They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools

Obama Exempting Schools From Testing Mandate

by Donna Gordon Blankinship

(AP) - State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.

The plan to offer waivers to all 50 states, as long as they meet other school reform requirements, comes at the request of President Barack Obama, Duncan said. More details on the waivers will come in September, he said.

The goal of the No Child Left Behind law is to have every student proficient in math and reading by 2014. States have been required to bring more students up to the math and reading standards each year, based on tests that usually take place each spring. The step-by-step ramping up of the 9-year-old law has caused heartburn in states and most school districts, because more and more schools are labeled as failures as too few of their students meet testing goals.

Critics say the benchmarks are unrealistic and brands schools as failures even if they make progress. Schools and districts where too few kids pass the tests for several years are subject to sanctions that can include firing teachers or closing the school entirely.

Through the waivers, schools will get some relief from looming deadlines to meet testing goals as long as they agree to embrace other kinds of education reforms such as raising standards, helping teachers and principals improve, and focusing on fixing the lowest performing schools.

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Glenn Beck talks with Teachers about education problems

Mexican-American Propaganda in the Tucson School District

Tennessee elementary students sing “Boycott big business”

Homeschooled Girl Forced Into Public School

NH Supreme Court: homeschooled girl must

go to public school against mom’s wishes

by John-Henry Westen

CONCORD, NH, March 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld a lower court order Wednesday that sided with the father of a homeschooled student and forced her into a government-run school against her Christian mother’s wishes.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney John Anthony Simmons, who represented the mother, who is divorced from the father, argued that the burden of proof was on the father to prove harm in order to change the schooling arrangement. Because no harm was demonstrated and the girl was acknowledged to be academically superior and socially interactive, even by the court, Simmons argued that the homeschooling arrangement should not have been changed.

However, in the original order issued in July 2009, Judge Lucinda V. Sadler reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”

“Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children,” responded Simmons. “Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to be mixed with other views. That’s precisely what the lower court admitted it was doing.”

“The lower court held the Christian faith of this mother and daughter against them,” Simmons said. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court bypassed this issue and wrote this off as a ‘parent versus parent’ issue without recognizing the very real underlying threat to religious liberty.”

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Students Score Better With Teachers Paid for Performance

by Ludger Woessmann

Countries with performance pay for teachers score higher on PISA tests

American 15-year-olds continue to perform no better than at the industrial-world average in reading and science, and below that in mathematics. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, released in December 2010 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States performed only at the international average in reading, and trailed 18 and 23 other countries in science and math, respectively. Students in China’s Shanghai province outscored everyone.

But is there anything in the data the OECD has accumulated to give policymakers reason to believe that merit pay works? Do the countries that pay teachers based on their performance score higher on PISA tests? Based on my new analysis, the answer is yes. A little-used survey conducted by the OECD in 2005 makes it possible to identify the developed countries participating in PISA that appear to have some kind of performance pay plan. Linking that information to a country’s test performance, one finds that students in countries with performance pay perform at higher levels in math, science, and reading. Specifically, students in countries that permit teacher salaries to be adjusted for outstanding performance score approximately one-quarter of a standard deviation higher on the international math and reading tests, and about 15 percent higher on the science test, than students in countries without performance pay.

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Letter from Teacher: 'Americans Stole Our Land'

Teachers Unions Explained

Wis Doctors Hand Out Fake Excuses to Protesters

2/3rds of Wisconsin 8th Graders Can't Read

by Terence P. Jeffrey

Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”

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Hidden cameras expose British Muslim schools teaching hate

Mandatory federally funded Arabic language program in Texas

by Chad Groening

Author and activist David Horowitz says it's absolutely outrageous that some elementary and intermediate school students will be forced to take Arabic language and culture classes in a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb.

Several Dallas television stations have reported that the Mansfield Independent School District is instituting the Arabic language studies after receiving a federal grant from the Foreign Language Assistance Program of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). Under the program, Arabic classes would be mandatory at an elementary and intermediate school in the district and optional at the middle and high schools.

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***UPDATE***

Arabic classes on hold in Texas school district pending review...

by Joe Newby

The Mansfield, Texas, Independent School District announced late Wednesday that it has "slowed the process of implementation" of a program to teach Arabic to its' students pending a review of the curriculum.

