Cowlesy
08-27-2010, 04:21 PM
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244804/race-nowhere-john-derbyshire?page=1
This is a 2 page article, and the beginning page is important, but please visit the link to get the whole story.
No it isn’t. Not only is it not great, it’s also not money. The federal government hasn’t got any money, and its creditors are shutting off the credit spigot. The $700 million “won” by New York is pretend money, faery gold that will melt away to nothing when the trumpets sound to herald the great inflation that is coming upon us.
Which is actually the good news. If that $700 million were real money, it would be a tad more painful to watch it disappearing into the great drooling maw of the ed-biz leviathan. Here’s the proposed allocation:
$219.7 million: New standards and assessments, revised curriculum. $177 million: Programs still to be determined that comply with federal education reform priorities. $113.6 million: Improvements at failing schools. $110.3 million: Training of teachers and school principals. $64.2 million: New data systems to track student performance.
Talk about fuzzy! You could drive a coach and four through any one of those item descriptions, and the ed-biz leeches surely will. “Training of teachers and school principals,” for example. How much more training do they need, for crying out loud? You already have to have a master’s degree before they’ll let you do any serious teaching in this state. I suppose the Devil’s Dictionary translation here is: “More sabbaticals and ‘professional development’ time away from the job.” You can bet, at a very minimum, that every one of those spending points will involve the hiring of more people — more public-sector tax-eaters, while the private sector gasps and chokes for air.
Does not everyone by now understand that public money beyond the meager necessities is pure poison to our educational system, a domestic-policy equivalent to the resource curse? Didn’t anybody learn anything from the Kansas City fiasco? (How are they doing over there in Kansas City nowadays, by the way? Let’s take a look . . . Oh.)
Another big item recently has been the preparations for next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Schools complex in Los Angeles. The complex cost $578 million. Oh, and:
The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School, which opened in 2009.
But isn’t California looking at a colossal budget deficit? Yes it is. So is the federal government. Leviathan must be fed, though, and there are still a few private-sector taxpayers whose veins have not yet been emptied of all their blood. And this is education we’re talking about! It’s for the kiddies! What could be more important? Why do you hate children, Mr. Derbyshire?
Here is my prescription for a reform of the nation’s education system. First, destroy all the schools. Cart away the rubble for landfill and sow the ground with salt. Abolish the federal Department of Education and all state equivalents. End all education funding from public sources.
If the inhabitants of any district then wish their kids to be educated in schools, let them raise the necessary funds themselves. Then let them build the schools themselves, like zeks. There should be just one federally approved model: an unheated wood-and-tar-paper structure with plastic sheeting for windows.
Any person above the age of twelve who wishes to attend school should have to stand outside the school gate for a month, in all weathers, pleading to be admitted. There should be a constitutional amendment banning any community from employing non-teaching staff in its schools at any ratio to teaching staff higher than one percent. And let’s have a federal penalty of 25-to-life for anyone attempting to form a teachers’ union.
Crazy, you say? No: Spending half a billion dollars you don’t have on a school to educate 4,200 students, some high proportion of whom are in the country illegally, is crazy. Shoveling seven hundred million dollars into the public sector of a state whose private sector is withering on the vine is crazy. Pretending that by spending enough money you can turn every child into a bookish child is crazy.
Though I’m certainly willing to let my proposal compete in the marketplace of ideas. How about a nationwide referendum: the Derbyshire plan, as above, vs. the Obama plan? The result might, as in our little local referendum here this week, not be the one the ed-biz panjandrums prefer.
— John Derbyshire is an NRO columnist and author, most recently, of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.
I am in full support of the Derbyshire Plan for education.
There was too much win in that for me to appropriately highlight it.
This is a 2 page article, and the beginning page is important, but please visit the link to get the whole story.
No it isn’t. Not only is it not great, it’s also not money. The federal government hasn’t got any money, and its creditors are shutting off the credit spigot. The $700 million “won” by New York is pretend money, faery gold that will melt away to nothing when the trumpets sound to herald the great inflation that is coming upon us.
Which is actually the good news. If that $700 million were real money, it would be a tad more painful to watch it disappearing into the great drooling maw of the ed-biz leviathan. Here’s the proposed allocation:
$219.7 million: New standards and assessments, revised curriculum. $177 million: Programs still to be determined that comply with federal education reform priorities. $113.6 million: Improvements at failing schools. $110.3 million: Training of teachers and school principals. $64.2 million: New data systems to track student performance.
Talk about fuzzy! You could drive a coach and four through any one of those item descriptions, and the ed-biz leeches surely will. “Training of teachers and school principals,” for example. How much more training do they need, for crying out loud? You already have to have a master’s degree before they’ll let you do any serious teaching in this state. I suppose the Devil’s Dictionary translation here is: “More sabbaticals and ‘professional development’ time away from the job.” You can bet, at a very minimum, that every one of those spending points will involve the hiring of more people — more public-sector tax-eaters, while the private sector gasps and chokes for air.
Does not everyone by now understand that public money beyond the meager necessities is pure poison to our educational system, a domestic-policy equivalent to the resource curse? Didn’t anybody learn anything from the Kansas City fiasco? (How are they doing over there in Kansas City nowadays, by the way? Let’s take a look . . . Oh.)
Another big item recently has been the preparations for next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Schools complex in Los Angeles. The complex cost $578 million. Oh, and:
The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School, which opened in 2009.
But isn’t California looking at a colossal budget deficit? Yes it is. So is the federal government. Leviathan must be fed, though, and there are still a few private-sector taxpayers whose veins have not yet been emptied of all their blood. And this is education we’re talking about! It’s for the kiddies! What could be more important? Why do you hate children, Mr. Derbyshire?
Here is my prescription for a reform of the nation’s education system. First, destroy all the schools. Cart away the rubble for landfill and sow the ground with salt. Abolish the federal Department of Education and all state equivalents. End all education funding from public sources.
If the inhabitants of any district then wish their kids to be educated in schools, let them raise the necessary funds themselves. Then let them build the schools themselves, like zeks. There should be just one federally approved model: an unheated wood-and-tar-paper structure with plastic sheeting for windows.
Any person above the age of twelve who wishes to attend school should have to stand outside the school gate for a month, in all weathers, pleading to be admitted. There should be a constitutional amendment banning any community from employing non-teaching staff in its schools at any ratio to teaching staff higher than one percent. And let’s have a federal penalty of 25-to-life for anyone attempting to form a teachers’ union.
Crazy, you say? No: Spending half a billion dollars you don’t have on a school to educate 4,200 students, some high proportion of whom are in the country illegally, is crazy. Shoveling seven hundred million dollars into the public sector of a state whose private sector is withering on the vine is crazy. Pretending that by spending enough money you can turn every child into a bookish child is crazy.
Though I’m certainly willing to let my proposal compete in the marketplace of ideas. How about a nationwide referendum: the Derbyshire plan, as above, vs. the Obama plan? The result might, as in our little local referendum here this week, not be the one the ed-biz panjandrums prefer.
— John Derbyshire is an NRO columnist and author, most recently, of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.
I am in full support of the Derbyshire Plan for education.
There was too much win in that for me to appropriately highlight it.