For years, I have been writing about the decline of public education in the United States. The political power of teachers’ unions led to bloated budgets as schools pursued ideological agendas over educational advancements. Despite massive budgets, scores of students in major cities have continued to plummet or remain at the same dismal levels. Now, Arkansas has shown what is possible if officials put education first. Scores in the state have soared after the implementation of reforms that many of us have advocated for years. It also shows that state governments, not the federal government, are critical to reversing our slide in educational performance as the Administration moves toward eliminating the Department of Education.
Arkansas implemented a new program and testing protocol called the Arkansas Teaching, Learning, and Assessment System, or ATLAS with a mix of higher pay for teachers, performance-based bonuses, and a voucher system for families.
The result has been increasing proficiency scores across every major area between 2024 and 2026, with mathematics increasing from 36.4% to 44.2%, science from 35.6% to 44% and English language arts from 33.8% to 39.5%. Overall proficiency overall increased from 36.9% last year to 42.2% in 2026
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders heralded the success of the LEARNS Act, a 2023 law that made sweeping changes to the state’s education system.
The use of the voucher system has been fiercely opposed by the teachers’ unions. The decline of our educational standards have led me to change my view of vouchers.
I was long skeptical of voucher systems because of that commitment to public education. Decades ago, my parents helped create an organization to stem the exodus of families from public schools and to reinforce academic standards in the Chicago Public School system. They convinced more families to remain in the system because they believed (as I do) that public schools can play a critical role in shaping citizens through diverse, shared experiences.
Watching the continued decline in scores, my views on vouchers changed. In my view, teacher unions and administrators are destroying public education in America. They are treating families as captive audiences while infusing education with social and political agendas.
That view was captured in the comment of Iowa school board member Rachel Wall, who said: “The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.”
State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Wis.) tweeted: “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.”
That is precisely what families are asking to do through voucher systems.
In the meantime, the educational activists continue to prevail with Democratic leaders. This week, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (who ran on being a moderate) continued her radical shift to the left with the appointment of a LGBTQ activist who pushed back against efforts to bar biological males from girls’ bathrooms to a state advisory board.
In the meantime, the state boards have continued to undermine gifted and talented programs and other educational advancements despite poor testing results.
The only way to break this decades-long cycle of failure, in my opinion, is to give families alternatives by allowing them to send their children to schools with core educational (as opposed to advocacy) priorities.
Arkansas shows what can be done by focusing on creating choices and incentives for excellence in education.
In the meantime, teachers’ unions continue to spend wildly to support Democratic politicians who, in turn, yield to their every demand for pension increases and other matters. The unions have become the piggy bank for Democratic candidates, spending an estimated $1 billion on such campaigns over the last 10 years. In cities like Chicago, teachers successfully demanded paid time off and buses to join protests against Trump and ICE, declaring that “civic action … requires more than textbooks.”
If you want to understand the priorities of the unions, just watch one of NEA head Becky Pringle’s unhinged speeches:
Her declarations that the union will “win all of the things” clearly did not include educational improvements for students.
In a prior column, I was particularly moved by the frustration of a mother in Baltimore who complained that her son was in the top half of his class despite failing all but three of his classes. Graduating students without proficiency in English or Math is the worst possible path for these students, schools and society.
Despite such records, voters in major blue cities continue to reelect the same politicians and replicate the same failed policies. We will continue to condemn generations of inner city kids to lives of poverty unless we change the economic and political equation for education policies, including breaking the hold of unions like the NEA. They are “winning” in Arkansas, but it is the students not the politicians who are reaping the rewards.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Ümraniye Profesyonel Su Kaçağı Tespiti 7/24 hizmet vermeleri çok önemli. Gece yarısı aradım, sabah erkenden geldiler. https://distinctconsultandassociates.com
Sarah Huckabee is a smart cookie. Arkansas wrote their own standards. They shed the CRT. I haven’t looked at them but may. The test tool ATLAS sounds good. Test given twice to date shows growth.
