Probably the single most discussed part of O!s question-and-answer in Darleen’s thread from last night, and face it, there were some doozies, was this bit:
I think there are areas like education, where some in my party have been too resistant to reform, and have argued only money makes a difference. And there have been others on the Republican side or the conservative side who said, no matter how much money you spend, nothing makes a difference, so let’s just blow up the public school systems. And — and I think that both sides are going to have to acknowledge we’re going to need more money for new science labs, to pay teachers more effectively. But we’re also going to need more reform, which means that we’ve got to train teachers more effectively; bad teachers need to be fired after being given the opportunity to train effectively; that we should experiment with things like charter schools that are innovating in the classroom; that we should have high standards.
Leaving aside any snark about Bill Ayers, I have to ask, in all sincerity, who the heck Obama’s talking about when he says that some conservatives advocate “blowing up” public school systems? Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the idea of charter schools and vouchers supposed to be to introduce choice and competition into the mix to improve the options available to, above all others, low-income students? I can understand how some teachers union die-hards might like to represent this as union busting, but it’s hard to reconcile the specific actions of the Obama administration in, say, my home town of Milwaukee, with this rhetoric:
The Milwaukee Public School system, for example, would receive $88.6 million over two years for new construction projects under the House version of the stimulus — even though the district currently has 15 vacant school buildings and declining enrollment. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted MPS spending rose by 35%, per-pupil spending increased by 36% and state aid grew by 58%. Over the same period, enrollment fell by a percentage point and is projected to continue falling, leaving the system with enough excess capacity for some 22,000 students.
“In general, MPS facilities have been described by school officials as being in good to better-than-good condition,” reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The kind of situations that create urgent needs for renovation or new construction in some cities have not been on the priority list for MPS officials in recent years.”
The Milwaukee situation is instructive for another reason. The city is home to the country’s oldest and largest school voucher program, which provides public funds for children to attend private schools. Families who participate in the means-tested voucher program receive $6,700 per pupil, while the city spends more than $13,000 per student. In addition to saving the taxpayers money, voucher students graduate at higher rates and outscore their counterparts on reading and math exams, which is one reason waiting lists for the program are common.
Yet language in the stimulus bill expressly prohibits any dollars from going toward financial assistance to students attending private schools. In other words, Milwaukee can use the money to build schools it doesn’t need, but not to expand education programs that are producing better outcomes for disadvantaged kids.
Granted, many of these schools weren’t built during the 1850s, and I’ve no doubt that this new building will create more construction jobs in the local economy, but would it be paranoid for me to suggest that the principal thrust of this program is to reallocate funding away from those annoying charter and religious schools that seem virulently capable of providing a quality education for less? I am not saying that these institutions, which are already up and running and filled with teachers and staff who are willing to do the hard work of educating without all the bells and whistles, such as top-flight science labs full of seldom-used instruments, would not be grateful for a little investment, but Milwaukee has proved that the most important thing that charter schools bring to the table is their ability, in part because they need to be stingier, to bring parents into the process of being involved with the procuring and allocation of resources.
As a high school student, I attended Marquette University High School, back in the seventies, and I can state for a certainty that the facilities were inferior to those at my local high school. But the dedication and the expectations of the Jesuits who ran that academic boot camp were such that my education there was far superior to that received by my pals. Was I deprived? Maybe there’s nothing quite so awkward as a dance with the girls from Divine Savior-Holy Angels, and maybe I didn’t always appreciate having my homeroom teacher shake me down for my lunch money to send it to starving third-world people (“It’s another rung on the ladder to heaven, Collins!”), but I seem to have survived, somehow. When I was a sophomore, we got a spectrometer (used), paid for by bake sales, bought with money not sent to starving third-worlders.
Maybe I should add that, apart from the lack of girls, it was the most integrated school I ever attended. We all got along, and why not? We were unified by our hatred and love of those effing Jesuits. Bastards.
Via hf: Wrestling made mandatory in Chicago public schools
The Democrats would outlaw private schools if they could. As second choice, they will marginalize them and make it harder for any parent to choose them.
