The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released the results Tuesday. They say that only 27 percent of the more than 600 candidates who took the test passed. The test was administered in March of this year.

The teacher’s licensing exam tested potential teachers on their knowledge of elementary school mathematics. This included geometry, statistics, and probability.

To learn more about everyday math read the following links:

• Illinois Loop Math Program Reviews
• Math Curriculum by Town (Grayslake District 46 uses everyday math)
• DANCE OF THE MATH LEMONS
• MATH VIDEOS
• NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS: TEACH THE BASICS
• SUCCESS: TEST SCORES NOT DROPPING
• EVERYDAY MATH

They asked parents to volunteer to lead after-school programs in drawing, painting, handcrafts, dancing, sports, cheerleading and chess.

“Kids would be interested in after-school programs and it would keep their minds off gangs,” explained Marissa Juarez, 11. “It would keep them inside and safe.”

The fifth-graders also may have hit on just what they need to help them heal from the effects of urban violence.

The physical, social and artistic outlets kids urged are among the coping mechanisms experts recommend for those touched by violence. Similar activities are used with children in war-torn countries.

I will agree that kids need recess. My question is why did the kids themselves have to come up with a solution? Why didn’t the teachers and administrators come up with a solution to have recess? The answer is simple, teachers and administrators are constrained by teacher union contracts and the need to make it appear they are in need of more money to pay for these basic programs. They are part of a government monopoly that has no incentive to innovate. They can just sit back and cry poor anytime parents and other question them.

Our public government schools are setup to thwart accountability. They prove this day after day with stories of corruption, pay to play, exhorbitant pensions, extravagant perks, over taxation, no bid contracts, and over spending.

Remember everyone, when the schools start crying poor, it is just a game to get more money. very little of that additional money will actually be used to help education.

Lake County school districts in support of a 1 percent sales tax increase for the county have to regroup and decide what their next step will be, as the sales tax increase won’t be on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Roycealee Wood, regional superintendent of schools in Lake County, said the support of school districts representing 51 percent of the student body in the county, about 72,000, was needed to place a referendum question asking for a 1 percent sales-tax increase on the ballot. And that number needed to be reached by the Lake County Board’s meeting on Tuesday.

If you live in one of the following school districts, please start looking for fiscally responsible residents who would make good school board candidates. Elections a re next April and petitions will need to be signed and turned in late this year.

• Big Hollow District 38
• Deerfield District 109
• Highland Park District 112
• Lake Villa District 41
• Zion-Benton Township High School District 126
• Grant Community High School District 124
• Grayslake District 46
• Millburn District 24
• Mundelein High School District 120
• Waukegan District 60
• Prairie Crossing Charter School
• Woodland District 50

And don’t forget the comment by Regional Superintendent of Schools, Roycealee Wood next time she is up for re-election.

“Obviously I’m in support of anything that will help our public schools,”

This comment is easy to interpret. It means she will continue to support the never ending tax increases asked for by our public government schools.

To fix these endless tax increases, we have to starting funding the child and stop funding the bureaucracy.

Local school districts in Illinois are forced to raise 62 percent of their revenue from the property tax on homeowners and businesses. They get 8.4 percent of their money from the federal government.

Schools are not forced to raise revenue from property taxes as stated. Up until 1992 there was virtually no limit on the amount a school district could levy. Since 1992, they have been limited by PTELL, although that can be easily exploited to get more money than approvedTechnorati Tags: Education reform, SB2288, HB750, State Sen. Meeks, New Trier, Fund the child, PTELL, overtax, referndum, funding inequities. In addition, with each increase in in the local property tax levy, there is a decrease in in State funding. In essence, the amount levied locally and the lowering of the amount received from the State makes the funding locally increase at a faster rate than the State increases.

This current system absolutely causes funding to be different based on your zipcode. The solution that the schools, teachers unions, and many State Legislators want is a huge tax increase. The only thing this tax increase does is provide more money to the education bureaucracy while they only give a small portion to the actual education of the children.

State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) recently announced that he wants Chicago Public Schools students to enroll at suburban New Trier Township High School on the first day of class to protest the inequities in school funding in Illinois. For the past six years, Meeks has worked to pass legislation that would increase the state income tax to fund the schools, while offering some property tax relief.

This tax increase solution, known as SB2288/HB750, is what State Sen. Meeks wants. Again, this solution won’t provide the results he claims to want and that is an educated populace of inner city kids. His blind support of the education bureaucracy only extends the educational apartheid inherent in the current public government schools.

The solution to fix this is funding the child and stop funding the bureaucracy. When we start giving and equal amount of money to each child and let the parents choose what school they want them to attend, we will turn around our educational system in quick order. This is already been done in New Zealand with astoundingly quick results. Competition is a wonderful thing to end the bloated bureaucracy in our current government run monopoly call public schools. School choice saves money and increases results.

State Sen. James Meeks of Chicago’s South Side got the conversation going recently when he urged Chicago students to skip class on Sept. 2, the first day of school in the city, and try to enroll instead at Winnetka’s New Trier High School. Meeks hopes the protest will shine a light on what he considers to be an unfair school funding system in Illinois, one that favors rich areas over poor ones. The New Trier district, with two high school campuses, spends about $17,000 a year on each of its students, while Chicago Public Schools, a unit district that includes both elementary and high schools, spends about $10,000.

This is just a stunt because New Trier and every other school district won’t allow this to happen. The district model perpetuates the inequtiy which allow people like Meeks and the teachers unions to continually lobby for more taxpayer money. The trend of ever increasing taxes will never end as long as we allow the bureaucrats to decide where our children attend school. The only solution is to Fund the Child instead of funding public government school bureaucracies. Money is not the answer as I have explained many times before. Watch the video I posted early that shows the idiocy of the arguments against a system that allows parents to choose. There are also many articles I have posted at Fund the Child.

First, an answer. Yes, millions of dollars from losing Illinois Lottery tickets go to fund public education.

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The lottery began in 1974, but the money wasn’t specifically earmarked for education until 1985. That year, a new law required all lottery profits go to the state’s schools fund, which helps finance kindergarten through high school public education.

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There was no requirement the lottery money be on top of what was already there. So, as lottery money comes in, it frees up other state tax money to spend elsewhere. How much education gets in the end is up to the annual political whims of state lawmakers and the governor.

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“Thus, while the lottery is a significant source of revenue, it has never been – nor will be – the primary source of school funding,” reads a line on one pamphlet explaining where lottery money goes.

So the lottery funding education is a myth and will remain so. This leaves the bulk of school funding on the backs of homeowners through property taxes. As much as everyone likes to claim property taxes are local control, it is really just a state sanctioned tax to give the appearance of local control.

It’s time to fund the child and quit funding the bureaucracies in the public government schools

Since 2004, the foundation has tracked the school performance of African-American boys. This year’s report, released last month in Chicago at the annual UNITY convention of minority journalists, shows that 53 percent of black males did not receive diplomas with their cohort during the 2005-06 school year.

“Unfortunately, it’s pretty much the same thing,” said Michael Holzman, a research consultant for the foundation and the author of the report.

Mr. Holzman said that schools enrolling large numbers of black male students are not as good as schools with a larger population of white students: The teachers are not as experienced and effective, the schools lack resources, and the curriculum is not as challenging. Non-black students enrolled at such schools, he said, also did not graduate at the same rate as their counterparts in schools that had fewer black students.

What about Chicago?

Chicago, which has the nation’s second-highest enrollment of black males, had a graduation rate of 37 percent for African-American boys, compared with 62 percent for white males, the Schott report found. In addition, the report found, the school systems in New York City, Detroit, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., also did not graduate the majority of black boys.

The report says there is a “leadership deficit” and I have to agree, but not in the way they claim. The leadership deficit I see is African American leaders like Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rev. Meeks, the NAACP and others who blindly support a public government school system that is setup to keep African American children uneducated and thus unable to compete without governmental support. How they justify this blind support is beyond me. The only possible reasons I see are that it is all about the money they receive by staying in leadership roles and with a dumbed down population, they won’t be able to think for themselves and will continue to support these failed leaders and their policies of apartheid.

This apartheid system will not change until we start funding the child instead of funding a self-serving bloated bureaucracy that cares more about its own extravagent pensions, salaries and benefits instead of the needs of actually educating the children of this country.

• News-Sun: Antioch group recommends elementary school referendum (Excerpt below)
• Daily Herald: Antioch group tabs education goals
• Antioch Review: Nav34 recommendations presented to board

An advisory group of parents and staff studying the issues facing Antioch School District 34 for the past seven months recommended the district hold a bond referendum to build more classrooms to relieve overcrowding and the district’s reliance on 16 mobile classrooms.

Considering the slowed economy and two failed referendums since 2006, the earliest the district would pursue a referendum would be March 2009, said District 34 Superintendent Scott Thompson.

“It’s too soon to do in November,” he said. “We have to determine when the right time is economically.”

What Superintendent Thompson means by November being too soon is they the district does not have the needed time to get their propaganda out in favor of a Yes vote. This is especially true since their last 2 attempts have been beaten.

District 34, like virtually every other school district in Illinois doesn’t listen to the taxpayers. They continue to put referendum after referendum on the ballot until it is passed. They’ll do surveys and these consensus groups together to make it appear that they are listening to the taxpayers, when these attempts are just masquerades of propaganda to get what the district wants.

Our public government schools are overfunded currently. They do not need more money. They need fiscal responsibility to stop the spending problems instead. One way to force this is to Fund The Child. Designate a specified amount of money for each and every child. The parents then get to choose the school they want their child to attend and the money then follows. This puts the parents in charge of the purse strings instead of the bloated and self-serving school bureaucracy. The schools will actually have to earn the money by innovating and actually producing results.

You can take a survey about District 34 at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JGFWf8RgmyTbEJ3Chjoadw_3d_3d
. Let them know what you think.

Democrats in Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate.
[snip]
it’s one that actually works and helps thousands of poor children.
[snip]
This fight has nothing to do with saving money.
[snip]
Kevin Chavis [snip] says, “If we were going to do what was best for the kids, then continuing it is a no-brainer. Those kids are thriving.” More than 90% of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.

Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a “Godsend” or a “lifeline” for their sons and daughters. “Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school,” says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. “Why do they want to take our choices away?”
[snip]
the teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down.
[snip]
Ms. Norton contends that vouchers undermine support and funding for public schools.
[snip]
The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools.
[snip]
A new study on charter schools in Los Angeles County finds big academic gains when families have expanded choices for educating their kids.
[snip]
The reason unions want to shut the program down immediately isn’t because they’re afraid it will fail. They’re afraid it will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools.