A watch
“Juneteenth National Independence Day”
– Wikipedia
_______________
“I’m an American. My ancestors first arrived here in 1607. I want my country invaded, conquered, and taken over by people who are not Americans, people who were denied admission to obtain citizenship, and various and sundry other foreigners and illegal aliens, past and present. I want foreigners and illegal aliens to vote in my country. I want to give all my money and private property to parasitic foreign invaders as “free stuff,” “free status,” welfare, affirmative action, and governmental taxpayer charity. I want to give my country away. Those are my deepest longings and greatest desires as an unhyphenated and patriotic, actual American.”
– American
I’m an American. My ancestors arrived here more than 20,000 years ago.
They were the first humans to set foot in North America, and this was our country.
In 1607 my country was invaded by a bunch of white European illegal aliens who brought smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, measles, influenza and diphtheria.
This invasion of disease ridden illegal aliens caused great suffering and hardship among the populations of my REAL American ancestors.
Things have been going downhill ever since.
—– REAL American
^ A complete and total crock of made up, fabricated BS ^
Shabbat shalom everyone 💥🫶🎁🥰🎂💯🎉🎊🍾🏆👯🥂🍷🍞
Have a peaceful sabbath
Peace
I also raised my children in the public schools but have seen them deteriorate, add on significant administrative costs, openly taught CRT in required classes, and generally have provided this current generation of students with less exposure to the classics than in my youth. My state has a superintendent of public instruction (an elected position) that is going off in his direction. Our local school board has been captured by the state NEA. Certainly democratic means can be used at the school board and state levels to promote better education but it is the parents who have a better sense of these things. If the parents vote with their voucher dollars, it will be truly revolutionary for American education. Failing schools will be quickly closed and the better schools will compete for students and parents. It will be a practically cost free, but not disruption free, effective education reform. Competition will work its magic.
CRT is the analysis of federal and state laws and their effects on different races.
Is legal analysis being taught in public schools today? Normally that holds off until a student enters a graduate degree program, such as for a Juris Doctorate. Must be some advanced kids in grade school analyzing the past 200 or so years of material.
CRT stands for critical race theory. Are you perhaps getting mixed up with CLS (critical legal studies)?
Great question:
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Critical race theory draws on the priorities and perspectives of both critical legal studies (CLS) and conventional civil rights scholarship, while also sharply contesting both of these fields. UC Davis School of Law legal scholar Angela P. Harris, describes critical race theory as sharing “a commitment to a vision of liberation from racism through right reason” with the civil rights tradition.[145] It deconstructs some premises and arguments of legal theory and simultaneously holds that legally constructed rights are incredibly important.[146] CRT scholars disagreed with the CLS anti-legal rights stance, nor did they wish to “abandon the notions of law” completely; CRT legal scholars acknowledged that some legislation and reforms had helped people of color.[18] As described by Derrick Bell, critical race theory in Harris’ view is committed to “radical critique of the law (which is normatively deconstructionist) and… radical emancipation by the law (which is normatively reconstructionist)”.[147]
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Philosophical_foundations
Does that sound like a grade school subject?
I think what most must think of CRT is that any discussion of how white people referred to black people as no better than cattle is a problem. Those white people really don’t want anyone to know that Texas, having lost the Civil War, never mentioned that to their slaves until long after; that annoucment day is Juneteenth. Also that the battle at the Alamo was to keep slaves in the Republic of Texas and secede from Mexico which held slavery to be illegal. Thus the American Civil War was the second time Texans fought to keep slaves on forced labor camps. And the Tulsa Race Massacre where white guys dropped fire bombs from airplanes onto black houses because black people showed up to stop a lynching.
So wikipedia is your authority. Hmmm.
CRT stems from the neo-Marxist school of critical theory where all whites are oppressors and all blacks are oppressed. A poor white meth addict in a trailer park in the mountains of West Virginia is oppressing a wealthy African American surgeon in Boston.
CRT traces its intellectual roots back to the Frankfurt School and its multidisciplinary approach to Critical Theory. CRT is a descendant of that movement.