Save for the correct thinking liberal uber wealthy who send their kids to tony secular prep schools on the fast track to select colleges so they to assure their aristocratic place in the US government to rule the hoi poloi.
So goes the [federalized] public school system, so goes the health system. Some are more equal than others.
Health care? You mean you don’t like the failed policies of the last eight Europes, Darleen?
Why is it that the constant of affairs in government schools is that they need reforming? Doesn’t this say something about the folly of government schooling?
I mean aside from the fact private education actually educates, and does so for roughly half the cost. And then there’s that constitutionality part, where the rotting architecture of government dick-up education was, apparently, foreseen and not, you know, therefore actually enumerated as a function of government. Not to mention O!bama’s personal utter failure as a Chicago reform-by-money politician.
But to the point: If reform is the unending, eternal cry concerning government institutions of lowest learning, then what possible practical justification is there that they exist at all? And trolls, spare me the canard about costs and affordability. When a system is so shot through with grossly expensive ruin as the American government school system is — that it always needs reform — there is nothing but upside to virtually any free-choice, free-market alternative.
Rather; “state of affairs” in the first line.
Darleen — Not quite. They’d outlaw private schools FOR US.
But we’re saved: Porn Star to run for US Senate
Yeah, I think it’s nice that underperforming teachers are given waivers to get better training and try again. Because we wouldn’t want to burden them with higher expectations than they naturally impose on their students.
That would be wrong.
And what will that training be in? Education! Because of the content.
But we’re sociopaths, Dan. QED.
The system works. Kids learn a lot more of what they need to know outside of school today than ever before really. School is just something you have to tolerate until you can get to your job or your computer at home or just go to where you can soak up an environment that’s not permeated with blatherings about global warming and imperialism and how dangerous it is to have a penis. I think for real that the success stories that come out of this system are a lot more remarkable than the ones from back in the day. Imagine what they could do with a formal education though.
Even in evil socialistic Bruges, they have a voucher free choice system for schools. There are public schools, but they compete with private schools for kids. Parochial schools qualify for vouchers.
If evil Lambic addled Belgiums can figure it out, what is our problem?
And guess what, they have a better system, and it costs LESS per child than the U.S. System (on average).
Jesuits are like Drill Instructors.
If you didn’t hate them by the end of your term, they weren’t doing their job correctly.
(So I’ve been told)
Obviously the problem with a formal education is that it would have to be formal. And that would mean that the edutariat would have to be informed. And the content of the character is best expressed by one’s views on the plight of the polar bears.
So, I’m not really sure what you’re driving at, hf.
Yes, more of this, Dan. I was educated by an order of priests in what some visitors have called a “Medieval Study Hall” – in any event, the building was built in the 1800s as a junior seminary and hadn’t changed much since, outside of an irregular application of interior paint. I was also an Irish Schoolboy for some time during my high school years, and I’d have to say that the notion that education is a function of funding would not be met well, if understood at all. This idea is a singularly American one. Learning isn’t supposed to be easy, or, at the very least, can’t be made so by funding.
If your average High School student can’t master, say, reading and writing the English language, how will newfangled whizbangs help at all? What will new physics labs do for students who haven’t mastered the mathematics necessary to conduct physics experiments? I’d agree that students need books, but what good are books if they wouldn’t read them if they had them?
At some point, the whole thing comes down to the terrible matter of putting forth the effort to learn things, especially hard things.
There are lots and lots of kids still that don’t want to grow up to be brainwashed losers is all I mean. If the public schools don’t leverage that, there’s still a lot of them what won’t be left by the wayside. The failure of our public schools makes it easier for the cream to rise to the top is what I think personally.
Yeah, Alec. I think most kids could benefit from some exposure to medieval studies.
What I’m saying is… are the kids what succeed in our public school system really the same kids that are worth a shit as human beings?
I guess it depends on what your view of “succeeds” is. First, you have to learn to speak the pabulum.
Morality. We’re entirely too moral to allow success.
Jesuits? Pshaw.
Try Christian Brothers.
Teaching as to war . . .
