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.”
‘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.’
That’s the thing: this isn’t relegated to economic demographics any longer; the wealthiest kids are just as deficient, and in some cases to a greater degree, as the bluest districts in blue states tend to be the wealthiest (often generationally, these days), as well – it is very much across the board, and relative privilege is more pervasive today than ever. It is nonetheless the height of irony that formerly besmirched places like Arkansas or Mississippi are turning out students in lower grades more proficient, critically capable, and skilled than modern Ivy League grads.
Suffice it to say, it isn’t difficult to see where the actual ignorance lay, or how utterly useless leftist ideology is in relation to anything whatsoever that matters to a functional and healthy society, and in 2026, that is all the dems represent alongside their delusions of superiority.
“inner city kids” is not part of your response. “inner city kids” are not the wealthiest in the blue states.
“formerly besmirched places like Arkansas or Mississippi are turning out students in lower grades more proficient, critically capable, and skilled than modern Ivy League grads.”
Seriously not true. Past the 4th grade the students in those states fall back to sub-average performance.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Mark Twain
School boards are elected, so it’s parents who are making those choices.
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 ^
So you are descended from immigrants, just like Europeans who arrived 400 years ago. Congratulations. You attacked other tribes, murdered, tortured and raped your enemies, and kidnapped and enslaved the tribes you defeated. Your history of violence is well-documented. You lost against a small group of a more advanced civilization that had invented the wheel. At least you admit NOBODY IS A “NATIVE” AMERICAN.
Europeans arrived probably iun the 9th century – certainly by the 11th and in scale in the late 15th.
Absolutely they brought lots of problems to peoples whose standard of living was barely advanced from cave dwellers.
But things have NOT been going down hill for the americans whose ancestors came here from siberia 20+ thousand years ago.
They are more numerous and prosperous today that they were in 1492, while in 1492 they were barely better off than 20,000 years ago.
But things have not improved for those americans as much as they have for Europeans.
But why would you expect differently ? Those white Europeans had improved their standard of living on their own by orders of magnitude in the preceding 1000 years.
At the time of christ outside the mediterainian all of europe lived little better than the inhabitants of the western hemisphere – in many ways they may have lived worse.
But in a few hundred years Europeans went from standard of living inferior to those of the western hemisphere to able to build ships that could with difficulty cross the atlantic or go from Norway to the mediteranian. A few hundred years later they were building ships to traverse the entire globe – and firearms, and a few hundred years after that they had advanced from a biopowered world to the world of energy and machines.
Myriads of other peoples have advanced rapidly for a time through history – but the first occupants of the western hemisphere are not among them. A few in south and central america managed to reach the development of Egyptians – but 4000 years later. But no people have advanced from so far behind to so far ahead of the rest of the world as western Europeans have.
The first inhabitants of the western hemisphere had 20,000 years to do what Europeans did in 2000 – and failed.
It is unlikely there were cave dwellers. More that the rare occupation of caves led to the preservation of evidence that people were there.
“white Europeans had improved their standard of living on their own by orders of magnitude in the preceding 1000 years”,
while they had not improved their standard of living in the previous 200,000 years. They stumbled over a few critical discoveries but were far behind the Chinese. One of those discoveries was the gunpowder that they got from China to use in guns. Without China Europeans would have continued whacking each other with sharp sticks which they made of metal.
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:
—
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
ATS – I care about as much about your half truths about Texas as I do bout the 1813 Fort Mims massacre in which 1000 Creek Warriors murdered and scalped about 400 white settlers.
You are free to decide for yourself what you think is meaningful and important in history.
But you are NOT free to decide what must be FORCED on everyone else.
AFTER the lies and half truths you have ranted about are CORRECTED from your errors – absolutely they should be Taught – for the few minutes in US history that reflects their relative importance.
Call it DEI, or CRT or XYZ – it does not matter – what has people Angry is that you are massively amplifying the importance of a small collection of lies and half truths way way way beyond their significance in history.
The Alamo on the surface is little different from your Tulsa Race riot – but it has far outsized importance as the result was Not only the Republic and eventual State of Texas, but the limits of Mexican expansion into North America.