The District says in a press release that Arabic has been listed as a "critical language" due to a shortage of Arabic speakers, and a need for people who better understand the Arabic culture and traditions.

Mansfield ISD also clarified that the classes are not mandatory, as has been previously reported. The original CBS News article said the classes were "mandatory", but all references to the mandatory nature of the program have been removed from the edited version of the article.

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School Choice Makes Financial Sense

by Ben Boychuk

Empowering parents to choose the best school for their children - whether public or pri- vate, regardless of ZIP code - isn’t just the right thing to do. With states struggling to overcome yawning budget deficits, school choice makes good fiscal sense. Governors and state legislatures across the nation are facing a grim financial reality: More than $100 billion in federal education stimulus money is gone. Another bailout isn’t forthcoming, and voters have no great appetite for additional tax increases. After years of pumping up school spending, real cuts are coming. In fact, they’re overdue.

With resources tight, the smarter lawmakers and governors are proposing some ambitious reforms. These include establishing new teacher-evaluation rules and ending the practice of “last hired, first fired” that punishes younger teachers and protects time-servers; removing expensive class-size mandates; and renegotiating “Cadillac” pension plans.

Excellent ideas all. But states such as Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania are also considering legislation to establish or expand opportunity scholarship programs currently offering low-income parents or parents with disabled children the means to send their children to the school of their choice instead of one determined by their residence.

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Rethinking Evaluations When Almost Every Teacher Gets an ‘A’

by Jennifer Gollan

Grade inflation — a term normally associated with students — is widespread among Bay Area teachers, who receive so many favorable evaluations that it is impossible to tell how well they are performing, some educators say.

For the 2009-10 school year, just 40 out of 1,924 teachers — or 2 percent — reviewed by the San Francisco Unified School District received below-satisfactory performance reviews, district records show. Those figures are consistent with recent years: an average of 2.7 percent of teachers evaluated over the past five years received marks of “unsatisfactory” or “needs improvement,” records show. And education scholars say that in a system where all teachers are winners, a crucial gauge of teacher quality is essentially lost.

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School Succeeds by Firing Teachers

School Hailed by Obama Succeeded by

Firing Teachers and Bucking the Union

by Michael Warren

President Obama spoke last night about the need to “win the race to educate our kids” and asked if we as Americans are “willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.” He highlighted one school in particular—Bruce Randolph School in Denver. “Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado; located on turf between two rival gangs,” Obama said. “But last May, 97 percent of the seniors received their diploma. Most will be the first in their family to go to college.”

What Obama failed to mention is how Bruce Randolph turned its situation around: firing teachers at will after being granted an exemption from union rules.

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Charter Schools Outperform Traditional Public Schools

An Option for Learning: An Assessment of

Student Achievement in Charter Public Schools

by Liv Finne

Since the 1930s, traditional public schools have been centrally run from the top down by state legislatures, school district administrators and, starting in the late 1960s, by collective bargaining agreements negotiated by powerful unions. In addition, administrators in traditional public schools have never been held directly accountable for student performance. Public schools that fail to educate students adequately often remain open and unchanged year after year.

Key Findings:

1. Charter public schools are popular with parents; 365,000 students are on waiting lists to attend a charter public school.
2. Across the nation, over 1.7 million children now attend 5,453 charter public schools. This number increased by 9% in 2010 alone.
3. Well-run charter public schools perform significantly better than traditional public schools.
4. Charter public school students are no different in academic background and motivation than students attending traditional public schools.
5. Charter public schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have closed the achievement gap between minority and white students.

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Teacher Still On Staff After Molesting 6th Grade Student

Disgraced Teacher Enjoys Well-Paid Salary

13 Years After Sexually Molesting 6th Grader

by Meredith Jessup

On June 26, 1997, New York teacher Roland Pierre was was arrested on felony sex-abuse charges after allegedly calling one of his PS 138 sixth-grade students into an empty classroom, closed the door and molested her. Pierre was permanently removed from the classroom, but like many tenured teachers accused of wrongdoing, he wasn’t fired. Instead, he joined other disgraced educators in the so-called “rubber room” — the “purgatory of teachers yanked for the classroom for alleged wrongdoing” — where he’d wait out the union-guided appeals process.

But, as the NY Post notes, 13 years later, Pierre is still receiving full pay and fringe benefits from his old teaching job, including health benefits, pension and vacation time. In all, the 75-year-old continues to pull down $97,101 a year for a job he hasn’t done in 13 years.