Comment by Techie on 2/10 @ 8:40 am #
Having experienced both, they are doing their job if you hate them during your term, by the end they are one of the most significant persons in your life, ever.
Well, that was how I’d heard it.
I’m sure by the end, you’re happy to be out, and then the retrospection starts.
I think he must have meant “blow up” in the context of “inflate”.
That doesn’t make sense, but neither did demolition using high explosives.
…or maybe in the “whatever blows up your skirt” sense.
Which also makes no sense, but is amusing.
I probably don’t need to add that I’m easily amused, but I’m doing it anyhow. Deal.
“I’m sure by the end, you’re happy to be out, and then the retrospection starts.”
I think it is one of those “he gained my respect immediately, and by the end, I had earned his,” which is to say, the student accomplished an act of learning. The most feared nun is the most beloved by eighth grade.
oh. I saw this on Drudge. I don’t think you can underestimate the impact Ayers has had on Chicago schools.
Damn, you’re from Milwaukee? We were stationed there for a few years when I was in high school. We lived on the north side of town just a couple blocks up from Saint Mary’s Hospital and one or two west of Lake Park.
Wow, so right off of North Avenue? Fun area, shank. My fave bar, underneath what used to be Oriental Drugs, is right there.
CoE divests from firm guilty of selling heavy machines of mass destruction to Zionists.
They took a loss.
The use of the “blow up the public schools system” jab was simply another of O!s rhetorical devices. You see, he had just had the courage to criticize his own party for crying out loud!!! So, in his formulaic fashion, immediately afterward he necessarily criticized eeeeeeevil RethugliKKKans, using a more strident words that combatitive and violent connotations; while the Democrats were merely guilty of being spendthrifts the Rethugs were a reactionary mob whose violent response would deprive folks of some basic right they were entitled to. I also believe that it was no coincidence that he wanted to make a connection, under the radar, to some Rethugs reactionary behavior of bombing abortion clinics…
Thye public school system is an effin’ catastrophe. They have more dollars per student than just about any private school, yet don’t even come close, overall, to achieveing similar results. Part of that has to do with classroom disciplinary standards, the appreciation of the elective nature of private school attendance, a much higher caliber of teacher, and the general absolute moral component that is intrinsic to religious private schools…
The ever increasing resources of the public school system has in large measure has gone to teacher salaries, once horribly low but now outscale in the other direction considering many finish at the lower end of their graduating classes, and a bloated administrative cadre; at least here in NYC and in Maryland where I lived prior. Very little of that money has made it’s way back into the classrooms. And of the monies that have, they have been spent on computer terminals often used to teach kids self paced courses, or used in ways that ineffectually support the pedagogical goals; much like the permissive nature of calculator use in math classes has rendered many too lazy to use their heads. I know I’m old school and am fond of the ,”what if you were on a desert island” rhetorical foil, but I’m here to tell you that I can count on two hands the number of times we used a calculator in a year long vector calculus course; and probably used it less than 50 times in the preceding years calculus class. Technology is a wonderful tool, but it neither replaces books, brains, nor effort…
The school public school system suffers from too much Billy Ayers social justice drivel and grievance mongering revisionist history dogma. And until we can fire the dufus, low end of the curve, teachers-regardless of their ethnicity or gender-and actually engage in some real education such as reading, writing, mathematics, (factual)history, and civics, our public schools will continue to be an epic fail-regardless of the money thrown at them…
And unfortunately, so too may be our youth…
Pity. Isn’t CAT’s business going to skyrocket? What with all the infrastructure that’s getting stimulated.
That’s what they do best, hf.
Those bastards made me use a slide rule, Bob. A fucking slide rule! *weeps*
This is the part that jumped out at me.
What exactly would a person, whose whole life has been on the left, mean by “train teachers more effectively”? What is a “bad teacher” to a leftist? Leftists who base every thing in their lives on Party and power? What about “given the opportunity to train effectively”? Train to do what? Teach what?
This is to me one of those statements that sounds one way to conservatives but is actually meant by the speaker to state something entirely different.