Though even there I would note that Texas exists because even though the spanish “settled” a significant portion of North America – above the Rio Grand the spanish/Mexican population was Tiny. Large numbers of Whites settled in Texas because the Mexicans INVITED THEM, because Mexico did not have the people or wherewithal to govern the land then very nominally claimed north of the Rio Grande.
After Mexico invited a bunch of White Settlers into Texas, they suddenly found the people they invited in did not wish to be governed by Mexico and were more than sufficient in number to govern themselves.
I could go on at lenght about the Alamo and Texas History and Sam Houston and the eventual defeat of Santa Anna and his forces – but what really matters is that YOU REALLY DO NOT KNOW ANY OF THAT.
That your entire understanding of th history of the Texas or the United States is a tiny and distorted portion of the whole that pushes a false and unimportant narative. And that you have shilled so hard that not only are the students you educate ignorant of actual history and beleiving propoganda – but they do not know what 2+2 is and can not get a job making a hamburger.
Contra many on the right here – the Problem is Not our children – it is WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THEM.
To a small extent – it is about your lies, and half truths – but to a far larger extent it is that you have Crippled them.
“400 white settlers”?
The 400 were among the armed white killers forcing people from their land were attacked by the people they had been killing and robbing.
—
Part of the invitation was to respect the laws of Mexico. As one would with drunken party guests who are breaking the furniture and punching holes in the walls the Mexicans tried to evict those they had invited.
The important part is that White Americans insisted on chaining and beating and killing Black Americans to force them to work in forced labor camps to make money for the White Americans and Texas fought the battle to continue to do that twice. Even after they lost the second time they refused to turn their captives loose.
That is the foundation of Texas. Through no work of their own, oil was located under the state and that finding, entirely unearned, has made Texas insufferable ever since.
“Although that is not necessarily . . .”
Very astute.
That is *exactly* the process by which academic ideas infiltrate k-12.
Sounds like desperate people. I’ll take my leave and she can have all the things.
“. . . Mexico which held slavery to be illegal.”
Nice whitewashing of Mexican history. During that time, the entirety of Mexico was a slave country.
First, its citizens were slaves of a theocratic Emperor. Then they were enslaved by a military dictator (Santa Anna).
Forced labor camps? No more slaves than Americans are now.
I realize that insensible conservatives and MAGAs see themselves as being enslaved and will welcome being in the basket of deplorables.
Emancipation day would have been more inclusive for all
ATS – word games to dodge the problem is futile.
With respect to everything you have written above – Does ANY of it teach you how to make a hamburger, a house, a space ship ?
Does any of it actually make you any more productive ?
As to your claims – who built the ships that carried people – free and slaves to the western hemisphere – certainly no one from Africa.
BTW the battle of the Alamo took place in 1836 – 25 years BEFORE the Civil War – and
“The institution of slavery itself was declared illegal in 1839; in practice, however, slavery was far from abolished for several decades. ”
Here is the Texas Declaration of Independence – it is the proclamation tot he world of why Texas ought to be free and independent
it is modeled after the US Declaration of independence. It lists all the grevance of Texans with the government of Santa Anna,
https://ia800802.us.archive.org/25/items/Documents-On-Diplomacy/1836TexasDeclarationOfIndependence.pdf
Among those who signed it were Lorenzo de Zavala, José Francisco Ruiz, and José Antonio Navarro – all texans of mexican descent – and all major figures in texas independence.
You RANT about CRT – and then try to tell us all what SHOULD be taught to our children – and you can not even manage to get that right.
You rant about the Tulsa riots – who invented the planes that allegedly participated in the firebombing ?
Of all the great African Americans – from Crispus Atticks through George Washington Carver to Martin Luther King – what writings of great African philosophers did they learn from ? Where are the African libraries and books from before the colonial period ? Where are the great African colleges founded before the University of Balongna or Oxford or the Sorbune or even before Harvard ?
All consequential acheivements of almost the entire world are build entirely on the acheivements of the West.
Absolutely the west built on the achievements of the Chinese and Indians, and Sumerians and Egyptians – but you have to go back before the Egyptians to find anything From Africa that influenced the world.
Even the warped ideologies of communism and socialism that the left have adopted came from Marx a German Jew.
You rant about slavery – yet it is the West that ended Slavery first – both internally and throughout the world. BEFORE the US ended slavery we not only ended the slave trade, but actively participated in disrupting it throughout the world. Early Growth of the US navy – BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR was in the operations to end the global slave trade.