Just think about this story. Vouchers are working in inner-city schools, yet teachers unions don’t care. The teacher unions don’t want competition. They don’t want to help truly educate poor children. They are only interested in money and their own self preservation. The next time you here a union member say it’s for the kids, you’ll know it is not for the kids, it is for the education bureaucrats.

If you are a teacher and you really do care about children’s education. You have to stand up to your union and tell them to stop this madness. If not, you run the risk of being generalized as a education bureaucrat that cares more about your salary, benefits and bloated pensions than the children you are charged with teaching.

What’s not mentioned is South Carolina-based Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Inc. named the award winners after being paid $22,192 to assess seven District 46 schools. Documents obtained by the Daily Herald through the Freedom of Information Act show the district spent an extra $15,732 for 20 administrators and teachers to attend a five-day Blue Ribbon Schools conference and awards banquet in North Charleston, S.C., in December.

———————————————-
Specifics on how Grayslake Elementary academics would benefit from Blue Ribbon Schools were not cited in the initial award announcement, but Correll in February sent a letter to all district residents outlining numerous recommendations.

Total expenses related to Blue Ribbon Schools were $40,468, according to district documents. Correll said the costs were covered by properly tapping into a combination of nearly $89,500 available in federal grants and $200,000 from the superintendent’s professional development account.

I’m not sure where the letters went, but the portion of the district where I live did not receive the letter mentioned.

In following the recommendations of the paid consultant’s awards, the district is purchasing SMART boards, electronic blackboards connected to a computer. I am still not convinced these boards will really help increase a test scores. They are like any other technology introduced as a way to help students, but in the end turn out to be a gimick of an education company.

Classroom technology similar to an electronic chalkboard is cited as one of the academic benefits from Grayslake Elementary District 46’s hiring of Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence Inc.

——————————————-
Part of the presentation noted how South Carolina-based Blue Ribbon Schools President/CEO Bart Teal found District 46 lacking in technology after studying its buildings last fall. The veteran educator’s company gives advice to schools on how to improve, and provides awards to clients typically promoted in news releases and on Web sites without mention of a financial arrangement.

SMART Technologies was one of the vendors at the Blue Ribbon Schools’ December conference.

Here are a few of the other suggestions:

• Having maps with student-friendly “I can” statements to promote ownership of learning standards at Prairieview, a pre-kindergarten through fourth grade school.

• Developing a more comprehensive new-teacher orientation plan at Meadowview, a kindergarten-through-fourth-grade school.

• Making better use of test data to drive instruction at Frederick School. The building serves fifth- and sixth-graders.

• Creating a school song at Grayslake Middle School. Children in grades seven and eight attend the school.

• Implementing a student leadership group and homework clubs at Park Campus in Round Lake, a building for kindergarten through eighth-grade.

Some of those suggestions are good, others will do nothing to educate a child better. It appears most of these suggestions appears to have come from other educrats. I have a suggestion a couple of suggestions that will increase learning:

• Replace their whole language with a phonics based curriculum
• Replace their everyday math with a direct instruction curriculum

Feel free to email the Grayslake Board and thank them for making this decision in favor of the taxpayers. I don’t always agree with their decision, but this a good one and they deserve our thanks. I have already emailed them my thanks.

On the other hand you may want to email your frustration and disgust to Gurnee Mayor Kristina Kovarik and the Village Board. Mayor Kovarik supports this tax grab. Help make sure the Gurnee Board gets the real numbers so they are not deceived into thinking this tax swap is actually for education. Make sure they understand only7.5% of this tax increase will end up back in education.

This is the email I sent to Mayor Kovarik and the Gurnee Board:

I agree with Chris and have written about this bill and its predecessors many times before. This bill does nothing to improve education. It is just another tax increase under the guise of helping the children. Here is the breakdown of where the money will go:

• 56.5% will go to fund state debt, road construction, state employee pensions and unpaid Medicaid bills
• 36% will go to property tax relief
• 7.5% will go to education

As you can see, only 7.5% of this $8 billion tax increase will actually get to the school districts. Once this small percentage of money gets to the school districts 70-80% of the money will go to salaries instead of to the children.

When are our politicians going to stand up for the children instead of the education bureaucracy and teachers unions? When are the teachers going to stand up to their union and tell them to start supporting the children? The answer to that question is very clear. The teachers unions and public government school bureaucracy is bloated and self serving. They are not going to stand up for the children until we citizens force the issue. It is long past time to start funding the child and stop funding the bureaucracy.

If you want to stop the continual money grab by legislators, county, township and school boards, then visit the Illinois Citizen Coalition and see how voting YES on a Constitution Convention this November can change this.

Extremewisdom.com has an alternative education funding plan that fully funds education, but results in a tax cut. View a short video presentation and read the Executive Summary.

For background information on HB750 now SB2288 review the following articles:

• Teachers To Springfield Part Duex
• School Funding: Where the Candidates Stand
• Study Showing More Faults with HB750
• HB 750 Not Dead Yet
• Tax Increase Cost an Average of 20%
• HB 750/SB 1484 Flyer
• HB 750 Analysis Roundup
• More HB750 Analysis
• HB 750 – Massive State Tax Increase

• Public schools’ revenue growth outpaces inflation
• Chapter 2: Unequal state equalizer
• Chapter 3: Suburban taxpayers’ heavy share
• Chapter 4: 1 of every 2 education dollars stays in classroom
• Chapter 5: Non-class costs weigh heavy on schools
• Chapter 6: Administrator pay vs. teacher paySuper pay for superintendents
• Chapter 8: Unit districts get by on less
• Chapter 9: Schools falling further into debt
• Chapter 10: Only 1 in 5 high school graduates are ready for college

The solution for many is to give the schools more money:

From the data provided it is fairly obvious that the money currently going into the public school bureaucracy is not being spent efficiently or effectively in educating our children. The question from this becomes, how do we fix this problem. The answer is definitely not more money. The Daily Herald hints at the solution when they finished their recommendations with this quote: [Emphasis mine]

The Daily Herald is absolutely correct in stating the public school bureaucracy will never change on its own. What they failed to recognize though is that the system has become so bloated and self serving that the taxpayers will never be able to turn the system around alone. The only solution therefore, is to put the money in the hands of the parents by funding the child. This empowers the parents to demand accountability and thus change. Without this direct control of the funding, public school bureaucrats will always find a way to thwart the will of the taxpayer. The empowered parent will be much harder to circumvent, since they can take their child and their money to another school. The solution is simple: fund the child instead of the bureaucracy.

There are many people complaining about how much there assessments have risen this year. They know this means their taxes will go up in the spring. I have heard many times that Lake County has the highest property taxes around. Well, that is true and it was recently confirmed by Forbes magazine in a report showing Lake County as having the highest property taxes in the Midwest.

Last week I attended the Citizens Action Project meeting help in Prairie Crossing. The meeting did not meet my expectations. The presentations on how to appeal your assessments were weakly presented. You can view their outline of the appeal process here or watch the video of the presentation. They were able to successfully highlight how different assessors do their jobs. This leads to multiple questions:

• Why do we have 18 elected township assessors?
• Why do we have townships at all?
• Why are there so many taxing bodies in Lake County and Illinois?
• Why do we need 892 school districts?

The group is trying to disconnect the assessment process from the tax process. This does nothing but direct blame at the wrong people. The Assessors DO NOT raise your taxes. They only raise your assessment. The taxing bodies raise your taxes. They get an increase each and every year. In fact if the assessor raises your assessment, but the taxing body does not increase their levy, your taxes would not increase. In fact, they may decline. You can view an explanation of how this works at the County Assessor website.

This leads to how the group really missed a great opportunity to tell the attendees why their taxes are going up so much. Your taxes are increasing so much because the taxing bodies are leving more and more each year. If you want your taxes to quit going up go to your levy hearings and speak out at their meetings and levy hearings. All taxing bodies in Lake County are having those hearings this month so they can give them to the County Tax Extension Office this month. Some bodies have already held their meetings.

Start by looking at your tax bill. Who gets the largest percentage of you tax money? This will be your local school districts. In Grayslake, the Levy Hearing for District 46 schools will be held at 7:30 pm on December 10th at Prairieview. District 127 does not have their agenda up, but their levy hearing will be December 13th, unless they call a special meeting for the day after Christmas like they did last year.

The Big Hollow School District 38 has made it official, they are putting another referendum on the ballot. This time for a working cash bond. As I wrote about back in Spetember, a working cash bond only masks the larger issue of overspending by the district by allowing them to move working cash funds into other funds masking the true spending habits. The district has a spending problem that will not be fixed by more money. More money only continues to hide this fact from the public and will gradually make the problem even worse for the district.

When reading the News-Sun article it stood out that nowhere did the reporters questions anyone about district spending habits. In addition they posted this time line:

This section was entitled “REVENUE STRUGGLE” indicating total belief that the district has a revenue problem and not a spending problem. This again is a reason why many people don’t believe journalist are being as fair and balanced as they should be. Second, there is no mention that the PTELL law did not come into place until 1990 and how it allows schools to continue to get funding increases every year. In fact, Big Hollow has had increases in revenue of 414% since 1990 while the student population increased on 194%.

* Source: Lake County Regional Office of Education — Annual Financial Data Report
* Illinois State Board of Education Report Card

As you can see the revenue has increases by a total of over $10 Million dollars. Per student revenue has increased by over 59% and still the school board and district administration say this is not enough. What is the amount of money they would be satisfied with. My guess after looking at their spending habits is that even the working cash bond is only temporary and they will be back for more in just a few short years.

Just take a look at your last tax bill. Where does the majority of that tax money already go? It goes to the schools of course and yet they cannot spend your money fast enough and keep coming back for more.

For the residents of Big Hollow, you only have to look at Grayslake District 46 to see what happens when you elect a responsible school board. We defeated the 4th atemp at a referendum here back in 2005. The administration before that had made the same cuts your district has. Since that time, almost every cut has been restored without a referendum. Also, the board has returned bond money to the taxpayers that was received in an unethical manner. I have no doubts though that D46 is not perfect and if we lose an election, the schools will once again be at our doors begging for money. The system here in Illinois is broken and is stacked against the taxpayer. We can make small strides and hold back the wave for a few years. It just takes work and resolve to overcome the personal attacks and rules put in place to defeat us. Stand strong residents of Big Hollow and fight the overspending bureaucrats who use your children as pawns against you.