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Only 1 percent of 'bad' schools turn around

by Amanda Paulson

A lot of attention is being given to the idea of school “turnarounds” lately – the concept of taking a poorly performing school and drastically changing the staff, curricula, or other elements in an effort to make it much better.

But a study out Tuesday underlines just how hard it is to actually turn around a failing school.

The study, “Are Bad Schools Immortal?,” examined more than 2,000 of the worst-performing district and charter schools in 10 states over five years. It found that very few of them closed, and even fewer – about 1 percent – truly “turned around.”

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Liberals' 50 Years of Dreadful Domestic Policy

by Larry Elder

For the past 50 years, the Democrats -- and many Republicans who should know better -- have been wrong about virtually every major domestic policy issue. Let's review some of them:

Taxes.

The bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts represents the latest triumph over the "soak the rich because trickledown doesn't work" leftists.

President Ronald Reagan sharply reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, doubling the Treasury's tax revenue. President George H.W. Bush raised the income tax rate, as did his successor. But President George W. Bush lowered them to the current 35 percent.

President Barack Obama repeatedly called the current rate unfair, harmful to the country and a reward to those who "didn't need" the cuts and "didn't ask for" them. If true, he and his party ditched their moral obligation to oppose the extension. But they didn't, because none of it is true. Democratic icon John F. Kennedy, who reduced the top marginal rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent, said, "A rising tide lifts all the boats." He was right -- and most of the Democratic Party knows it.

Welfare for the "underclass."

When President Lyndon Johnson launched his "War on Poverty," the poverty rate was trending down. When he offered money and benefits to unmarried women, the rate started flat-lining. Women married the government, allowing men to abandon their moral and financial responsibilities.

The percentage of children born outside of marriage -- to young, disproportionately uneducated and disproportionately brown and black women -- exploded. In 1996, over the objections of many on the left, welfare was reformed. Time limits were imposed, and women no longer received additional benefits if they had more children. The welfare rolls declined. Ten years later, The New York Times wrote: "When the 1996 law was passed ... liberal advocacy groups ... predicted that it would increase child poverty, hunger and homelessness. The predictions were not fulfilled."

Education.

The federal government's increasing involvement with education -- what is properly a state and local function -- has been costly and ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Title I, a program begun 45 years ago to close the performance gap between urban and suburban schools, burns through more than $15 billion a year, and the performance gap has widened. The feds spend $80 billion a year on K-12 education, as if money is the answer. States like Utah and Iowa spend much less money per student compared with districts like those in New York City and Washington, D.C., with much better results.

Where parents have choices -- where the money follows the student rather than the other way around -- the students perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. But the teachers' unions and the Democratic Party continue to resist true competition among public, private and parochial schools.

Gun control.

Violent crime occurs disproportionately in urban areas -- where Democrats in charge impose the most draconian gun control laws.

Over the objection of those who warn of a "return to the Wild West," 34 states passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. Not one state has repealed its law. Professor John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," says: "There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate: As more people obtain permits, there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent and robberies by over 2 percent."

"Affirmative action."

Race-based preferences have been a disaster for college admissions. Students admitted with lesser credentials are more likely to drop out. Had their credentials matched their schools, they would have been far more likely to graduate and thus enter the job market at a more productive level.

Preferences in government hiring and contracting have led to widespread, costly and morale-draining "reverse discrimination" lawsuits. Where preferences have been put to the ballot, voters -- even in liberal states like California -- have voted against them.

Minimum wage hikes.

Almost all economists agree that minimum wage laws contribute to unemployment among the low-skilled -- the very group the "compassionate party" claims to care about.

Economist Walter Williams, 74, in his new autobiography, "Up from the Projects," describes the many low-skilled jobs he took as a teenager. "By today's standards," he wrote, "my youthful employment opportunities might be seen as extraordinary. That was not the case in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, as I've reported in some of my research, teenage unemployment among blacks was slightly lower than among whites, and black teens were more active in the labor force as well. All of my classmates, friends, and acquaintances who wanted to work found jobs of one sort or another."

ObamaCare.

This ghastly government-directed scheme will inevitably lead to rationing and lower-quality care -- all without "bending the cost curve" down as Obama promised.

Any party can have a bad half-century. Merry Christmas.

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