Slavery has existed in Every race culture and people throughout the world – The west was the FIRST to end it – Africans were among the last.
Mauritania in west Africa is the last nation to make slavery illegal – though it still persists.
Slavery – in the form of forced labor without pay – still exists in North Korea, followed African and mid-eastern countries.
Do you teach ANY of this ?
There are MANY problems with the Garbage you seek to teach.
It is lies and half truths.
It falsely pretends that the west is the source of all the worlds ills.
If falsely fails to credit the west with being the driving force to end all the things the left hates.
None of it makes those inculcated in it either better people or more productive people.
It celebrates and indoctrinates people into valuing the WORST things that came out of the west – communism and socialism.
These are just a few of the massive problems with your nonsense.
With respect to YOUR litany of nonsense.
Slavery was and still is bad everywhere. There is no excuse for it anyway.
The moral and ideological foundations that ultimately ENDED legal slavery and seek to end illegal slavery throughout the world – FREE WILL – originated in Judiasm and were developed near exclusively IN THE WEST.
If it were up to the rest of the world – slavery everywhere would still be legal. It is not because the West is the dominant force in the world.
That is because it is the most productive society in existance, and that is because western ideas are the pinnacle of human thought.
Absolutely White people thought of black people as cattle – as did yellow people and red people and brown people and black people.
Slavery is as ancient as humanity and was pervasive EVERYWHERE.
Someone above rants about how the first inhabitants of the western hemisphere arrived 20,000 years ago – it was actually closer to 30 and there were three major waves – with each new group exterminating the men of the prior group, raping the women and enslaving the children – as has happened throughout the entirety of human history everywhere UNTIL THE WEST ENDED IT.
Even your celebrated Juneteenth – is the day that WHITE UNION SOLDIERS Enforce the emancipation proclamation.
Everything you value CAME FROM THE WEST that you HATE.
The estimated deaths in the Tulsa Race riots are about 300.
750,000 people – the majority Norther Whites died in the Civil war – to End Slavery in the US.
1800+ people – mostly union soldiers died on the SS Sultana on April 27, 1865 returning home on the Mississippi.
2,403 Americans were killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
September 11 attacks caused 2,977 fatalities.
There are probably 10,000 incidents in which 300 white Americans died – why is Tulsa more important than any of those ?
According to the Equal Justice Institute – which I am a member approximately 4800 people – 1300 of them White were lynched from 1882-1968.
The last lynching occurring almost 60 years ago. The total number of blacks lynched over an 80 year period is barely larger than the number of people killed on 9/11
While all the things YOU think are absolutely critical – are important – there are also just a small portion of the very long and very rich history of this country.
And that is the real problem – YOU distort reality – either you make blatantly false statements – as many of your claims above, or you tell half truths – as much of the rest of your claims are. And then you DEMAND that YOUR tiny slice of history dominates everything else.
And not only do you distort history – but you distort science and math and reading and writing.
Alas, alas for you,
Lawyers and pharisees
Hypocrites that you be
Searching for souls and fools to forsake them
You travel the land you scour the sea
After you’ve got your converts you make them
Twice as fit for hell!
As you are yourselves!
Sure that the kingdom of Heaven awaits you
You will not venture half so far
Other men that might enter the gates you
Keep from passing through!
Drag them down with you!
The point of lynching was terrorism, not genocide. The small numbers only reflect the effectiveness of the terror.
What a weak mind you have.
Does the Equal Justice Institute know the drivel you post a dozen times every day?
Did you notice that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Confederacy? It was an effort to undermine the ability of the Confederates to fund the war of secession, not to end slavery in the United States. The 3/5ths part of the Constitution is kept as a constant reminder of that terrorism. It hasn’t been excised because a portion of the population believes it to be true.
White, former-Confederates kept the slaves. White people bred people as slaves; a break from slavery anywhere else in the world.
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.
The labels only matter as a means of communicating. It is unimportant whether the garbage the left is drowning our children in is called CRT or XYZ.
What matters is that it leaves them unable to hold a job at McDonald’s on graduation.
As Adam Smith taught – the sole object ot production is consumption – a corollary is that you can not consume if you do not produce.