As I have written many times before, the Public Government School Monopoly is not properly educating our children. They are a government bureaucracy that is bloated and self-serving. Yes, there are some very good teachers within the system, and yet they cannot overcome the weight of a government sanctioned monopoly that is more intent on self preservation than actual education. You can see this everyday when the teachers unions and other state sanctioned school organizations attempt to thwart charter schools, vouchers, and any measure that would hold them accountable in how they educate our children.

As this article rightly points out, school choice is not just a problem for the inner city children, it is a problem for all children. Education is being dumbed down to hide the effects of poor curriculum like Everyday Math and Whole Language. Public schools today are only providing us a higher priced education with ever decreasing standards and stagnant educational outcomes.

There is a simple solution to this problem of poor education. This solution is to empower parents by funding the child. Below is the prescription for a better educated populace:

This woman is making a decision out of financial reasons. The financial reasoning here is flawed however. It appears that she has ignored or has not researched many options. Some of these options are scholarships, grants, community colleges, and writing seminars presented by writers at local libraries. These options make continued education more affordable. These other options require more time, hard work and commitment.

The answer to many people in our society today is the government should take care of me. Her basic argument is that the government should want people improving themselves through education and because of that the government should be willing to pay for it. Basically, she is arguing that all education should be free and there should not be any hard work or personal responsibility on her part to receive it. The arguments here illustrate she is a member of the blank check society.

She also argues that the government is now making money off of what used to be free. I believe she is getting her arguments mixed up, since a college education has never been free.

The argument now moves to our government monopoly we call public school system. I would like to ask her why spending over $500 Billion dollars is not enough to educate the children in our government run schools? How can private schools, charter schools and home schoolers provide a better education for less than our government schools? How much more money does the government have to spend?

The answers to these questions are very simple. The government is the problem, not the solution. The government is setup by bureaucrats to benefit themselves instead of the children or the taxpayers. Sure people will benefit, but only after the bureaucracy has siphoned off its share first. The more we the people allow the government to take care of us, the more freedoms we lose and the more control these bureaucrats gain over our lives and money. If you want to have more money and freedom, stop asking the government for handouts. If you want to reverse the mentality of the blank check society, then reduce the size of government.

A disturbing talent drain in our nation’s schools, squandering the potential of millions of lower-income, high-achieving students each year was exposed today before the U.S. House of Representative’s Education Committee. New research cited at the hearing shows that students who demonstrate strong academic potential despite obstacles that come with low incomes, are currently ignored under No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

In actuality, these same students were ignored long before NCLB. Our public government school system has been teaching to the middle for decades. This is part of the reason for the decline in our educational system. A larger part is the poor curriculum used in our schools today.

Joshua S. Wyner, Executive Vice President of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which wrote the report with Civic Enterprises. “But we are missing an important opportunity to promote high achievement for all students, no matter what their income and background. The needs of high potential and high-achieving students should not be pitted against the educational needs of underachievers.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Wyner is missing an important opportunity here. Instead of asking Congress to further regulate the already over regulated government schools, he should have been asking for deregulation and the breaking up of this monopoly. As long as our education system is designed as a monopoly that forces students to go to a bureaucrat assigned school these students will continue to be ignored. Empower the parents instead of the bureaucracy.

In elementary and high school, lower-income students neither maintain their status as high achievers nor rise into the ranks of high achievers as frequently as higher-income students.

There are many reasons for this. I know many readers will claim it is due to a lack of money in the lower income neighborhoods, thus limiting the opportunities that lower income kids receive as opposed to those in higher income neighborhoods. This argument is rather disingenuous. The school officials that claim they need more money to provide more choice are the same people who want to maintain the government monopoly that denies parents choice. Money does not equal an increase in performance. Just look at Washington D.C. Schools and you’ll see why that approach is not the correct solution.

But this highly visible national struggle to reverse poor achievement among low-income students must be accompanied by a concerted effort to promote high achievement within the same population. The conclusion to be drawn from our research findings is not that high-achieving students from lower-income backgrounds are suffering more than other lower-income students, but that their talents are similarly under-nurtured. Even though lower-income students succeed at one grade level, we cannot assume that they are subsequently exempt from the struggles facing other lower-income students or that we do not need to pay attention to their continued educational success. Holding on to those faulty assumptions will prevent us from reversing the trend made plain by our findings: we are failing these high-achieving students throughout the educational process.

The quote highlighted is very telling, “their talents are similarly under-nurtured”. To put this in words everyone will understand, schools are throwing high achievers into the same class as low achievers. They then teach to the middle trying to bring up those at the low end leaving those at the high end to fend for themselves. This is the model throughout the overwhelming majority of our public government schools. This model must be broken.

If we break this model, what will we replace it with? The answer to that question is simple and has been repeated here many times. Here is how we help all children, overachievers, underachievers, and all those in between:

• Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
• Empower parents to choose which school their child will attend
  • Public – in or out of current district boundary
  • Private
  • Charter
• Remove all current mandates
• Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
• Require yearly testing of all students – all schools (These tests should be created by an independent authority and not the current State or Education Bureaucracy)
• Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
• DO NOT reauthorize NCLB, it will no longer be needed
• Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed

As Joanne Jacobs describes 2 of the books:

Actually, The Lovely Bones is a coming-of-death book narrated by a ghostly victim of a serial rapist-killer. I wouldn’t recommend it to young readers — or to parents. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, another reading list favorite, is an excellent book but includes homosexual rape. These aren’t beach books.

Similarly, doing the school year, teachers place books on the required reading lists like the following:

1. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut
2. “Beloved ” by Toni Morrison
3. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
4. “Awakening” by Kate Chopin
5. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
6. “Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
7. “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan
8. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
9. Fallen Angels

When a teacher assigns a book to read it should to enhance the learning experience. They should not be assigning books that have foul language, sex, rape, and violence. The students required to read these books could not see these images on the screen in a movie. Why is it necessary to have them read and picture these images in their minds?

Why are these books being thrust upon our children? There are many reasons for this. Many claim these new books are real life and allow the young readers to connect with the story with the hope they will read more. This reasoning seems to be more of an excuse. If teachers are to open the minds of children to explore, then why are the reading lists consisting of easier and profane books instead of books that challenge the mind?

Why is classical literature not good enough today? Why do students need easier reading lists? There are many answers to this, but one main reason is that students are not being taught to be effective readers because of reading instruction programs like Whole Language. Since these students are not effective readers, they cannot understand the more challenging concepts and words in the classics. They are more inclined to understand the new, easier reading books of today.

Schools are meant to educate our children and yet they continue to dumb down the reading; they dumb down the tests; and don’t want to be held accountable. Yes, there are some very good teachers out there who believe in challenging their students expecting them to learn. The problem is really the system. Our public education system is really a government monopoly. This monopoly is setup to work against accountability. It is a bloated bureaucracy that cares more for itself than the needs of the students or the wishes of the parents who want access to a quality education for their children. This system must be reformed.

The reform method is very simple. Change the funding from the bureaucracy to the child with the following steps:

• Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
• The parents then choose which school their child will attend
  • Public – in or out of current district boundary
  • Private
  • Charter
• Remove all current mandates
• Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
• Require yearly testing of all students – all schools
• Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
• Abolish NCLB, it will no longer be needed
• Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed

These steps empower the parents instead of the bureaucracy. Government schools will now have to compete for students and thus money. They will no longer get a free ride based on a students’ zip code. This free market approach is simple and will benefit all of our children. Money will only be drained from the bad schools. Good schools will end up getting more money because they will attract more students. Kids in poorer communities will get more choices because money is now available for entrepreneurs to step in and help those students as well. This is being done now so I know it will happen when money is no longer being devoured by the government education monopoly.

Education should be a top priority for everyone. These children are our future. Do we want them to have a better country than we do now? Do we want to doom them to failure or being second-class citizens of the world? The answer is obvious, we want them to have a better country and we want them to continue to lead the world in not only freedoms, but economically and intellectually. We will doom them and this desire if we do not stop the government education monopoly from making drones out of our children. We must elect people who will fund the child and stop funding the bureaucracy.

A couple of quick items I noticed in the summary were the following [Emphasis mine]:

1. 
   

   Multiple Indicators/Assessments – Allows states to use more than a single test for accountability purposes. States can use multiple, state-developed assessments taken at different points in time to measure AYP and may consider more than reading and math assessments in the final AYP determination. Such additional indicators of school progress include graduation rates, dropout rates, college enrollment rates, percentages of students successfully completing end of course exams for college preparatory courses, assessments in history, science, civics and government, and writing, and improvements in the performance of the lowest and highest performing students in the school. Substantial improvement on such indicators may provide credit of up to a total of 15% of elementary schools’ Annual Measurable Objectives and 25% of high schools’ Annual Measurable Objectives. Requires states to make itemized score analyses understandable and useful to schools.

2. 
   

   In order to use a growth model, states need to have in place longitudinal data systems that compare the same group of students each year. These data systems will include certain elements, including: • An ability to match individual student scores on state academic assessments from year to year; • A unique student identifier so test scores can be monitored while individual privacy is protected and a unique teacher identifier that matches student records to the appropriate teacher; • Enrollment, attendance, demographic and program participation information including individual student membership in subgroups at the school, grade and classroom level; • Student-level data on the entrance and exit of the education system for each student including first-time grade enrollment, grade level retention, transfer status, and drop out rates.

The multiple indicators will allow schools to game the system even more than they do now. This is easily seen by the way the test scores show high numbers meeting AYP while the Nations Report Card does not.

The second items of having year to year tracking of both students and teachers would be a great data to have. In fact, a system like this should have already been in place if the public schools had truly been interested in knowing what methods work and who the best teachers are. This is basic data that is neccessary for finding, fixing, and improving educational outcomes.

I am not going to analyze this document too much because NCLB is not needed. It is a misguided effort by lawmakers and the education bureaucracy to seemingly provide accountability, but in fact does not fix the inherent problems that exist in this government sanctioned monopoly. The education bureaucracy has become bloated and inefficient. They no longer are responsive to the community in which they live or the parents who are not given an alternative to the failing education of their local school district.

The solution is to fund the child and not the bureaucracy. This simple plan that would allow all children equal access to a good education and would put parents back in charge of their children’s education can easily be done with the following steps:

• Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
• The parents then choose which school their child will attend
  • Public – in or out of current district boundary
  • Private
  • Charter
• Remove all current mandates
• Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
• Require yearly testing of all students – all schools (These tests should be created by an independent authority and not the current State or Education Bureaucracy)
• Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
• DO NOT reauthorize NCLB, it will no longer be needed
• Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed

Whether you share my views or not, you are being given a change to express your concerns with Congress on this matter. To provide them your comments please send and email to ESEA.Comments@mail.house.gov. You will need to include your name. They would also appreciate the page and line numbers related to your comment. These comments are due by September 5, 2007 so don’t delay.