Although that is not necessarily a “grade school subject,” it does get pushed down in simplified versions into K-12 curricula that shame and guilt children based on their race. Broader CRT tenets are woven into specific subject areas, particularly social studies, literature, and ethnic studies. Classrooms teach concepts like intersectionality, implicit bias, and systemic racism through assigned readings, project-based learning, and discussions on historical and contemporary events. Some districts integrate CRT-aligned concepts directly into broader character and equity initiatives. This can involve age-appropriate classroom exercises where students evaluate their personal social identities, power, and privilege. Districts frequently contract external Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) consultants who help draft new academic standards or guide teachers on how to center race and identity in their daily lesson.
So you can blather all you want about Texas history, but your blathering is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Why should the children feel shame and guilt? How can they avoid repeating the atrocities of the past if they are unaware of how reasonable those atrocities seemed to the people who committed them?
I guess you don’t like to examine the history of Texas – one of the many reasons CRT came up in the first place.
You are a sick, evil monster. Making little kids feel shame and guilt because of their skin color. You are a typical leftist loser. Leftists are mentally-deranged monsters.
LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE, YOU FREAK
Sounds like desperate people. I’ll take my leave and she can have all the things.
That is CRT. The woman screaming and unhinged declaring we are the NEA is CRT. She left out the part, we’ve destroyed the white power structure in education. Education is rubble portion of the dysregulated emotions.
What she presents is the unhinged , overwhelmed want, need of all the things denied her because of her race. She actually requires medical care whether or not her emotions are well founded.
It’s the upturned head of the screaming woman in Picasso’s, Guernica, braying with the horses in a stable.
It’s CRT. Now move on with what is constructive. Btw, it’s the reason Mangione shot the healthcare CEO, too. He has a defense if he went through public schools.
Vouchers are appropriate.
I’ll look it up…
A voucher system can be useful if intelligently planned and then run and monitored. I see no reason for not using the same measuring sticks in voucher/private schools and public schools. You need the comparison and it can also lead to rewards for those public systems that reform and improve.
Another option is a report on HISD (Houston Independent School District) that was recently released. Many of you may be aware that HISD was taken over by the State of Texas in 2023 because of the abysmal record of multiple failing schools. A new manager was appointed, the old board was removed and new educators were put on the New Board (not elected). A report this month shows a significant improvement in scores and accomplishment throughout the system. It is encouraging but of course not perfect. Success can only be achieved over the long term as you build upon improvement. It does make you wonder if elected school boards are an effective way of managing education. I don’t know that answer.
One of the reasons my wife and I left Houston in 1979 after completing my fellowship, was because the head of HISD publicly, to the media, stated that if your child graduated from HISD, they could guarantee your child the equivalent of an 8th grade education.It was not the only reason we left but certainly a major one.
Public Schools for a long time were a strength for our nation. I think if we want true improvement then the states have to push that improvement and not the federal government. Vouchers are one way but not the only way
Voucher-based competition would most likely cause public schools to improve through the catfish effect. Everybody would win except people who depend on keeping students uneducated.
Except public schools have fixed overhead to maintain the buildings and provide heating and cooling. With students drained from them that portion doesn’t change. Private schools can decide how large a facility they need and where they can hold classes controlling th non-educational costs that public schools cannot avoid. If a private school maxes out, they don’t have to build costly add-ons; they simply reject the extra students. By keeping small they can siphon off the profitable students without risk that the public schools are forced to take.
The main advantage that private schools have in success for their students is that to get into them the parents have to be involved; the students are individually unlikely to be doing better, but the voucher/private school system merely segregates the haves from the not haves in terms of parental involvement. The motivated students with unmotivated parents are left in the public school, underfunded, while the unmotivated students with the motivated parents get a trip to Club Ed.
First paragraph: Public schools need to move into buildings that are the right size for the students whose families choose to send them there. Voila, problem solved. Saying they’re currently in buildings that would be too large is a weak argument for depriving families of choice. In fact it’s patently ridiculous.
the voucher/private school system merely segregates the haves from the not haves in terms of parental involvement.
