Comments on: Tuesday 10/30/2007 DAILY NEWS DIGEST

by: Reactionary

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:18:05 +0000

IIRC, Utah was the only state that did not have any ‘dropout factories’.

by: Reactionary

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:11:46 +0000

Utahns Can Vote for School Choice Tuesday
By John Stossel

“Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools.

What a great idea. Finally, parents will have choices that wealthy parents have always had. The resulting competition would create better private schools and even improve the government schools.

But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what’s best for your kids.

They say they’re all for improving education but not by introducing choice. “When it comes to providing every Utah child with a quality education, we believe, as do most Americans, that our greatest hope for success is investing in research-proven reforms. These include the things parents and teachers know will make a difference in the classroom, such as smaller class sizes and investment in teacher development programs. Focusing on this type of reform will bring far greater success than diverting tax dollars to an alternative education system.”

Please. I’ve heard that song for years. Government schools in America fail while spending on average more than $11,000 per student. Utah spends $7,500.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/utahns_can_vote_for_school_cho.html

by: John

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:00:24 +0000

Willie, most of those dropouts in places like inner-city Mobile & Birmingham ain’t exactly becoming Republicans. But many of them do vote - whether they know it or not.

by: Willie

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:44:15 +0000

What I see here in south Mobile County crosses racial lines. Disfunctional families breed disfunction. Low wages across the board create situations where even if children have two parents, both have to work in jobs that are not family friendly which adds to the problems of parenting. No matter how you spin it, huge numbers of young people are leaving public schools for a tough future. The sad fact is in today’s world too many young people are not doing better, educationally nor financially, than their parents and grandparents.

by: Scorpius

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:41:25 +0000

I primarily blame the dropout rates on ignorant and apathetic “parents.” The parents are usually immature, unskilled teeneagers who end up dumping “junior” on Grandmama to raise. The cycle repeats itself 14-15 years later, provided grandmama isn’t a crackwhore. I blame the status quo on the AEA, trial lawyers, politicos who use education as if they were playing foosball and moronic Liberals.

If we are going to reverse dropout rates and actually educate our children we need a RADICAL overhaul of the public school system—top to bottom.

Discipline needs to be re-instituted, parents need to be held accountable and failure must not be tolerated. Oh, and we run the teachers’ union and their jackals in the legal profession out of state.

by: Reactionary

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:36:01 +0000

Willie - I don’t know much about Mobile. Can you provide some information about the values of the families of the students who are zoned for those failing Mobile County schools?

by: Willie

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:09:53 +0000

I am not sure you can blame dropout rates on legislators nor teachers. I think our Alabama family values and a low
emphasis on education has more to do with it than anything else. Remember, we voted down an initiative that would
have given high schoolers with a B average a free college education. What states in the US have the highest divorce rates and which have the lowest?

by: Reactionary

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:49:07 +0000

Willie - my comment was meant to illustrate that teacher pay increases are not a panacea for what ails schools.

If I knew how to fix broken schools I’d run for Governor. What I do know is that in this ‘red state’, Democrats run the legislature and schools - helping to create the mess in which we find ourselves.

by: Willie

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:47:35 +0000

I just read in today’s Mobile Press Register that the 9 of the 14 Mobile County’s high schools are listed as drop out
factories, which means only 60% of the 9th graders go on to graduate from the school. Alabama fudges the graduation figures to make us look smarter than we are (wow, what an understatement) by listing graduation figures, but the fact remains that senior classes are 30% smaller than 9th grade classes. Or as I like to tell people like Reactionary,
“future fodder for our glorious red state”.

by: Ayn Rand

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:52:20 +0000

I’m curious to see where Alabama stands with regards to impoverished students. I personally think this report is a bunch of hooey.

I saw first hand where individuals made false claims with regards to income levels. Free lunch, but better clothes, $6-8 on snacks each day, where I might afford a pack of crackers. The level of accountability is rather lax, and reports of this nature do little to help the situation.

This reminds me of a commercial that was on the tele a few years back. You had several mid-evil scholars conspiring around a table, deciding the best course of action to turn back invaders. The solution was to hurl large sacks of gold coins at them. “Are you suggesting we throw money at the problem?” How will the solution to this crisis be any different.