1. Why did the district build new schools if the finances were so bad? Why didn’t they scale them down if they needed more room?
   
   

   They built more schools because their student population has tripled. They were able to build these schools with SPECIFIC money that can only be used for building facilities. This money cannot be used for anything else. (People are always willing to spend money on a building…not on personnel.)

2. Does Ms. Gallichio know that there are many people in the district on fixed incomes? Seniors, empty nesters etc. who can not afford to pay higher taxes anymore?
   
   

   Although there are many people who are on fixed incomes, the population within Big Hollow has hugely grown to be a younger public. It seems misguided to provide poor public education just because retired individuals want to save money on taxes. I understand their needs, but we need to contribute towards our future and not just respect our past.

3. The tax increase has been voted down! It was voted down last time, why isn’t someone coming up with a plan to really cut spending instead of directing cuts at the children?
   
   

   The tax increase does continue to be voted down. For some reason, people believe that there is rampant spending going in within the district. However, if you look at their financial statements and compare them with other districts in Lake County, they spend the least and are funded the least. They are, in fact, the lowest funded school district in Lake County. Feel free to look at their staff list and try to find positions that are not needed. If you compare it with other school districts, you’ll notice that many positions are actually missing. (And probably could be used!)

4. Why wasn’t the old property put up for sale sooner, so the transition would be smoother?
   
   

   The old property is still property and not just a liability but a potential asset. I’m sure that the school district hoped that the community of Big Hollow would actually desire to have a good public education program. This would result in higher property value and then Big Hollow School District could later sell the property for additional value. Regardless, with a $30M debt and growing, a $5M sale of property isn’t going to help very much.

5. What personnel cuts are being made?
   
   

   The personnel cuts are the programs that were cut. There is a requirement to provide certain types of education and although some people would not mind having 50 kids per classroom to save money on teacher salaries, this is absurd. If you look at their staff lists…they are already barebones. If you go to a popular website and look at the teacher salaries, you may also notice that they are poorly paid already.

6. What class will Ms. Cosman be teaching next year? What is here degree in? If her degree is in music, then why will she be teaching another subject that she has not mastered? If her degree was not in music to start with, why was she teaching music?
   
   

   Teachers can be proficient in more than one field. In fact, with the current NCLB requirements, all priorities must be towards supplying highly qualified teachers whenever possible. Those teachers would not be placed into regular classrooms if they were not qualified.

7. Now that grades K-8 are in one location, why is there a need for two priciples and an assistant?
   
   

   There are 3 buildings and each administrator must actually evaluate every teacher, maintain the school management, deal with the community as a whole, provide professional development, and ultimately be the leader and manager of a large staff. I find it hard to swallow that a suggestion of LESS administration is the solution than already exists. Many elementary schools have 1 principal AND 1 assistant principal. Middle schools in many cases have an assistant principal for each grade level. If you compare Big Hollow with other school districts, you’ll see that they have the bare minimum to function. By requesting that they actually remove more personnel is simply asking for them to give up and crumble.

8. Is it true that the Superintendent received a 5.5% pay increase?
   
   

   There is no problem with a Superintendent or any other individual receiving a raise. If you look at his salary on a popular website, you’ll see that it is $40-50k less than other superintendents in the area. I’m not against pointing figures at overpaid teachers and administrators, but this is not the district to do so.

9. How many other administrators received raises and how much were they?
   
   

   It doesn’t matter…what matters is that those administrators are still underpaid and will possibly go elsewhere where the salaries are better.

10. What was the average raise for teachers this past year and also again for the upcoming school year?
    
    

    Raises are contractual and one of the few motivators for teachers to stay in their profession. This is especially true for Big Hollow who get paid so little considering their educational background. The theory is simple…the more experience a teacher has the better they are. I believe this theory holds true for the majority of teachers out there. Although we could hire 1st year teachers every year and fire them because they’d not be tenured, the quality of education would be even worse for the students.

11. Is there a plan to freeze salaries? If so, for who?
    
    

    The beauty or curse of contracts is that you cannot just freeze the salaries. See my multiple previous mentions about poorly funded/paid teachers and you’ll see why freezing salaries is not a good option.

The following was after the answers given above:

My Response:

I did forget this as well. Increasing property taxes decrease home values (Hat tip: Extreme Wisdom):

Adams next comment:

My response:

Adam’s Response:

My Response:

Adam also commented on another Big Hollow post as well. You can read that exchange here.

It is my opinion that no post should be excluded just because you don’t agree with it. This divergence of ideas is what makes this country so great. We can disagree and yet debate civilly about them. It is this debate that will produce innovative solutions to aid in the education of this and future generations. It for this reason that I have posted all entries that are education related. I have not excluded anyone. If your post is missing, it is truly unintentional and I will correct that by putting your post at the entryway to the carnival.

UPDATE: Next week’s carnival will be hosted by The Red Pencil. You can email Vivek your posts at theredpencil [at] gmail [dot] com or you can use this handy submission form instead. You can visit last week’s midway down at Education in Texas. If you are interested in taking a daily whirl around the edusphere, sign up or just visit Edusphere.US.

I also would like ot include one special request. WikiFOIA.com is asking for help in getting Freedom of Information (FOI) procedures and costs from across the country. If you know that information for your school district please update that information.

It’s time to enter the carnival; explore, learn and debate to your heart’s content. If you enjoy suprises, click the House of Mirrors button below and be randomly transported to one of the Carnival links. Enjoy!

To kick off the debate and hopefully set the energy level to high, read this controversial post from Extreme Wisdom that asks the question, “Is Public Education in America Even “Legitimate?”“. It should get the debate cranked up swiftly no matter what your views are.

Next stop is the blog of Presidential Candidate John Cox to explore Ritalin use in schools. [Disclosure: I write the majority of his education policy posts]

I also humbly submit my post entitled “Can We Compete?” which explores the NEA July cover article of the same title.

McHenry County Blogger, Cal Skinner reports a Illinois State Senator has introduced legislation that would allow public money to be used to promote a referendum. Election interference laws are so weak now that there is no accountability anyway.

Andy at The Cool Justice Report found out a school prevented a democratic student election by not counting write in votes for a student who used derogatory language about the school in an online blog.

I have an affinity for homeschoolers, since I am one myself. You can visit their carnival at Dewey’s Treehouse this week, but for now let me share some of my favorites.

Do you like Opera? How about if it is free? Well then, head on over to Higher Up and Further In to find out how to get free Opera lessons.

I discovered Teen Literacy Tips via Bending the Twigs in a post about the dumbing down of summer reading lists.

HeadMistress at The Common Room provides part II of The Seven Liberal Arts and a Classical Education in which she discusses the place of Greek in modern education.

Consent of the Governed talks about the ridiculousness of paying kids to stay in school.

Alasandra provides her responses to the top myths of homeschooling.

Jocelyn of Lothlorien writes about some of her homeschool friends who have started their own businesses. Check them out and see what ingenuity can do for some young entrepreneurs.

Reasons why empowering parents will help more than laws and a little EduPolicy on the side:

EdWonk explains that the elephant in the EduReform center ring is really teacher quality and he shares the following quote:

Over at Kim’s Play Place, she explains why the basics are essential and how NCLB is not the culprit in the increased time on tested subjects.

I believe NCLB is ineffective should be renewed. It would not be needed if teachers considered all the tests they write and give to be were considered “high stakes tests” instead of “low stakes testing” as explained by Right Wing Nation.

Brett at The DeHavilland Blog explores the idea of the upside of less education funding. The idea is simple, put the public back in public funding and remove the government from the middle.

Joanne Jacobs brings us a report on summer reading lists and how they have changed over the years, i.e. many of the classics are no longer on the list.

Matt over at Going to the Mat shares what education topics he would like to see researched and why there is a disconnect between what is being researched and what should be researched.

der Logiker is giving his advice on how to choose a topic for your thesis. The tips and warnings could save you much frustration and stress. If you are looking for a topic, Advances in the History of Psychology shares where you can get a $25,000 fellowship along with his exploration into whether there are sex differences in the learning of science and math.

Ryan of I Thought a Think has a great post about the war on the gifted. He is absolutely correct. The gifted are being shortchanged because of the structure of our public schools. These students need to give a chance learn at their level and pace at a school that is tailored for them instead of being stuck alone in a school hallway. In a bonus post he asks is there a problem why males do not seem to be teaching in K-6. I believe the answer may be the lack of alternative methods to becoming a teacher and the arcane salary structure. This limits the professional who may want to change careers.

The Science Goddess at What’s it Like on the Inside explains why the Internet can and should be used in schools. I have to agree that some of the regulations in place in some school districts are overblown as well.

Math:

Math is my favorite subject and why I am a computer programmer today. Denise over at Let’s Play Math provides us with some great quotes about why some of us love math.

Mathematics is rated M for mature by Tony at Pencils Down is thought provoking. However, I disagree with his concept, but would accept it as an alternative if parents were given the choice of whether their child attended this school.

Helps for teachers:

Eric at Secondhand Thoughts explores why former troops would make good teachers.

Bill at The Tempered Radical ponders how other teachers determine student learning difficulties. Do you use voodoo or statistics?

MS_Teacher reflects on her first day of teaching and the lessons she learned from it.

Clix shares what works for her at Epic Adventures Are Often Uncomfortable.

Elementary History Teacher gives some advice on how to remember the children’s names. It is a bit of sanity advice to start the school year.

The Therapy Doc shares a field trip that should be mandatory. I have to agree. I have read much about the holocaust, but have been to one of the museums. I have also taught my children about it. I do plan to visit one of the museums when I get the opportunity. We all need to remember that evil does exist in this world. The Daily Planet posted a holocaust article entitled, “It All Started With A Girl: An Anne Frank Biography Essay“. Good job Homey.

Darren from Right on the Left Coast shares why he has changed his mind about arming teachers. This is a controversial topic, but one that deserves thought and debate.

The fourth law of behavioral management across the pond at scenes from the battleground. They close with the following question, “If you do not see others as responsible for their actions how can you ever take responsibility for your own?” Hopefully the mentality of personal responsibility makes its way back into our public school system. It surely is needed.

Tim Frederick shares his thoughts on the distinction between teaching with the test and teaching to the test.

Mister Teacher form Learn Me Good shares a new game, “Place Ball” to help with rote memorization. Let him know what you think or if you have heard of the game before.