Consider it in the light that the left has their political objectives, power objectives. How would those be advanced by teacher “training”? Which teachers would be considered “bad” for not “training effectively”?
Obama may place US under International Court:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30632
And the hits just keep on coming……………….
Read the comments section and see what “The World” has planned once this comes about.
Teaching the three R’s in elementary classes is a repetitive, boring, job. For both the students and the teacher. That is doing it in a way that works and has worked for ages is boring. This is how it got phased out and replaced by all those fun things that don’t work but both the teachers and the kids have “fun” doing them.
Dan’s Jesuits did it the hard, boring way. My mother was a teacher back in the 50’s/60’s. She taught me at home to read and do basic math before I was 5. Boring yes, but effective. I did the same work with my son because the school system wouldn’t, couldn’t. He hated it but he became a better person for it.
The teacher’s unions have done the job a union does. Make their members jobs, pay better, and be less like work and more like play. Public sector jobs should never have been allowed to unionize. That and the spread of the college education degree requirement have done the wrecking. Until those two things are addressed, reform is just a new paint job on a tar paper shack.
Happyfeet and I were speculating just a couple of days ago that the ICC would be coming to a once proud sovereign nation near you. So no surprises on that day when it shows up a done deal on the front pages of the WaPo or NYT. Sadness, sure. Surprises, no.
I’m willing to give The One a pass on this one. I think that making the public schools compete with private-sector schools for pupils and achievement levels really would cause the public school system to blow up. I have a great deal of doubt over the ability of our current crop of teachers and administrators to cope with that kind of competition.
The One was just calling it like he sees it. We should applaud him for recognizing and admitting that they’d destroy themselves before they’d reform themselves.
Dan, I’ve got bad news for you and your blog. Obama is an ideological Marxist. Trying to interpret what he means is useless. He is a Marxist. Unfortunately he is too stupid and to inexperienced at anything to realize just what he is hoping for. I’m serious. Marxists are not honest. Nothing matters but the cause. Honesty is useless to Marxism.
Don’t want to face another Katrina Hurricane? Obviously you are not going to stop huge and powerful hurricanes from hitting the coasts of the US. But failing levees? Oh yeah, that is something you can do something about. Don’t build coastal cities below sea level or at the least, if you don’t wish to preempt free citizens rights to build their own cities below sea-level, don’t subsidize that sort of unwise choice with federal or state monies. Plan to get people out before their cities are inundated with water. But don’t help people re-build below sea level after you have saved their lives. Failure happens. Learn to recognize and avoid past failures by not repeating them in the future. What’s so hard about that?
Dan, my wife used to be a teacher at Hartford Avenue school, in that neighborhood. Do you know Ma Fischers? Or Hooligans?
Sdferr, Obama doesn’t give a fiddlers fart about New Orleans or the levee’s. This is populist bullshit and pandering. Trust me my friends, Obama is a Marxist and he’ll say anything to keep a base as he moves America further left. Pretty soon the damage will be done and he’ll leave America about as prosperous as East Berlin was.
Yeah, both. Ma Fischer’s was an apres-bar institution. I’ve been to Hoolie’s a bunch, too, that triangular bar with the good sandwiches.
How interesting the expression “blowing up” to reference the opposition, coming from a friend of Bill Ayers. Projection, anyone? But I see we’re still engaging in these quaint hermeneutics. This man is incapable of good faith discourse. His genius is in the impersonation. He is indeed the One, the greatest triumph of the Left — a candidate who was able not to leak the acid of his Leftism through every pore long enough to get elected. That’s why everybody has been so ga-ga over the guy — they knew they’d finessed the public perception game for the first in their history. Who else could have performed such a feat? Dennis Kucinich? But this act can only go on for so long. Watching a Leftist trying to pretend otherwise is like watching Newman in that episode of “Seinfeld” trying to keep from scratching his fleas.
This is “the Washington Monument” gambit pushed out to a national scale. Transparency. Count on it.