From each according to his ability to each according to his need
has proved a bloody failure everytime it is tried with the amount of blood proportionate to the extent it has been tried. Conversely
by the sweat of your brow you shall earn your daily bread is an immutable truth.
Produce or DIE.
A man said to the universe
“Sir I exist”
The Universe replied
“That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation”
Education can make our lives better or worse – depending on how productive it makes us.
I’ll look it up…
ATS – more word games. Are you debating that public schools are in serious decline ? That they are wasting time teaching worthless nonsense and failing to effectively teach students critical skills that are required if we wish to live in a society with a decent standard of living ?
Failure is failure – and no amount of words games can hide that.
Regardless of what YOU call CRT – the posters you are pi$$ing on have called the stupid nonsense that YOU and your ilk are teaching everyone’s children that leaves them incapable of a job at McDonald’s CRT.
Given that they grasp that 2+2 does not equal 5 – they are likely far better with words than you.
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
I want money sent to schools to build brand new buildings with modern conveniences – but that doesn’t happen because poor schools are in poor neighborhoods with low amounts of revenue to pay for them.
Vouchers may let students get onto buses to take 2 or more hours away from them each school day as they wait for the buses, ride the routes, put up with delays, cutting them from extracurricular activities that are the sort of thing they could put on college applications. They lose 2 hours of potential homework time, lose 2 hours of enrichment, every. single. day. of. school. And weekends? No one is coming to transport them to the weekend school activities.
Why do you hate poor people so much? Is it their skin color?
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.
The study was randomized, but applying becomes a minor factor in part because one can look at the siblings and twins who didn’t get into the charter schools and had to remain in public schools. The results were so one-sided in favor of the charter schools that minor claims don’t change the results.
Don’t start with your game of attacking the charter schools by saying, “It would be a surprise if there were not other financial considerations as well, such as the ability of the parents to participate.” The details of the study are out there, so you don’t have to pretend. You can actually look at the study.
Sometimes NYC does great things. Look at the Giuliani administration. NYC did great things, but nowadays NYC is heading in the direction of bankruptcy and an increasing crime and murder rate.
“one can look” is not the same as “after looking”
If the study was out there you would have a link to it.
“Like many cities around the country, New York City experienced a sharp uptick in violent crime during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of these increases have now receded. As of 2025, murders and shootings are at or near all-time lows. The city’s murder rate also remains below the national average.”
Below the national average, in 2025.
All-time lows.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/2025-trends-crime-and-safety-new-york-city
“Except public schools have fixed overhead to maintain the buildings and provide heating and cooling”
As do all schools – public or otherwise.
Regardless that is irrelevant.
Should we subsidize Buggy Whips – because they do not meet our needs and demand is low ?
The free market can be brutal – you must do a better job or die.
That is what we WANT.
While I strongly suspect that there is a place for buildings and heating and cooling in education – I could be wrong.
Either they prove their value or they die.
And that is how it should be.
The top 10 companies in the 60’s were General Motors, Exxon Mobil, US Steel, General Electric, Esmark, Chrysler, Armour, Gulf Oil, Mobil, and DuPont
today it is Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Saudi Aramco, Tencent Holdings, UnitedHealth Group, and JPMorgan.
Many of the top 10 75 years ago are gone – the rest are much less important.
In 50 years the list will be vastly different.
The GOAL is NOT to protect buildings – it is to better educate Children.
If buildings are useful in doing so – then they will survive.
If not – bulldoze them.
“With students drained from them that portion doesn’t change.”
So what ? Sell the buildings to private schools, repurpose them, bulldoze them
Do not lose sight of the actual OBJECTIVE – better educated students.
There is a story possibly attributd to Milton Friedman
Friedman visited a damn construction site in china and was surprised to find numerous workers digging with shovels. Yet, machines could accomplish the task more quickly and efficiently. So he asked “Why aren’t you using earthmoving equipment?” The answer was “You don’t understand. This project is designed to employ large numbers of people” So freidman responded “I see. If creating jobs is your primary objective, then perhaps you should give the workers spoons instead of shovels.”
“Private schools can decide how large a facility they need and where they can hold classes controlling the non-educational costs that public schools cannot avoid.”