Dan shares some of his first day procedures and encourages other to share theirs at the First Day Wiki.

Book Reviews:
Joel from So You Want To Teach? wants to change the world and he wants your help to do it by giving away “The 4-Hour workweek“.

In a further look at NCLB, Matthew Tabor reviews the book “Tested by Linda Perlstein“.

Steph W. at Thoughts on Meaningful Learning talks about The Book of Learning and Forgetting and how we learn from things around us.

Helps for parents and students:

Campus Grotto lays out the must have tech gadgets for students while Scott at College and Finance reminds them of 18 overlooked things everyone should bring to college. While technically this not education related, Finance Is Personal gives 10 statistical facts why you should never play the lottery. This is commons sense advice for all the students heading back to college and think they can strike it rich without hard work.

Ms. Cornelius at A Shrewdness of Apes provides a lesson for teachers and parents who need to know the language (slang) of drug use. Learn it and be prepared.

Miscellaneous:

Greg at Rhymes with Right explains why special and months and days are an injustice to the students.

Jose Vilson explains when he saw the eyes of the devil in the education system. There are people in any profession that are just there to collect a paycheck and those that are plain vindictive.

Atheist Revolution shares their thoughts on why BYU is failing to foster critical thinking. I disagree with their logic, standing up for your beliefs does not necessarily mean you are not fostering critical thinking.

Baroness Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institute and Pharmacology Professor at Oxford University claims the learning styles approach is “nonsense“ and a “waste of valuable time and resources“. The methods are known as “visual, auditory or kinaesthetic (Vak)”. [Emphasis mine]

In addition, Frank Coffield, a London University Professor, calls learning styles, “theoretically incoherent and confused“. His final comment was as follows:

I am sure that very soon, there will be a myriad of studies released by the education establishment refuting these claims. In the end though, they will only be doing this to protect their money sources and not for the good of the children. Time and time again we have seen the education establishment release studies that do not rely on scientific methods. We can see this even more clearly in how they choose curriculum that has not been proven with scientifically based research.

The government run monopoly we call public schools is so heavy with bureaucracy that they no longer educate children effectively. They can only find new schemes like “learning styles” to force an unsuspecting public and elected officials to give them more money. Some ready examples of this are the smaller class sizes, universal preschool, and preparing students for the 21st century. These are all slogans and catch phrases that do nothing to effectively educate. They do everything to increase the size of the education bureaucracy.

It is time to end the games played by the government run public school monopoly. It is time to empower parents by funding each and every child equally.

Now the condition of the schools (from linked article):

And finally, the education outcomes for all these expenditures with the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Eight Grade results (from linked article):

The expenditures in the Washington DC school system teach us a very powerful lesson. That lesson is that more money is not the answer to solving the crisis in education we face in this nation. The numbers in DC also demonstrate that no amount of money will ever overcome the inefficiencies, ineptitude, corruption, and unaccountability of the bureaucrats who run the government schools.

There is a solution that is simple, yet elegant. The plan will empower parents by allowing them to choose the best school for their child. Parental empowerment will force all schools to earn the trust of parents. Parental empowerment will save taxpayers money. Parental Empowerment gets parents more involved in their child’s education. Parental empowerment will raise standards. And the best aspect of Parental Empowerment is that it raises the educational outcome of all children.

Here is the outline of the plan:

The quote by Riverview Memorial Elementary School Principal Nancy Holloway may shed some light on why the educrats of today can’t write textbooks,

In other words, many of today’s educrats, who claim to be experts, don’t have enough subject mastery to allow them to teach effectively, much less write a textbook.

There are many reasons why we have many teachers teaching math and other classes in which they do not have subject mastery. There are really 2 main reasons for this. The first is the teacher union negotiated contracts that make it almost impossible to fire bad teachers. The tenure and longevity rules also force schools to move teachers into classes in which they do not have subject mastery.

This brings us to the second reason and that is the education system itself. The system has allowed the teacher unions to dictate the terms of employment. This is because the system itself has no accountability since it is a government run monopoly. This in turn has allowed the administrators and teachers to have virtually no accountability.

The lack of accountability will not change on its own. It is only going to change from outside pressure from parents, taxpayers and hopefully, the good teachers that are in the system, who are fed up with the bad teachers around them. We must all stand up to the system and force accountability upon them by ending their monopoly status where children are assigned a school based on their street address. Accountability will only come from putting the parents in charge of their children’s education. We must once again fund the child and stop funding the bureaucracy.

This paragraph has to be one of the most ironic I have seen in a while from the education establishment. In it they are arguing that American students can compete effectively today just as they always have. They claim this is just fear of competition and we should not be afraid of that. The question that immediately pops into my mind at this point is why are teachers unions and our government schools so afraid of competition? If competition is nothing to be feared, why do they fear it and try to stop it at every turn. They fight to stop charter schools; school choice; and homeschooling. They instead try to impose younger starting ages and mandates to prevent competition.

Maybe this is why our education establishment is so afraid of competition. They don’t teach the basics anymore. They only teach students how to puzzle guess until they find the correct answer.

Ms. Strickler understands the problem. Our system of a government monopoly over education is the reason our children are not being taught properly. I wonder if Ms. Strickler understands that empowering parents to select the school their child attends would end this one-size-fits all government school system. It would force all schools to innovate and meet the needs of its students. Many schools would naturally specialize in teaching certain types of learners. This would allow all students to learn better fulfilling the idea of no child to be left behind without the actual need for the actual law itself.

Currently, local control is only a myth. Schools are for the most part locally funded, but they are controlled by the education bureaucracy, state legislatures and federal regulations. Parents have less local control over education than have over the purchase their automobile. They can pick the model, color, and style of car. They can even choose the dealership to purchase from. But with the current government school system they are assigned a school based on their street address. They are even assigned the classroom and the teacher. Imagine being told, you can only purchase your car from the dealership in your neighborhood. If you decide to purchase it elsewhere because you don’t like the selection, you still have to pay the local dealership as well as the other dealer.

The system is broken and must be changed. It is time to stop playing around the edges of reform and actually reform the system. The government run monopoly must be ended. We need to introduce true competition and true local control by funding each and every child equally. This puts the parents back in charge of education since they now wield the funding power over the school they feel is best for their child.

This is similar to what took place in Beach Park schools this past school year. This is happening across Illinois. Parents are trying to do what is best for their child while schools punish them while receiving State benefits. These cases just highlight how broken this system is and why it must be changed.

I will excerpt some of the strength and weaknesses from both accountability models [Emphasis mine]:

Bureaucratic Accountability

• Strengths
  • The ability of regulators to command, investigate and punish schools and their employees gives regulatory accountability powerful strengths. (p. 11)
• Weakness
  • regulatory accountability by its nature must follow formal procedures that are the result of political and legal decision-making. The rules that govern regulatory accountability are matters of politics and law, so they reflect other factors besides simply the desire to protect children. (p.11)
  • A district that cannot afford to give teachers a raise may instead offer them greater insulation from regulatory accountability systems. (p.12)
  • The collective bargaining power of teachers’ unions helps them install procedure obstacles to regulatory accountability. Public school teachers accused of misconduct are entitled to a cumbersome, quasi-judicial adversarial process, including representation by union advocates and lengthy appeals. Firing a school employee, even one who is guilty of a heinous offense, takes years of costly, labor-intensive procedures. (p. 12)

Market Accountability

• Strengths
  • The strengths of market accountability are largely a mirror image of the weaknesses of regulatory accountability. Market accountability is carried out by parents who will be far more strongly motivated than even the most well-meaning regulator. (p. 13)
  • their decision-making processes are solely their own and solely concerned with the well-being of their children. (p.13)
  • They can just withdraw their children from that school and put them in another one that has better safeguards against misconduct. (p. 13)
• Weaknesses
  • Private schools typically conduct internal audits and adopt procedural safeguards against misconduct …… However, these practices are not under the direct control of the parents. Parents cannot tell private schools what safeguards to adopt; they can only choose among the available schools based on procedures that exist at those schools. (p. 13)
  • Parents cannot conduct investigations or audits to independently confirm whether schools follow their own procedures effectively. (p. 13)

Conclusion

This study proves what I have stated before, “schools will never be accountable until parents are in control.” Parents will almost always do a better job of protecting their children that a government bureaucrat. A set of written rules will never be able to judge character and motive. It will never be able to see shades of grey in a situation. It is only as good as the people who write it and then it will only see black and white. These written regulations has brought us zero tolerance for guns where pictures of guns have brought suspensions, kids turning in found guns have brought suspensions and other ridiculous rulings because a government bureaucrat only does what is written on a piece of paper and not what is good for the children.

Parents on the other hand look at the entire situation and use common sense and logic to determine what is best for their child. They understand that a teacher who is making sexual advances should be fired to protect their child and other children. With school choice they have this power to demand it. If the school does not follow through, they lose students and money. Government schools can take years to fire a teacher like this and often it is after a lengthy and costly process. Sometimes these teachers are allowed to resign and they move on to another school. You can find many examples of how poorly the government regulatory accountability works with the series of articles on The Hidden Cost of Tenure done by Scott Reeder of the Small Newspaper Group.

Bureaucracy is not the answer for educating our children. Parental choice is the answer. It is time to fund each and every child equally; allow the parents to choose which school their children will attend; the money then follows the child to that school. This forces all schools to be accountable to the parents and to earn their trust. This trust will entail both the educational outcome for the child and the safety of that child.

It is time to stand up to the teachers’ unions and tell them enough is enough. We will no longer permit you to protect failing and dangerous teachers. We will no longer allow you to use children as hostages for financial gain against the taxpayers and parents. We will not tolerate the poor educational outcomes because of your pension for self indulgence and self aggrandizing. We are going to put parents back in charge of their child’s education. Trust and respect are not a right, they are a privilege, and you will have to earn them from the parents once again.

To many people this all makes logical sense. They understand the education of our children is important. They understand that getting a good education can lead to a good job and a better life. This is what some teachers, union leaders, and politicians rely on. They use the emotional ties of children’s education to get elected and to grab more and more money from the taxpayer.

More and more taxpayers are starting to realize the awful truth behind the education bureaucracies’ plea for money. They are using this additional money for themselves and not for the education of our nation’s children.