Obama isn’t interested in debate any more than Gore is. If you don’t want to continue poring Billions into failed Public Schools…… {$1.2 Billion this current school year in Milwaukee for 80,000 studends with a 50% graduation rate} then you hate children and want to blow up the school system. THAT’S OUR LEADER??????
Obama is useless as tits on a bull. I’d love to meet him and tell him so. I’d tear him up!!
Government is adding jobs not cnotracting. Keeping all of our teachers and firefighters is not stimulus. But then you all knew that already.
They could call this bill the COOKABUNGA bill, because it’s as much COOKABUNGA as it is stimulus.
This is merely a Marxist power grab.
Every city government always says something like that whenever tax money gets tight.
Is the Washington Monument gambit one where they threaten to make cuts in vital services? Never touch those jobs that nobody cares about except the politician and his family. All the “deputy assistant administrator for blah blah blah” jobs.
School systems do it too to increase the millage. Chicken Little speeches.
Chicken Little speeches.
Just like the ones the Obama haters make?
Washington’s other than government economy used to involve heavy tourism. People come to the city to see the sights. Whenever a budget cut was threatened, the first thing the city fathers would suggest to cut to make up the shortfall was policing around the mall, counter-threatening closure, and pissing off the tourists from all over the country, who had gone out of their way to arrange vacations months in advance only to arrive at a closed Monument or museum.
“Uncle!”, budget cut canceled, funds restored.
STFU, turnip.
Yep, same type of ploy all over. Police, Firemen, road repair are the cries around here. I have four different income taxes to file as the result. Plus the normal property and sales taxes.
One would think that the Police and Firefighter’s Unions (aren’t they supposed to be good for something) would raise a stink about their livelihoods and missions being political pawns……
You gotta love his attempt at persuasion. Some say we should spend more money on schools. Some say we shouldn’t So I say we compromise… and spend more money on schools.
Dan-
We lived on North Lake Drive, between Bradford and Belleview. I was too young for most of the bars at that time, but I remember sneaking into the Globe to catch shows, and bussing tables at the Coffee Trader. Not sure if either of those places even exist anymore.
When I was growing up (in the south, admittedly), the bats the teachers used to whack you with were prominently displayed, including the holes bored in them to raise blisters. Needless to say, we were pretty well behaved. “An armed society is a polite society.”
Wow! Note this date in your diaries, folks; this may be the only time in the next time that Obama says something that makes sense.
Yes, blow up the public school system. Raze the buildings, burn the volumes of regulations, policies, and documentation, fire and blacklist all the administrators, teachers, and janitors (since we can’t shoot them).
Then, rebuild from the ground up — literally in the case of physical plant, figuratively in the cases of payrolls and procedures. Nothing less radical has a chance of working; the corruption is so pervasive that if anything of the old institutions are left, it’ll spread through the new faster than body lice in a commune.
And the old Detroit Public Schools were considered exemplary up through the 1950’s (aircraft engine repair as a vo-tech course, anyone?).
Perhaps the issue is not money, but the culture the students live in – a culture that does not value getting an education.
My dad told a story about a parent-teacher night at Woodworth School in east Dearborn back when he started in the late 1950’s. An auto worker came up to him and told dad to let him know that if that autoworker’s son caused any problems – if so, he would put his son through the garage wall. (An early description of what my little brother has called a ‘wall-to-wall discussion’.)
Listen to your teachers, don’t cause problems and embarass your mother and me – or else. It isn’t the money, stupid; its the culture.
Not to say that the Dearborn Public Schools didn’t have money – they were rolling in it back then. The Great Ford paid for everything, and I know I got a good education (as much as I was willing to take) from very good teachers in very good facilities.
I am sure the Farmington Public Schools and the Birmingham Public Schools and those in East Lansing, and in St. Joseph do very well by their students, and their students do very well. It is the culture – and no money can change that.
Oh, sure, I know where those places are, and I can see your block in my mind’s eye.
Well, Mikey, that was before the kid could drop a dime to CPS and get daddy thrown in jail and blacklisted as a sex predator.
I’ll predict that within two years, there will be a requirement that any college accepting public funds cannot consider any student without a government high school diploma for admission to any program.