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.