Money is not the answer to fixing our public government school system. Money only perpetuates the ineptitude of a system that self serving and addicted to the perks and unaccountability of its actions. You may think this is harsh language. Yes, it is. This is because it is true. Let me share a few examples with you. [Emphasis Mine]

Example 1: Superintendent Demands Raise and Bonus

Example 2: Superintendent Receives 85 Sick Days Per Year

Example 3: Retirees Work for 13 Days to Earn Lifetime Health Care

Example 4: Other Michigan Retirement Loopholes Costing Schools

There are many, many more that can be found with a little research. If you accompany these examples with the fact that increased funding does not improve test scores, you see the real problem. Money that is supposed to be going to educate our children is lining the pockets of some current and retired employees. The rest is masking the true problem of a bureaucracy that is unaccountable, bloated and ineffective at actually educating our children properly.

School teachers are not underpaid. The so called teacher shortage appears to be caused more by the ability for teachers to retire early and the additional teachers needed to reduce class sizes. This continues to water down the teacher talent pool lowering quality. Teacher quality has been proven to be more important than class size.

While the federal government and others want to pour more money into finding better teachers, they fail to recognize that this money will not be effective until the government run schools are held accountable to the public. The best and fastest way to achieve this accountability is return control to the parents by funding each and every child equally no matter what school they attend.

Empowering parents will force all schools to earn the trust of the parents or their children will not attend that school and the school does not get their money. Not only is this good for the children, but all it will be good for all children. To compete, all schools will have to improve. They will be able to sit back and remain unaccountable any longer. Schools will compete for the best teachers, thus raising pay for the good teachers. A side affect of this will be bad teachers gradually being forced out of teaching. Schools will become more frugal with their money in regards to how it is spent. The majority will now be directed at improving the educational outcomes so they can earn the trust or more parents and gain more students.

This is a win-win solution for parents, teachers, politicians and especially our children. Parents are free to choose the best school for their child; teachers will be able to teach in a more conducive environment; politicians can finally say they improved education and lowered cost. The children get the greatest benefit of all. They get a good education and the chance to live the American Dream.

Many will say I am dreaming of a utopian ideal. I believe this can become a reality if we elect the right people to office. We need to stop reelecting career politicians and start electing true leaders; leaders that implement policies which are good for the entire country and not just their party. True leadership starts from the top. That is why we need a true leader as our next President. We need a leader to empower parents instead of the bureaucracy.

First, I understand the motivation for those who lie about where they live. However, they are still not doing what is right. They would be better off speaking up for change in the system instead. Here are a few excerpts from the article.

If true, the family could owe Plainfield School District $252,500 in tuition reimbursement, Godinez said. The district currently spends about $8,300 per student annually.

Currently, Plainfield School District has 25 schools, one pre-school and one alternative school with three new schools on the way this fall — meaning there could be at least 300 students attending Plainfield schools when they shouldn’t be, costing the taxpayers about $2.5 million.

A Joliet family who sent their two children to Plainfield schools for 2½ years agreed to pay the district $250 a month for seven years to fulfill their debt of $21,000 in out-of-school district tuition.

These cases are just a sampling of what is suspected to be about 10 kids per school in this district. The reporter in this story only tells the side of the school. It talks about the cost to the taxpayers as being the full $8300 per year. This number is technically correct, but not the entire story. The amount spent per student comes from property taxes, state aid and federal monies. The portion that the family should be charged is only the amount of property taxes. This is because the school has been counting these students and received their federal and state monies because the students attended their schools. The story doesn’t say whether the school will be returning this money to the state or federal government, but I would venture to say they won’t. While they are claiming that the taxpayers are being robbed, they are in effect doing the very same thing by getting double money for these children, minus the property tax difference of course.

With the family of seven, Thorse said the district is looking into asking the Will County State’s Attorney office to press charges against the parents and perhaps the grandparents.

Not only will they go after the double money, they want criminal charges brought against some of the families.

“We just don’t go away. It’s not right to the taxpayers,” Thorse said. “We will file criminal charges against parents who knowingly violated the residency. I think there are some people who don’t know. I think there are some situations where people are naive and think they can go to any school they want and anywhere they want.”

I highlighted the last quote because of the irony. This school administrator is telling parents they don’t have the right to send there children to whatever school they want. He is defending a government run monopoly. The irony of this quote is that in America, the freest nation on earth, children are subjected to a closed system that prevents many parents the freedom to send their child to the best school they can find.

The second situation is a mother who started the year living with her mother and is ending the year back with her husband, of course in separate school districts. The children however were reportedly living with the grandmother, although this is disputed by the school district.

This has been a tough year for Dana Wekesa, a 28-year-old nurse’s aide from Kenosha. While trying to balance a job, college and a rocky marriage, her mother in Zion has helped care for her children since 2000.

Now, with only six weeks of school left, her two school-aged children are not allowed to attend Newport Elementary School in Wadsworth anymore because Beach Park School District officials determined they don’t live within district boundaries. They also slapped Wekesa with a bill for $9,156, because non-resident students have to pay $43 per day.

Wekesa argues that her children — a kindergartner and third-grader — have residency because they sleep at her mother’s house within the district.

“They stay there four to five days a week and two or three weekends out of the month,” Wekesa said.

The changing circumstances in this mothers’ life is causing another problem for herself and her children. Again this situation arises because our government school monopoly is a closed system that doesn’t allow for freedom for changes in life. It restricts education while claiming it must educate everyone. This too leads directly to the money and how schools are funded.

Boundary changes within schools districts are almost always contentious. This is the case again in the third type of students, those that find themselves forced to change schools.

“I’m an advocate for school choice, but you can’t have that in the 15 minutes before school starts,” Schlomann said.

At its June 25, the school board discussed the possibility of allowing the 44 students to choose whether to remain at St. Charles North High School or attend St. Charles East. Under boundaries that the board approved in December, the 44 eighth-graders were to be sent to St. Charles East.

“A child may grow up in a certain neighborhood, attending certain football games, having visions of where they would go to school,” Schlomann said. “Those kinds of aspects are a part of the psyche of our community.”

Public school districts have the ultimate authority to choose which school a child attends based on not only on their zip code, but down to which house on which street you live. I am not sure how this superintendent defines school choice, but his actions here speak much louder than his words. He is defending the government school monopoly against the will of the parents and students choice.

Lastly, the story of this single mom will have national ramifications. She is one of the mothers who fought race only preferences in school assignments that lead to the Supreme Court ruling banning the practice. [Emphasis mine]

“We’re here not because we didn’t get our first choice, but because we didn’t get any choice,” Meredith said after the ruling.

He offered her a chance to sign on to the suit and charged her $1 for a fee. At trial, Meredith said the plan violated her rights by denying her son equal access to schools.

Meredith said she would take on the fight again, if it meant getting her son into a good school.

”My son is my world, and I will never quit fighting for his rights,” Meredith said. ”I hope my son looks back and knows I will stop at nothing to do what’s best for him.”

I know this decision has led to much despair and hand wringing among the liberals and the government school monopoly proponents. I side with the Supreme Court on this ruling. We are supposed to be a color blind society now and yet we still have to bow to preferences based solely on race. I am glad to see that ending and giving the country the opportunity to move on to becoming a color blind society in all aspects of our lives.

The aspect of this case that is more poignant than the race issue is the issue of “equal access to schools”. The way our current schools are setup deny many children equal access to a good education. As seen in the above examples they do this by district boundaries, internal school attendance boundaries, and racial delineation. Many within the government school bureaucracy would argue that to provide equal access only requires more money. It has been proven that money is not the answer to improving educational quality. Therefore, it will not be the answer to providing equal access to all children.

As I stated above, all of these cases lead to one conclusion for solving he problem. That solution is to fund the child and not the bureaucracy. This simple plan that would allow all children equal access to a good education would put parents back in charge of their children’s education. This can easily be done with the following steps:

• Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
• The parents then choose which school their child will attend
  • Public – in or out of current district boundary
  • Private
  • Charter
• Remove all current mandates
• Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
• Require yearly testing of all students – all schools (These tests should be created by an independent authority and not the current State or Education Bureaucracy)
• Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
• Abolish NCLB, it will no longer be needed
• Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed

I asked for the curriculum used at the time. I would like to share that with you now. It was finally sent to me after I believe my third time requesting it. It is linked below for your review. You will find that it is the standard dogma spewed by the teachers’ unions, schools are underfunded, Illinois is 49th, we spend less than other urban areas, etc. The lessons being taught here were propaganda. It was a biased used of selective facts for the students to use at the rally.

CPS Tax Curriculum:

• Cover Letter for Teachers
• Curriculum Attachments
• School Funding Activities
• School Funding Facts

Since this was a field trip, the classroom lessons, the buses, the teachers, the substitues, the security officers, and administrators were taxpayer funded. This propaganda trip cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars.

This is just one more reason to stop funding the bureaucracies and start funding the child.

You can read the full report on EDNet here.

This report highlights the ineffectiveness and waste inherent in a large bureaucracy. How much is this inability to manage projects costing the taxpayer and costing the students the department is supposed to support? How can we possibly believe the department can ever be effective in holding public schools accountable for educating our children when they can’t even hold their contractors accountable?

The Dept. of Education is an ineffective and inefficient bureaucracy. The money used to maintain this bureaucracy can be better utilized at the local level directly on the students. This would mean billions of dollars more going directly to educate our children.

We don’t need NCLB. We don’t need the Dept. of Education. We need direct funding of every child no matter what school they attend. How many good schools could be built and staffed with billions of more dollars getting pumped into the hands of parents to direct their childs education.

You can view the Dept. of Education budget here.

The board meeting will be Monday night where the board is going rescind the illegal vote. How long before they vote again on this issue and cut the programs legally?

By violating school code it is easy to see why people see these cuts as punitive toward the kids. A solution can be found if the board will start looking for one. They currently only want one solution and that is more money.

Just like I said before, they only want more money. The board does not appear to want any other solution.

This anger is misplaced. The school board spent the district into debt not the no voters. The school board is making these cuts, not the no voters. The majority of the voters have overwhelmingly said no. The school board has refused to listen or find another solution. The district and school board are at fault. The anger should be directed at them.

It is just a ploy to try and force the voters to agree to fork over more money. Yes, the board will probably make cuts that are punitive to the children. They are using your children as political pawns until you give them money. This is a sad way for school districts and school boards to act, but it is a reality because they have all the money, time, resources and of course your kids to use until you agree to give them money or they invite the State in to force you to give them money.

Parents, voters, and taxpayers, you must start rising up against the public government school monopoly and for the legislature to FUND THE CHILD and not the system. Tell them to give you the ultimate in local control by allowing you to choose the school your child attends. Take the power away from these self-serving educrats who don’t care about your child, but about their own salary and pension. Let’s FUND THE CHILD and not the system.

