Wining (sic) this deeply red district would be a political shocker and could deal a strong blow to Republicans’ extreme plan to end public education and hand over our democracy to lobbyists and special interests.Thankfully all the Left's lobbyists and special interests--Labor Unions like the NEA come to mind, will fight tooth and nail to thwart the GOP's extreme plan . . .
More than 300 Metro teachers displaced as positions eliminated | Nashville City Paper: "Lockhart, the veteran Whitsitt Elementary teacher, is among a handful of teachers who have alleged the district chose to displace her because of her age. Older teachers tend to earn larger salaries than newer employees. The teachers’ union is helping file complaints through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
[The Gov't's takeover of college "loans" is] a tremendous achievement, but the news may get lost in the excitement around the passage of comprehensive health care reform. So we need to make sure that when folks open the local paper to the letters page this week, they'll see notes from their neighbors supporting these important reforms.
In Spring 2007, on a conference call with students, then-Senator Barack Obama called for major reform to federal student loans:Yay, universal college education!!! Well, even if all Americans don't get college degrees, at least all Americans can pay for college degrees--universal tuition payments!!!
"We shouldn't be providing billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways to private banks. We should be providing an affordable, accessible college education to every American."
The student loan overhaul fulfills a long-time goal of Democratic lawmakers to end the bankers' role as middlemen and replace them with direct federal loans and aid to students.The parallels between the Democrats' designs on the student loan market and their designs on healthcare are remarkable. And the rhetoric employed for both proposals is more than "parallel"; it is identical.
Look, this was never about content. We were not going to have the president urging eight-year-olds to come out in favor of high taxes as patriotic. And anything he said would be perfectly OK, it will be “tie your shoelaces and be nice to your neighbor.”
What is odd and creepy is the conception of government that underlay whoever it was in the Education Department — and it could have been a plural — to have a question [for the kids to write about]: 'How can you help your president?'
That is not innocuous. Look, it is not going to do any real damage. We're not going to have people chanting poems about their Dear Leader. The question is that that kind of thing — about a relationship between the child and the president — is extremely odd. A child has a relationship with a parent or with a teacher, later a mentor or a coach, but not a president.
A child swears allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, but not the man who happens to be sitting in the White House. That's the difference between a 'popular democracy' (which is really a dictatorship) and a constitutional democracy.
And the idea that you would want a child to have any relationship with a president is odd. He shouldn't have any at all.
"The Obama administration is rethinking its course recommendations for students ahead of President Obama's address to the the nation's schoolchildren next week, rewriting its suggestions to teachers for student assignments on how to 'help the president.'
. . . .
Among the activities initially suggested for pre-K to 6th grade students was to 'write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.'
Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what 'the president wants us to do.'
. . . .
Presidential aides also acknowledged to [the Washington Times] that they helped the U.S. Education Department write the suggested assignments, which stirred criticism by many who say Obama is trying to indoctrinate the education system."
The program, "Public Schools in Bad Shape," was broadcast on November 12, 1999. In it, New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew warned that it would be wrong to create the idea that failure is "sewn within the fabric of public schools." Stossel agreed, noting that some public schools do good work.Maybe.
"But the big truth is that in city after city, the Catholic schools do better, spending less than half as much" as government-run schools, said Stossel. And while Catholic schools offer fewer union job protections, the bottom line is that "it sure seems good for the kids," with Catholic school graduation rates far outstripping those in the public schools.
Why Catholic Schools Succeed
How do U.S. Catholic schools do well on about $3,000 per student, when Crew says the New York City schools need even more than the $8,000 per student that is currently spent? Classes in Catholic schools are much larger than in the government schools, teachers are not paid as much, and many are teaching without a four-year degree and without a masters degree.
"Maybe it's not the money," suggested Stossel, "but about accountability and competition."
Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), who kept his cards close to the vest, signed the homeschool diploma bill this afternoon. HB0431/SB0433 was filibustered by the Democrats for nearly 2 hours two weeks ago as they fought tooth and nail to keep students with Category IV diplomas from getting jobs as police officers (despite getting their college degrees), or day care workers, auctioneers, hair dressers or pedorthists (among other jobs). I'm thankful to the Governor for not vetoing this and letting the community and the state to move on to more pressing issues.(emphasis mine)
While I'll admit that it's likely that on many of our more prestigious college campuses, Democrat-voting profs outnumber GOP-voting academics, that's certainly not true on every campus. I can tell you that it definitely was not the case during my tenure as a student at UT, where the collegiate culture I experienced strongly reflected the politics of the state and the region. My professors and fellow students were, on the whole, center-right to far-right in their political views.(emphasis mine) "Likely"? "Center-right to far-right"?
The state has authority to make principal and assistant principal changes due to the d[i]strict’s repeated failure to pass certain benchmarks required by state and federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laws. MNPS, as a district, is currently in NCLB’s “Restructuring” status, giving the DOE authority to approve all staffing resources.The obtuseness (and naivete, INMHO) of that last statement by Board Chair Marsha Warden is odd . . . and it almost makes you wonder exactly how concerned she is about having her school system in "restructuring" status.
One school board member, Steve Glover, recently organized a meeting with three state legislators to discuss the state’s role with the school district. At that meeting, Glover noted that some of the principals moved by the state had brought about success and change at their schools, in terms of NCLB. There appeared to be other factors playing a role in principal moves, and Glover highlighted public statements from Smith that the MNEA had contributed to the process.
. . . .
“It appears that they [MNEA] had a considerable amount of influence. …It unnerves me to think that they may have a hand in determining who the principals are, because I think that’s clearly a management decision,” Glover said. “Any time you’re in management, it’s a very fine line between the ‘respect’ and the ‘like.’”
. . . .
[Metro Nashville School] Board chair Marsha Warden said Thursday that she agrees that the MNEA’s relationship with the district has changed. She added that she hopes the union will play a larger role in helping the district monitor the effectiveness of individual teachers. A positive relationship with the union will be helpful to MNPS, she said, as long as the teachers’ union serves as a professional organization with a focus on teacher and student success.
“I think one of the most beneficial results for children would be a beneficial relationship with the MNEA,” Warden said.
"With college tuition prices rising at a much faster rate than that of inflation for decades, it stands to reason that somebody is getting rich. A report last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicates that university presidents are among the first in line at the gravy train.
. . . .
Like the original robber barons, today's university presidents make their living by charging exorbitant fees to those who pass through their domains. Fueled by government subsidies for students, tuition prices at public universities have more than tripled after inflation over the past three decades and have not fallen during a single year at least since 1980 (see "No way down," Aug. 27, 2005).
It's a record of price increases that would make oil executives blush but one that the captains of higher education get away with because the public mind has not associated their occupation with greed. Perception, however, may be catching up with reality."
"We've been spending increasing amounts of federal money for decades, with increasing rules, increasing mandates, increasing regulations," Thompson said. "It's not working."I agree with most of Thompson's observations/criticisms on the matter, but it seems to me that the OBVIOUS answer is to not have education dollars routed through a Federal Educational bureaucracy, right?
He added that there are problems with Bush's No Child Left Behind program, which requires annual testing and punishes schools that don't make progress.
"No Child Left Behind _ good concept, I'm all for testing _ but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test _ you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.
Instead, he said the federal government should be providing block grants as long as states set up objective testing programs.
He said his message to states would be, "We expect you to get objective testing done and publicize those tests for the local parents and for the local citizens and suffer the political ramifications locally if things don't work out right."
“We did not finish the peoples’ business and we failed young people because we lied to them,” Harper said. “We have said that the lottery was to help get them through school, and we have not done that."Well, speak for yourself, Senator. But sincerely failing to accomplish something you've promised isn't a lie, and most legislators never intended to reduce the scholarship to a veritable handout for students merely managing to survive at a state university. I don't think that people who voted for the lottery had that in mind either.
“And we have tried to raise the standards so very high, standards that we probably could not meet. We are trying to raise those standards so high, and it’s just to keep the kids from getting scholarship money,” she added.I know that several bloggers (notably from the Righter side of the ideological spectrum) (here and here) have sympathized with scholarship students having to maintain a 3.0 grade point average. And it is uncomfortable to note that students from higher-income families are faring better at maintaining the scholarships. But what is the objective for the scholarship program?