Nonsense, first you keep losing sight of the goal – educating children. But beyond that all you are pointing out is that in the free market – better decisions are made.
Businesses make decisions regarding fascilities – just like Government – they build, they rent, They outgrow, they move.
It is Govenrment that tends to make poor choices – building when it should rent, or visa versa, Staying when they should move.
Generally govenrment does all the same things that private schools do – just far slower – with far more planning and far worse results.
But a part of that is that no one in govenrment has to pay for their mistakes.
“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.”
Private schools come in far more variations than public schools. Again there is a private school a few miles from me that has facilities and programs that public schools would be envious of – it is expensive – but still costs less than DC or NYC Schools.
Cyber charters have virtually no brick and mortar expenses – but they had to create curiculum from scratch and they had to workj out how to make remote education actually work. We saw during covid how disasterously traditional public schools performed when they had to switch to remote learning.
I am not trying to pi$$ on public schools – just pointing out that what you think is without cost is nowhere close to free – cyber charters perform slightly better than public swchools – and Contra claims they do so on a significantly worse body of students. Cyber charters primarly serve students in poor performing districts, and students who are discipline problems – they alsdo get lots of spoecial needs students – because it is cheaper for a public school to push a special needs student on a cyber charter than to buiild fascilities for them – special needs students Already have adequate fascilites at home – they LIVE there.
Regardless -0 absolutely there are differenceds – that is how free markets work – Do you want the cheap generic corn flakes from the cereal aisle or do you want the gluten free fair trade organic Kashi ?
Each and every producer tries to poach from the others – and consumers individually pick what they can afford that gives them the best value.
“The main advantage that private schools have in success for their students is that to get into them the parents have to be involved;”
Possibly – but it does not matter. Again – you lose sight of the goal an education system that better serves the needs and values of parents.
“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.”
Again both false and irrelevant – I have a great deal of personal experience with Cyber Charters – My daughter has serious learning disabilities as a result of 2 years in a chines orphanage in the 90’s She is very smart, but she needs to learn in very specific ways. For the first 4 years in public schools she got excellent teachers and she was happy and in the top of her class. In 4th grade she got “the team of teachers from H311″ – she was miserable, we contacted the principle and he very politiely told us to F#$K off – that he would do nothing and there was nothing we could do.
So we looked at all kinds of laternatives. We tripped over Early cyber charters. We chose them primarily because it was a no cost solution and we had nothing to lose – if they were a disaster – it would be better than a year of misery in public school. It turned out incredibly well – cyber charters were an excellent fit for her. Later we changed to an even better cyber charter – which is AGIAN part of the point. You not only have to get parents to send their kids to your school in an actual free market you have to earn that EVERY DAY. You must constantly improve.
But MOST of the students in the Cyber charter were NOT from otherwise decent performing schools like ours – we actually moved to the school district because of the quality of the education BEFORE if failed our daughter. It was a good public school – just not good for our daughter.
Most of the students in her classes were from poor inner cith schools – they were the kids of single moms who wanted their kids to do better than they had – and cyber charters were their best hope of a better life for their kids. These students significantly underperformed statewide averages in their public schools – yet in the cyber charters they were meeting and barely exceeding state wide averages.
The cyber charters were NOT cherry picking the best – they were cherry picking the best parents from the worst schools.
” The motivated students with unmotivated parents are left in the public school, underfunded”:
In this country “poor school Districts” are vastly OVERFUNDED – Again DC is among the worst schools in the country and the most expensive.
With the slightest bit of Freedom – motivated parents will ALWAYS do better – that is just life – GET OVER IT.
You can assure that education is perfectly equal andf perfectly crap – by doing as the communists do – FORCE everyone into a crappy one size fits all system.
Put everyone in the Mao tunics of schools – where everything is completely homogeneous and bad.
Is that actually what you want ?
Every single other arrangement will always result in the students of more motivated parents doing better.
This is why DEI is WRONG – equal oportunity and equality are oposites – and the later does not exist – we are NOT equal, we do not have equal needs, abilities, ….
Gifted students with unmotivated parents will mostly manage to thrive – even in $hitty schools – absolutely they could do better.
Regardless they ONLY systrem that will give you EQUALITY – is a $hitty system that screws everyone.
Anything elsewill have some doing better than others but nearly everyone doing better than what we have.