As you can see these are cuts that affect the children themselves. These tactics are nothing more than threats to the parents for not allowing the district to take more of their money. There is a letter to the editor today in the Daily Herald that sees these tactics for what they are as well. They asked some very good questions that the board and administration should answer.

Big Hollow and many other districts use these same tactics of black mail and emotion everytime they try and take more taxpayer money to feed their every growing bureaucracy. You will notice in the articles from the Daily Herald and the News-Sun there is no mention of salary freezes or staffing cuts. The service cuts are directly aimed at the children. Even the School Board President admits these are small cuts:

With salaries being 70-80% of school budgets, why are there no cuts where it can really save money? In a separate Daily Herald article on Friday we discover that the music teacher, Carol Cosman, will be teaching another class this fall. Since this will not be music, what class will she be teaching? What is here degree in? If her degree is in music, then why will she be teaching another subject that she has not mastered? If here degree was not in music to start with, why was she teaching music?

We continue to have teachers that are teaching in subjects they have mastered. This situation is not good for students. Think about this logically. Yes, I know logic goes against the grain for those who only want more taxpayer money. They want you to rely only on emotions. If you question the need for a person with a masters degree or the pay of a teacher, you will hear the argument that teachers put up with so much in the class room and only those that are certified to teach are capable of doing the job properly. If you follow that logic, that must mean the teacher has spent the years of their education learning nad mastering the subject they are teaching. Unfortunately, this argument does not hold water. As in the case here in Big Hollow, it shows that teachers are not neccessarily subject masters in the class they are teaching. They are more likely learn the material they are teaching just ahead of the students they are teaching. This is common because of many factors, but mostly due to the union rules of seniority.

School districts around the state continue to use these same tactics of blackmail. They claim it is only the truth and the only choice. In most cases it is not the only option, it is simply the only option they want to look at. As an example, here in Grayslake District 46, we defeated a 4th straight referendum attempt in 2005. These same threats were made about shortening the day and elminating lunch. They had previously cut art and music programs. The voters elected 4 new members to the school board. The Superintendent was replaced that same year. The new board did not shorten the day. They restored art and outsourced the music program. There has not been a referendum since and music has now also been brought back inhouse.

The spending can be controlled, but only with diligence from the board and taxpayers. Boards can be easily swayed if the taxpayers do not continually watch the spending within the district. If there is a taxpayer in Big Hollow who is willing to continually watch over the district, please contact me. I will be happy to help you setup a website like mine to disseminate the truth with facts, instead of emotion, about the district’s spending problem. As a side note, there is a website setup to aid the tax and spenders. It Preserve Big Hollow. They have already posted about my articles in their critics section. I did not even know about them until recently when a friend of mine informed me. Feel free to pass this article on to them as well. Maybe they can get some of these questions answered for the taxpayers.

The original Press Release form the School Board can be found here.

Here are the basic ideas of this plan.

As you can see this plan, funds every child equally; lowers the tax burden, especially on those in the high property tax areas; repeals all the unnecessary mandates; ends all the local district referendums nonsense.

Feel free to debate Bruno on his plan. Together we can make Illinois a state with the best education.

At first glance, this appears to be a reasonable question. It gives the impression that the current public school system is doing the best it can with the resources we, the public, provide to them. However, it then shifts the blame of any failure off of the system and back onto the public. This question is just another setup to avoid answering the first part of the question about the failures of public schools to properly educate.

Below are a few better questions to ask:

1. Why is the US continuing to fall behind our International peers when we spend over $500 billion dollars on education each year?
2. Why is $500 billion dollars not enough to properly educate the children of this country?
3. Why do we continue to allow the current public school system to make excuse after excuse for not properly educating our children?
4. Why do we not value the education of all of our children?

The US is continuing to fall behind because our education system has become a self-serving bureaucracy. We have lost local control of our schools to the state and federal mandates, the majority of which were lobbied for by teachers unions. These mandates and the inefficiencies of such a large bureaucracy as the public school system means large amounts of the money we spend on education never make it to the classroom.

$500 billion dollars should be plenty of money to properly educate our children. The Department of Education is one piece of the bureaucracy that needs to be abolished. NCLB is another. This law is a failed piece of legislation that is nationalizing our education system making it less and less efficient. This also drains more money that could go to the child if it was not tied up in the enforcement of complex and arcane rules.

Our society is very generous to our schools. We value education because it helps raise kids out of poverty. It allows immigrants to provide a better life for their families. Education is the key to the success this nation enjoys in business. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy in place today is stifling the freedoms that allowed this nation to become the great country is has become.

Schools teach Fuzzy Math and Whole Language; ban the US flag for a day; remove America from the classroom; fail to have teachers who understand the subject they are to teach and provide history textbooks that turn children off to learning the history of this great country. The following is an excerpt from a speech David McCullough gave at Hillsdale College on History:

Too many parents are duped into thinking that it is someone else’s public school that is bad. It can’t be their school. If it was their child would not be making such good grades. This is a myth that schools have been able to perpetuate by norming up test scores and dumbing down the tests to give the illusion that they are doing a wonderful job at teaching the kids. This can easily be seen in the difference between the state school report cards and the NAEP scores. We need to do a better job at informing parents that the Emporer has no clothes. When this happens, parents will no longer allow the education bureaucracy to get away with improperly teaching our children.

Lastly, I believe most people do value the education of all children. They just have been very ineffective in telling the politicians this. They have allowed the education bureaucracy to dictate the terms of how students will be taught. Those that did learn the truth about our failing education system chose to pay for private schooling themselves or start homeschooling. They then fell silent allowing even further entrenchment by the education bureaucracy.

In closing, we are not failing our schools; our schools are failing our children; we are failing our children. It is time that everyone speaks up at the ballot box. Stop electing people who do not value the education of every child and elect those who do. Elect a person who will Fund the Child and stop funding the bureaucracy that is dumbing down our children just so they can get more of our money.

This is an interesting idea. It is truly unfair for everyone to pay for a service that all children do not benefit from. If the parents do have to pay a fee, then they will certainly become more intuned with how well the school is teaching their child. They will demand value comensorate with the expense. They will also quickly learn the value provided is well below the level they expect and will demand accountability.

Parents only need to look at the tax bill they just received in the mail to see that they are already paying a hefty fee to the schools. This fee is much higher than the $750 proposed. Parents should already demand accountability and value from their schools and yet the overwhelming majority are complacent and uninformed about the true state of our schools. More funding is not the issue, the schools have plenty of money. They just spend it on the bureaucracy instead of properly educating the children.

Parents at Warren and every other school around this state and country need to demand accountability. They need to demand that each child be funded equally no matter what school they choose. They need to demand that money stop flowing unabated to a system that is bloated, self serving and failing to educate our children properly. It is time to demand the state FUND THE CHILD and not the system.

I have tried several times to convince my local school board members that school choice saves money. They just can’t seem to see how since they are bombarbed with information from schools to the contrary. It is fairly obvious to anyone who looks at the numbers and this report now proves this point emphatically.

School choice provides competition. This competition helps bring about more parental involvement and raises the scores of those who choose vouchers and those remaining in the public schools. It will force the freedom principals need to innovate to help the students.

We already have a example of how school choice works. That example comes from New Zealand.

The NEA and other government school advocates have tried to scare parents into beleiving that their child would be hurt educationally if school choice was implemented. That is simply not the case as the above proves. They also claim that school choice if for elitest and won’t help the lower socio-economic students. This myth is also dispelled by looking at how school choice works in Milwaukee.

School choice will help the poorer students. Just think about a high school student in South Carolina that got a job to pay for his own private school because his public school was failing. School choice would help him.

Here’s another example of a Jesuit school in Chicago. They are helping poor kids get a great education. Just think about how many more kids they could help with school choice?

School choice helps everyone except for the bad teachers and administrators. They know this and they will fight to keep their padded pensions and system that is not accountable to anyone. It is time to fund the child instead of this broken system.

This information needs to be forwarded to every State Legislator. They are currently in the process of figuring out how to tax us all more so they can dump more money down the government school bureaucratic drain. Tell you legislator to start funding the child and stop funding the system.

If they worked to change the system, it would be better by now or there would be no principals. These principals understand that if they tried to change the system too much, they would most likely be fired. This is just one more reason why we need school choice. The current education establishment won’t allow the reform necessary to obtain real results. They know that if the system resembles charter schools, many of these administrators would be looking for work instead of milking the taxpayers for hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every year.

Some of the barriers are described as follows (p22-24):

The principals are handicapped by the bureaucratic system. This system is setup to give the appearance of local control, but it controlled by district personnel and by state and federal law. The system is setup to protect the incompetent and the teachers who have not mastered the subject they are teaching. All of this is not for the children, but for the protection of the system.

It is very clear to anyone using common sense that our current government run monopoly called public schools is a bloated system that hinders those who really do want to effectively teach the children of this nation. It is time we end the government school monopoly and start funding the child instead of the system.

>Funding the child allows the return of local control because the control is now in the hands of the parents instead of a government bureaucrat. We can eliminate the Department of Education because it will no longer be needed since the parents will be holding the schools accountable. NCLB can be repealed as well. It is an ineffective piece of legislation that does nothing more than nationalizes school control and allows states to game the system so they continue to look good instead of actually being good.

Wake up people. The education establishment has kept the shades closed for way too long. They are now being exposed for what they truly are and it is time to stand up and tell them NO! It is time to FUND THE CHILD instead of the system.

Download the full report here.

One teacher union member stated about Chicago Public Schools, “the district is claming poor and then hiring $170,00 administrators.” More parents and taxpayers need to understand this fact. The money is going into the bloated bureaucracy and not into the classroom to help the kids learn.

In closing, the reporter made a statement that was unintended but spoke the truth in volumes. She said, “The teachers don’t care where the money comes from as long as they get it.”

Neither the GRT or HB750 is going to help the kids learn. It is only going to put more money into the pockets of the teachers, administrators. The bloated bureaucracy will eat through the money faster than a pig at the trough.

A simple plan that is cheaper and results in a better educated populace. With a better educated populace, government run schools will no longer be able to use kids as pawns in their efforts to get more taxpayer money. Their money grabs and spending sprees will come to an end. This is the real reason the education establishment does not want each child funded equally. They know they their gravy train will be cut off and they will have to compete to earn the parents trust by producing results.

In addition to the better education results, the costs for the voucher program was lower than that of the state run schools.

There are many examples of how school choice benefits not only the rich, but the poor as well. There is a great example of this in a Jesuit school on the south side of Chicago.

