone would choose not to leave the bad school. Some may choose to stay with the hope that things will get better.
Second, assume that most students leave the bad school for a better one. What should that bad school do? My guess is the administration will do what it takes to make it better. If the administration chooses to ignore the fact that their school is bad and does nothing to make it better and attract students, the school will die and many people will be on the street looking for another school that may be available and find a job. This is commonly known as competition. This word seems to be almost verboten in the discussion of education, but it should not be. The job of the teachers and administrators is to produce an educated child. I believe introducing parental choice and competition into the mix will go a long way to doing just that.
Walter E. Williams has written several colums on the state of education. Here is sample of some of these. Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
Black Education - Walter E. Williams, Dec 23, 2009