Complete and total BS. You’re probably unaware that the school choice/voucher movement was started by a poor Black mother in Milwaukee. The haves can already afford private school, genius. It’s the have-nots who are trapped in failing schools that need vouchers the most.
Hey Jerry – can we get a lib in here who knows what they’re talking about. I’m getting tired of these lame-o arguments against school choice.
The school buildings are governed by the city or state and cannot be changed by the school system itself. They cannot abandon buildings that were established by law and they cannot move to buildings unless also established by law.
The haves can afford it, for certain. Then the voucher is issued and the private schools hike the tuition by that amount. If the poor could not afford it before they cannot afford it after.
Her movement has failed in every way to make a difference to the entirety of public education or a substantial number of students. In the Arkansas case only 1% of the voucher users were from failing schools.
If you get cancer, don’t have it treated. Clearly your body is failing and medical care should go elsewhere, someone who isn’t ill.
The buildings are closed down as enrollment decreases. California is down 75, 000 pupils causing shut downs. Buildings can be sold.
People who need things also steal money, dub.
School building status is determined by the SCHOOL DISTRICT, you pathetic ignoramus.
If the poor could not afford it before they cannot afford it after.
What a total crock of BS. You are a brazen liar! That has never been true in the history of vouchers in the US. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
You are a sick, twisted, evil monster. You only want to deny poor people the opportunity to escape failing schools. What motive could you have for such an evil wish? The only one that makes any sense: you are a shill for the lying, corrupt teachers unions. GFY
That’s not what happens. It does improve public schools. In the real world, we have found you get, when implemented:
1. More attention to safety.
2. Higher standard of education.
3. Better feedback (to the parents) from the schools.
4. Performance gains.
5. Increased Resources as districts tighten belts. Less is spent on the overwhelming bureaucracy (the overwhelming factor in the increase in the cost of schooling greater than inflation) with the funds moving toward improving the children’s education.
Per the Cicero Institute — since 1960 we have 44% more students with no significant change in educational outcomes despite:
1438% increase in teacher aids
716% increase in guidance counselors (a worthless position)
659% increase in teacher support coordinators
246% increase in support staff
172% increase in administrators
Then we get to the front line:
207% increase in principles/vice-principles (there are four VPs at Kirkwood HS where I used to live, I had NONE in my HS)
136% increase in teachers
127% increase in librarians
That’s why education has gone up 273% more than inflation since the 1960s. And NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN ANY SIGNIFICANT FASHION. Except the costs per child.
Seems like parents aren’t getting involved in their children’s education. Which makes sense as inflation has driven them to both parents working, sometimes two jobs, robbing children of their attention, a critical part of education no teacher can replace. With the loss of parental attention is an increase in disciplinary problems requiring more administrators to cope with them.
Want to save a lot of money – eliminate high school competitive sports.
Charter schools succeeded in NYC better than anyone hoped for. The teachers’ unions and Democrats are trying to destroy those charter schools for the benefit of the union, not teachers and Democrat politicians, instead of students.
All sorts of explanations were created by the union and politicians, mostly false.
Some facts:
Charter schools paid less per capita than public schools: 75%
Totally random selection
Comparison in the same building with the same cafeteria
Comparison of the same grades
Much more creating a phenomenal study mostly not seen outside of hard science.
Takeaway: Teacher unions and Democrat politicians don’t care about students.
Below is the AI summary of Sowell’s analysis from his book
To see the absolute scale of the data Sowell aggregated across these shared buildings:
• In Mathematics:
• Charters: 161 total grade levels tested → 109 achieved a passing majority (68%).
• Traditional Public Schools: 177 total grade levels tested → 18 achieved a passing majority (10%).
Reddit
• Sowell’s takeaway: The disparity in achieving a math proficiency majority under the same roof was nearly seven to one in favor of charters.
