education

Hey y'all,

I just wanted to drop by and update you on the goings-on of the Young Democrats of North Carolina.

Follow me below the fold ...

They are arresting students instead of educating them. Something is wrong with this picture. One of the arrested students said that her arrest is worthwhile if it moves even one person to act. Will you be that person?

Pre-kindergarten is one of the most effective investments we can make in our children and in our future. Unfortunately, a new bill in the state House would drastically limit eligibility and freeze thousands of families out of NC Pre-K, North Carolina's public pre-kindergarten program.

We expect this bill to be on the House Floor tomorrow, so it's critical that you take action now!

Specifically, House Bill 935 would limit eligibility for NC Pre-K to only children from households earning less than the federal poverty line (FPL). If these new rules were applied to all children currently enrolled in NC Pre-K, over 9,000 children would no longer meet the financial requirements for the program. Among these potentially excluded families are thousands of low-income, working parents who would otherwise not be able to afford pre-kindergarten for their children.

Please take a moment to email your legislator and ask him/her to vote "NO" on
House Bill 935.

What are the best educational systems doing? A 2011 study by a consortium of educators in Europe, the U.S., and Asia identified the top performers,the top five nations in Europe whose culture is closest to our own.

1. Finland
2. Germany
3. Austria
4. Sweden
5. Switzerland

The five are joined by S.Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore,and Canada in the top 10. The U.S. is 19.

Common elements of the top rated:

1. Equitable funding for all schools set by national standards
2. National, stable curriculum standards mixing subject mastery and learning skills with creative/independent thinking in flexible school day structures.
3. Individualized instruction/learning using the most up to date computer tutoring, record keeping,communication between teacher/student/home,with teachers as coaches,educational plan creators, and evaluators/assessors.

Apparently North Carolina ranks 48th in the nation in per pupil spending? And our average for teacher pay ranks 46th? To say that is discouraging is an understatement.

According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI),

This will be the fifth consecutive year public schools have endured significant funding reductions. Many local superintendents have shared that schools in their districts have already been "cut to the bone." For years, many schools in North Carolina have operated with fewer teachers and staff, limited resources such as textbooks and technology, less training for teachers, and with facilities in need of update and repair. One superintendent has described the situation as a rubber band that has been stretched to its breaking point.

Given the harsh spending cuts over the past few years, it seems strange that our lawmakers are focused on charter schools and other faddish privatization schemes. No matter what your opinion is on charter schools, they take money away from our traditional public schools. Since 2008, the number of charter schools has grown by almost 50 percent, while over that same period nearly 4,000 traditional public schools have closed.

During the post-September 11 panic, the radical right-wing pundits like Mark Steyn peddled fears that Muslims with their high birthrate might overrun western civilization and forcibly convert America to Islam. Now that they've gained the upper hand in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA), radical right legislators (and their oligarch backers) are determined to forcibly convert state property and services purchased with public money into private profit. (Remember Russia?) For a quick buck, carpetbagging worshipers of the Golden Calf are flexing their muscles in Raleigh to demolish what North Carolinians built over the last half century.

For all their contempt for “the 47 percent” and “makers and takers” framing, Michael Lind explains that rent-seeking monopolists in the private sector are the real parasites:

In today’s rentier-friendly conservative ideology, somebody who makes payday loans at usurious interest rates, gouges businesses with high insurance rates, or gets paid tolls from a privatized toll road is as much a “maker” and an “entrepreneur” and a “capitalist” as someone who puts together a team of inventors, engineers, workers and investors to apply 3-D printing to printing replacement body parts. All money-making enterprises are supposed to be equally productive and socially useful, for no other reason than they make somebody rich.

In 1996 NC passed HB 955, also known as the Charter School Act. In January 2011 the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools ranked NC 32nd out of 41 states with charter school laws with poor marks in accountability, equity of funding, and the low cap of 100 schools for the state.

The NAPCS is billed as a non-profit headed by former Bush administration official Nina Rees, the reality is that it is a powerful, well connected lobbying group with deep pockets and wealthy benefactors, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is the amount of success it's had influencing the decisions of NC GOP legislators and the banquet of taxpayer dollars they've established for hedge fund managers, Wall St. banks, big banks, and wealthy investors to gorge upon.

Conservatives, especially the true believers that now populate the NC General Assembly, are fond of quoting Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. They love the quotes, but the content escapes them.

Smith wrote in "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations",
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Smith went on to observe, "But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less render them necessary."

Every time one of our Republican legislators goes to an ALEC seminar or meets behind closed doors with ALEC representatives to write laws, they are conspiring against the public ... and corporations are always the direct beneficiaries.

One has to wonder why there has been an explosion of charter school applications in NC and an equally explosive expansion of legislation crafted to aid them from the GOP.

The answer is twofold. Money and segregation. For too long most of us imagined that innovation in education focused on improving the lot of poor kids in failing public schools. That ideal image of school choice is what the money behind charter schools was selling, but when you unwrap their product, that's not what you get.

Charter schools have the autonomy to operate outside federal and state laws, they don't have to provide transportation, they can also add mandatory fees, and require contributions from student's families. That loud sucking noise you'll be hearing is public education money being siphoned from our school districts with the help of legislation sponsored by the NC GOP.

The ALEC inspired assault on public education continued in earnest last week. On March 12th Guilford County Teabagger darling and ultra-con Sen. Trudy Wade introduced SB 317, a bill that would redraw school districts along party lines, reduce terms from two to four years, inject political partisanship where it's unwanted,and make it easier for conservatives to take over and control local school boards. www.news-record.com/news/government/900484-63/trudy-wades-bill-makes-gui...

When asked what he thought of the bill by the News and Record, High Point realtor and school board member Ed Price, who is a friend of mine, responded, "Don't they have better things to do down there." Indeed they do Ed, unemployment is 9.6% and rising, but addressing it doesn't fit the agenda in Wingnut Land.