Just think about this school. It pays its on way while the students get real world experience and a great education. How many more poor students could this school help if every child was funded equally? Why does the education establishment continue to insist on their one size fits all approach? The system is too costly and cannot be sustained. The taxpayers are not a open wallet for educrats to plunder whenever they desire.

The solution is simple, Fund Every Child Equally regardless of sex, race, creed, their place of residence and most importantly, the school they choose to attend. The Department of Education can then be abolished along with repealing NCLB. The nationalization of our schools can cease and local control returned to the parents, where it belongs.

Arne Duncan, Superintendent of CPS stated that nearly 5000 students were present as I mentioned in the brief post a couple of days ago. I was mistaken though. All of these students were not from CPS. A high school band, not from CPS, led the parade.

There were many teachers present. Most of them had IEA T-shirts, while about 40 or so had a T-Shirt that said “Dedicated” on the front and “Working without a contract District 205” on the back (Picture below). How may substitute teachers did the taxpayers pay for on Wednesday?

I emailed Arne Duncan to ask a few questions (below). I would have spoken to him at the rally, but I was more interested in getting information to reporters, although it appears from the articles my efforts were wasted.

1. How many students attended the rally from CPS?
2. How many buses were used to transport these kids?
3. Was this considered a field trip for those attending students?
4. How many CPS teachers and staff members attended the rally?
5. How many substitute teachers were hired to cover for the teachers who attended?
6. I have asked the following question to many other teachers and superintendents.
   What dollar amount will it take to adequately fund a students education each year? I know there is a different number for elementary and high school.

I received an answer from Peter Cunningham from the Office of the CEO.

This email shows multiple issues with the rally. Let me highlight a few:

• Students were used as political pawns
• Students were indoctrinated instead of being educated
• The taxpayers spent thousands of dollars on teachers, principals, security officers, etc in busing 2000 students to Springfield in 100 buses
• The taxpayers spent thousands more for substitutes to replace the staff being paid to attend the rally
• CPS schools want to receive and spend $20,000 per year per child

It would be interesting to see the lesson plans on how CPS and other schools taught/teach kids about funding inequity. Are they showing them how school funding increased 157% since 1987 while student population increased 13% while Inflation was only 57%?

Did they have a taxpayer watchdog group speak to the students about the spending issues? My guess is this was a one sided conversation complete with only the data they wanted the students to see. If anyone is willing, a FOIA of these lesson plans would be in order.

I will direct you to a few of the online newspaper stories and then share a little more about the day. The first is from the State Journal-Register. This story has a link to actual video of the event on its site.

The second story is from the Pantagraph:

Lastly, is an editorial from the State Journal-Register via Students First

Why is $20 billion not enough for our schools? Why are they always seeking more money? It’s obvious, if they can shift the debate to money, then they always have a ready made excuse for kids under performing. Money becomes the issue instead of quality. They now have cover for their failure to do their job and they get to have higher salaries while continuing to fail.

I attempted to get to reporters at the event. I spoke with 4 different reporters and shared with them the information I have on Fund The Child. The first reporter was with talk radio. She seemed attentive enough, but as I walked away my wife said she was shaking her head in disbelief at the information.

There were several camera crews filming as well. It was interesting in that nearly half of them had on hats provided by the IEA and their Invest in Excellence campaign. I hope they took them for the free hat, but it sure hurt their credibility as being impartial.

At the end of the rally I was able to catch 3 more reporters. Two of the three were totally disinterested. The last reporter I spoke to was pleasant and seemed interested. They even agreed that money was not going to solve the problem and that the schools had more issues than funding.

I had appointments to meet with both my State Senator Michael Bond and Representative Sandy Cole. This was my first chance to speak with Mr. Bond. I found it rather discouraging. He seem to answer our questions in more general terms trying to figure out what was the best politicians words to use. He seemed to be totally defending the current broken system and how we need to respect teachers more like Asian countries. He did agree that schools were not living up to expectations and needed to be greatly improved.

Mrs. Cole was rushed since the House was still in session. We had only a few minutes to speak. I have previously met with her and she seems open to other ideas, although I am still not convinced she is not just telling me what I want to hear and then votes to continue the current broken system. This was evident by her vote approving the authority for schools to use no-bid contracts.

I had contacted the Clerk of the House before going and had prepared a flyer for Fund The Child to give to every Representative and State Senator. I was in the Capitol first so I took my flyers to the Secretary of the Senate. I was told they were not allowed to have them place the flyers in the mailboxes (too much like lobbying). I was told the Clerk would do the same thing and that I should hand deliver them. I was able to deliver some, but my time did not allow me to hand them all out. My question is though, why can’t a flyer from a private citizen be handed out to everyone? I sure pay enough in taxes. I even had all the addresses and names on the flyers so this would have taken very little effort.

One of the Legislative Assistants relayed to us a story about the kids from the rally. While she was walking through the Capitol, one of the students put his shoulder into her knocking her to her knees. She stated it was obviously on purpose given where she was in relation to the student, the action taken and the reaction afterwards. She was able to locate the students teacher and report the incident, but she did not have any information on any disciplinary action.

The teachers that were brought to this event should have been screened first. I had to show 2 of them how to get water to wash their hands from the outdoor sinks beside the portable bathrooms. I had a good laugh after that, but felt very sorry for the kids they teach.

How much money do schools distrit throughout our state and country spend investigating residency issues? Wouldn’t that money be better spent on actually educating the children? You and I know that it would, but we currently have a closed system that claims that they have to teach all children, but in fact they get to pick and choose based on resdency. The bureaucrats who run this closed system operate under a government mandate and fight to keep it closed.

It is time we stand up and change the mandate. It is time to FUND THE CHILD and not the system.

First, the problem is that money does not follow the child so other local public schools can reject the students from failing schools (Daily Herald Opinion Brief):

Secondly, there are not enough good schools available for the students in failing schools to transfer into:

These are just examples that are happening all across the country of the ineffectiveness of NCLB. NCLB is not solving any of the problems it was meant to solve. It is perpetuating them, leaving most children behind. The Federal Government will never be able to legislate accountability into its government run monopoly school system. NCLB should be repealed and control returned to the local level by allowing parents to choose the school of their choice.

Some people believe that school choice should only be allowed within the Public School system. The experience from the examples we see of NCLB school choice prove that choice cannot be limited to the government school monopoly, but be allowed to flourish across all acredited schools. A one size fits all solution never works well and is the same reason a one size fits all government run school monopoly will never work for all students.

The problem:

How would most math students today begin taught fuzzy math do this problem? Frank answers the question by stating, “The problem can be solved by trial and error. But unless you stumble onto the answer quickly, it is a long, frustrating process.”

As we all know, trial and error is not a very efficient method of solving this problem. This is why everyday math and it’s sibling programs that try and teach kids to understand why is failing our children. The solution is really straight forward once you know the formula. But again, everday math proponents don’t want kids having to memorize formulas. Their slogan against this is “Drill and Kill”. Unfortunately, by not drilling and teaching kids facts and rules, they are dooming them to failure.

The solution:

What does this math teacher propose?

Another example:

Our public schools today don’t teach the basics anymore. I spoke with a person recently who deals with finances in their job. They had visited their child’s school a couple years ago to volunteer to help with kids with math that needed it. The teacher saw what they were doing, stopped them, and told them never to come help with the math class again. Why did this happen? Simple, the school taught Everyday Math, and this person was showing them the formulas and efficiect processes for solving math problems. Even though these kids needed help in math, they were not given being allowed to get it because it was actual direct instruction instead of the fuzzy math the school was teaching.

We have education foundation recommendin bad math programs, education schools teaching teachers to use the bad math programs and still we wonder why our kids tests scores are atrocious. Instead of listening to ed ucation school professors and foundations, let’s start listening to experts in the fields of Math and Science instead of ignoring them.

Math is not something that you can respect a child’s opinion on. Math is based on facts and formulas. There are right and wrong answers. It is not ideas and making kids feel connected.

I received the following email about this article:

My response was as follows:

There is a very interesting article about how effective Direct Instruction is in helping those especially in poverty. I’ll have to write a separate article on this later, but for now I’ll leave you with this quote:

Mr. Sobocinski goes to great lengths to try and defend the school. He wants to blame NCLB and the diversity of the school for making the school look bad. He asks for understanding from the community instead of blaming anyone at the school.

I ask why should the community be so understanding? The tests were dumbed down and the results normed up and yet the school could not pass.

Remember everyone, if the schools had not been performing so miserably, NCLB would have never become law. There would have been no reason for it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a support of NCLB. I believe it is another step toward the nationalization of our public schools.

We need less nationalization, not more. We need control to be returned to the local level. Unfortunately, the State has already eroded local control to the point school board members have very little control and thus the community has almost no control at all anymore.

We can reverse this trend however, with a very simple solution, Fund the Child. Fund each and every child equally and stop funding the governmental bureaucracy that has taken over our schools. Abolish the State and Federal mandates returning control back to the parents. This is the only way to have local control and stop the nationalization of our public schools.

Some teachers are finally realizing they have to change the way the profession operates. This includes pay that is based on teacher performance and not on longevity or how many irrelevant courses they take. [Emphasis mine]

The teachers in this study used common sense. That is pay the teachers for their quality of work. That quality will show in increased achievement by their students.

The NEA on the other hand wants more money to fund the bureaucracy that feeds it. Notice they never mention teacher quality, they just want higher overall salaries and then they’ll talk about how to raise pay even more.

There is a very simple solution to this problem that teachers and their unions continue to fight against. That is school choice. If you funded the child and stopped funding the bureaucratic system that protects poor quality teachers and results, the issue of teacher pays becomes moot. You may wonder how. First, the money is now in the hands of the parents (the ultimate local control). The parents can choose whatever school they feel provides their child the best education. The money from all sources then follows the child to the school of choice. This forces each school to compete for students. They will have to earn the trust of the parents or lose the funding. This will in turn raise teacher salaries for the quality teachers since the schools have to compete for them to attract the most kids.

There is a downside to this approach, but one that will be welcomed by parents. The result will be the quick jettisoning of bad teachers. The teachers the bureaucracy won’t allow schools to fire now, will be forced out. The schools will not be able to afford the dead weight they have carried for so long. This too will free up money for the quality teachers. The question will be, how many bad teachers will now be unemployed?

A side affect of this entire process will be that the Department of Education and NCLB will no longer be needed. Local control of our schools will be returned and the nationalization of our schools can be halted.

Just to remind you, the simple solution to solving the education funding issues and more importantly the poor quality within the public school system is to FUND THE CHILD, NOT THE SYSTEM.