• In English (ELA):
• Charters: 172 total grade levels tested → 112 achieved a passing majority (65%).
• Traditional Public Schools: 191 total grade levels tested → 27 achieved a passing majority (14%).
• Sowell’s takeaway: The disparity in achieving an ELA proficiency majority under the same roof was nearly five to one in favor of charters.
The students applying to the charter schools are not randomly selected. This is a sampling mistake that is often made. Only those parents who think their children will do well at the charter schools are motivated to apply, segregating the better students from the worse ones. It would be a surprise if there were not other financial considerations as well such as the ability of the parents to participate.
Odd though, normally nothing that NYC does is considered a good thing by the conservatives.
Often the pressure on a new manager of any large enterprise results in them pressuring their reporting structure to only give good news and either hide bad data or simply falsify it.
What are the parent’s associations reporting and, if they are, what is their basis for making an evaluation?
Mississippi has done the same.
Meanwhile, California has long since devolved from Top-5 when I was kid into an educational garbage heap. They’re #43 in math and #37 in reading. But I’m sure they have all memorized the 89 different pronouns they’re required to know…
A personal story-
The DL renewal came up and written test needed. Written pamphlets regarding rules of the road were provided by the DMV. It was long and boring.
An alternative was available via computerized criterion referenced testing. It was a prep class. It was fun, in color with mouse movable parts. Cars could be driven down roads.
At the end of each section there were tests, 10 questions. If any are missed computer generated re-teach passages and retest until mastery. At the end 💯 % mastery! I was a driving 🌟.
Aced it. ☺
IMPUDENT AND IMPERTINENT VIOLATION OF THE CIVILITY RULE.
BAN THIS TROLL FOR LIFE!
What? There are computer programs that teach most everything. The average cost is approx 100 dollars. Lessons are approx 45 minutes each.
Vouchers may provide a safer environment.
Personally, I looked at the federal standards about 20 years ago and they were incredibly intelligent in scope and sequence. There were people of great intelligence working federally.
I took another look 5 years later and 10 years etc and it was unintelligible scribble. The feds were demolished.
Hoping Arkansas does well.
…” Arkansas implemented a new program and testing protocol called the Arkansas Teaching, Learning, and Assessment System, or ATLAS with a mix of higher pay for teachers, performance-based bonuses, and a voucher system for families.” …
A.I.:
Arkansas has some of the lowest property taxes in the U.S., featuring an effective property tax rate of roughly 0.56%. This ranks it among the top 10 most affordable states for property taxes, costing homeowners a median annual tax of under $1,000.
They make up for it. Sales tax in Arkansas averages nearly 10%, burdening those whose primary expenses are subject to sales tax.
This is very encouraging from Arkansas, bonus teacher pay for results. In places like CA, IL, and NY, the teachers unions control pay schedules, and keep them based on degrees and years of service — NOT learning results nor curriculum modernizations that work to prepare students for 21st century job skills. I wouldn’t get rid of unions, but rather would cut back their powers over curriculum and teacher pay. Incentives for good teachers who are getting good results are one key to reform, because these “super-teachers” go unrecognized financially, see their authority in the classroom undermined by the school admin, and are giving up and retiring.
Doesn’t law restrict unions to wages, hours, conditions?
State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Wis.) tweeted: “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.” That is precisely what families are asking to do through voucher systems.
No, it’s not. The problem is that, after paying school taxes, families below upper-middle-class income levels cannot afford to pay private tuitions out of their family budget. What they’re asking is: if we’re going to pay those taxes, at least let us choose which school to send our kid to, so we’re not priced out of the option of our choice.
The public schools and teachers unions don’t want families to have that affordability, because they they would have to compete in a fair marketplace for educational services. They know they will either lose that competition, or have to spend time and effort improving their product. As it is, they do have a captive audience and so they can keep their market position without improving the product. This is standard monopoly behavior: customer lacks choice, so charge too much and supply an inferior product, without fear of losing customers. The customer loses, while the monopoly corporate bosses win (here, the “corporate bosses” are the unions and Dem politicians).
School boards are what controls the curriculum of schools. It is parents who pressure teachers to pass children who are below grade level and parents who control who is on the school board.
School vouchers are a state-level political issue. School districts can’t just pass a voucher law, it has to be enabled by state law. And if a state passes a voucher law, the school districts have to comply.
Having such competition in the K-12 education market would break the public schools’ monopoly, but the interests of the people in control of that monopoly diverge from the interests of the families who want school choice.
Vouchers will save some…imo
They don’t want school choice – they want their children to be well educated.
Competition for funding doesn’t drive good education. It drives flashy marketing and obscuring results.
The only way around that is parental involvement, which would already be enough to get a good education for their children. Only if parents keep up day-to-day with their children’s study can they know if the education is any good.
Privatizing education doesn’t fix that, but it does drain funds from public schools and the students enrolled in them.
Speaking of salad,
Personally, I find X/George’s personal insults toward renowned educator and legal analyst Jonathan Turley far more acidic and distasteful than a mouthful of word salad. Turley’s (and Darren’s) tolerance of X is far more admirable than any adjustment on the bill.
Now that we all know that Donald Trump was sodomized by Iran, it’s only fair to point out that this war, which has ended in groveling capitulation by a huge powerful country to a small, religiously strangled country, wasn’t the biggest foreign policy blunder in world history, or even in American history.
It may qualify as the stupidest and most humiliating, though, because it was both totally foreseeable and instantly apparent almost from the start. Unlike its predecessors in ignominy, there was no grace period to prepare and adjust ourselves for the enormity of the blunder. In the end, all Trump has had left as a face-saving weapon is bluster. As a weapon, it is bad: A silly-looking, ineffectual, wildly inaccurate blunderbuster.
To use a different metaphor, Trump muffed the launch run and the takeoff, and then didn’t stick the landing. He landed like an albatross, in a rump-up faceplant, and then picked himself up, preened a little, groomed himself as best he could, then waddled away as though nothing had happened.
The “unconditional surrender” he demanded from Iran turned into a neener-neener taunt. His most spectacular sour-grapesian quote (so far) was this one, feebly explaining why he has decided it is okay if Iran keeps some ballistic missiles, even though from the beginning he insisted his main goal was to make sure they never could develop nuclear weapons, the potential delivery of which is the principal strategic reason that ballistic missiles still exist. This is what Trump said: “Other countries have them,’“ he said, “so it’s a little bit unfair for Iran not to have some.”
You’re acting like it’s all over (another 50 years of the theocracy). The fact is that the IRGC and Basij have never been in a weaker position as a result of the economic disaster they’ve brought on with the closure of the Strait.
Things will continue to play out inside Iran. History cannot presently judge, because the history is still unfolding.
Their weak position has increased fuel prices in the US and Iran didn’t have to fire a shot except in self-defense against attacks by Israel and the US to raise those prices. Trump handed Iran a control they had not used before.
Trump didn’t hand the Hormuz lever to Iran. They have always had it. They just needed to be pushed
Your ignorance is only second to your drunken arrogance.
Trump didn’t retreat. Instead, he operated from absolute strength to leave Iran a military eunuch, stripped of its nuclear capability. The MOU is an astute blueprint of his thoughts. It is not a surrender. It simultaneously shields global energy markets and replenishes our military armaments for the next round. He handed Tehran a zero-sum choice: accept an American peace, or face total annihilation.
The ignorami anonymi critics screaming “appeasement” simply have their heads buried in the sand, completely blind to the trap that has just been set.
Iran didn’t have a nuclear capability. The US is a decade from replenishing its armaments. He is doing what he did in Afghanistan when he turned 5,000 terrorist troops loose while drawing down US troops to only 2,500 and leaving 87,000 pieces of military equipment for the terrorists to use. He did this as part of an arrangement that ISIS would not kill American troops if the American troops left on time, but when it was clear he would lose the election he sabotaged that withdrawal making if an impossible situation for Biden.
Despite such records, voters in major blue cities continue to reelect the same politicians and replicate the same failed policies.
Those very voters are the ones who ten years ago the public schools pumped out with a diploma but no actual learning or ability to understand the world around them. The system is working as intended. By design, ynion bosses and Dem politicians have climbed to the top of the hill of power, and that hill is made up of the dead bodies of the students they failed.
Does no good to “vote them out” at the polls. Our elections in these Democrat run jurisdictions are not free or fair. These grifters are voted in by fraudulent elections run by corrupt DNC officials and politicians.
Baloney. Face the truth. Conservatives could be winning these policy debates if we would compete intellectually.
That means acknowledging that SOME of the problems raised by progressives are real and serious (e.g. unimpressive social mobility compared to past decades), but that we conservatives have a better mousetrap in solving them. Is that asking too much?
Instead, conservatives take up a defensive stance, denying that any problem raised by progressives is real, denouncing them with ad-hominem putdowns, and offering no creative alternatives.
Also, there’s a wealth of support among moderate Dems to address the failing marriage rate, and dwindling birthrate, but rather than court a wider coalition around these issues, conservatives ignorantly paint these moderates with a broad brush defined by the radical left wing. That is a huge political mistake. If we conservatives are smart, we’ll cast aside pejorative labels and tribalism, and seek common ground around specific issues.
And, we need to face up to “imperfections” of the capitalist economy, discuss these candidly, and be proposing realistically achievable improvements.
The process of educational reforms in Arkansas began when the Clintons were in the Governor’s mansion, and were advanced still further during Asa Hutchinson’s leadership. Gov. Sanders is not turning things around so much as continuing a steady, incremental reform process in Arkansas that began in the 1980s. This focus on educational results puts shame to California.
The American Thesis Is Freedom And Self-Reliance.
The thesis of Karl Marx is the dictatorship of the hired help funded by other productive people’s money.
That is nowhere in the Constitution because it is incoherent, un-American, unconstitutional, and not viable in the least.
Elections have Republican observers. Are those observers just that stupid or are they supporting the Democrats?
“At the NEA’s representative assembly, delegates approved a new measure that calls for the organization and its members to promote sex-change procedures for LGBTQ youth. The new business item will be in place for one year and will update the NEA’s bargaining guidance around LGBTQ issues, such as access to sex-changing procedures for school employees.”
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/14/unearthed-video-teachers-union-president-rant-students/
“Arkansas implemented a new program and testing protocol called the Arkansas Teaching, Learning, and Assessment System, or ATLAS with a mix of higher pay for teachers, performance-based bonuses, and a voucher system for families.”
So teachers are paid more, leading to higher costs per student; they are incentivized to teach to the standardized test, and they are given performance-based bonuses when they have no control of which students they are given to teach. The voucher is a pass-through to the ones who lobbied for it.
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“The payment system for the vouchers will be run this year by ClassWallet, a private company contracting with the state. Participating private schools will invoice parents for tuition, fees, or other designated items, such as uniforms or required educational expenses. Parents will upload the invoice to their ClassWallet portal, which allows them to use voucher funds to cover those costs. The education department will then approve the expenses and disburse payments to the schools.
If a private school’s tuition was $10,000, for example, parents would still have to pay the school the difference after the voucher was applied — that is, $3,571.30 — while the state would pick up the tab for the rest.”
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https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/08/19/how-does-the-arkansas-learns-voucher-program-work-we-have-answers
Per the article less than 1% of those in the voucher program came from the poorest performing schools.
“We will continue to condemn generations of inner city kids to lives of poverty unless we change the economic and political equation for education policies, including breaking the hold of unions like the NEA.”
Don’t you see? That is how the system is designed: to “graduate” masses of future voters functionally illiterate in math and English comprehension that are too naive to understand that teacher’s unions and the public schools are the problem and not the solution. Doing so insures a continual majority of useful idiots that will continue to vote for more of the same, deluding themselves into thinking that change will magically occur from continuing more of the same.