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?
“A voucher system can be useful if intelligently planned and then run and monitored. ”
NOPE
If you want education (or anything else – like Healthcare) to work – get Government out of it.
Real Free markets plan themselves – and they do so extremely well – Ronald Coase won a Nobel for proving that with reasonable enforcement of property rights and minimal friction – bargaining – free markets will produce the best possible outcomes.
Parents are not the perfect choice to decide how children should be educated – the perfect choice does not exist. Parents are the best choice.
Decide on an amount and Dole it out blindly to every single student. Let parents spend that on education – however they please.
“I see no reason for not using the same measuring sticks in voucher/private schools and public schools.”
Correct – eliminate the government measuring stick entirely – parents can decide for themselves what they want out of a school.
“You need the comparison and it can also lead to rewards for those public systems that reform and improve.”
Do you need government to make decisions regarding Coffee, or breakfast cereal for you ?
Why do you think people can decidce for themselves what apartment to rent what house to buy, whether to have children, what car to buy, what food to eat,
and yet they need govenrment help to figure out how to educate their children.
OBVIOUSLY – some parents will make better choices than others – everything in the free market works like that.
We are not all equal, we do not have the same values. But despite this – on the whole we will make far better choices for ourselves and our children than government.
Absolutely Some parents will choose disasterously – but schools alreadyu screw up far more kids than bad parents ever will.
“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.”
Not interested in debating the relative merits of screwed up govenrment systems. School Board, no school board – what does it matter ?
Catholic Schools in the US outperform public schools at 1/4-1/3 of the cost. There is an absolutely incredibly elite private school a few miles from me that costs less than DC and NY schools.
“Public Schools for a long time were a strength for our nation.”
Then why is it that the FIRST thing that Catholics did when they came to the US was build their own schools ? Catholic Parrishes in the US Built Schools BEFORE Churches.
” 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”
The best answer is to just entirely eliminate public education – sell the schools and stop collecting school taxes. But we are unlikely to do that soon.
The least possible regulated voucher system is the NEXT BEST solution. It is a poor choice – just better than anything involving government.
The free market made the Depression possible. The free market makes monopolies inevitable. The free market puts sawdust and plaster into bread.
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.
That’s fine in my book, Personal Consumerism levels are controllable by the Individual. Those whom can balance a checkbook and keep in the household budge in line, do a better job than State and Local Officials.
The out-of-control spending by State and Local Officials is what needs to be brought into control.
Maybe A.I. will bring responsible and sound governance. We as humans have failed (e.i.: 39+ Trillion Debt)
If half of what you spend is on taxable food, and the other half on rent, how can the personal consumption be curtailed?
One third of the National Debt is because of Trump and the Republicans in the last 2 years.
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.
“curriculum of schools” has nothing to do with vouchers.
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.
Iran was very close to nuclear capability. You don’t have to believe that, but then you must remain bound with the ignorant loonies. Iran proved they had a missile capable of reaching European capitals. The only reason they didn’t have nuclear capability years earlier is that Israel and the U.S. prevented them with cyberwarfare, killing their scientists, and other types of sabotage. In 2003, the IAEA knew, based on inspectors on the ground, that Iran had highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuge components. Check out Wikipedia, a mostly leftist site that sanitizes leftists’ dreams.
Your facts are contextually wrong regarding the equipment and troops. Biden unnecessarily left the big stuff. Under Trump, there were no American deaths after DOHA, and Bagram was not given away.
Finally, no substantial quantities of drinkable alcohol were left, so you should have no complaints.
How do 2,500 troops remove 87,000 pieces of equipment with 5,000 terrorist troops trying to kill them?
Trump negotiated it to look good in the run-up to the election by cutting casualties, but it backfired when he let Covid go wild across the US.
“How do 2,500 troops remove 87,000 pieces?”
They pick them up one by one. Following Trump’s agreement with the Taliban, American combat deaths dropped to zero, and the original plan was to retain control of Bagram Air Base. Biden foolishly gave it up.
“When he let Covid go wild across the US.”
This ignores the reality of the pandemic. There were no existing treatments for Covid, yet Trump delivered a vaccine in record time; a quintessential mark of leadership. The virus couldn’t be contained without a working vaccine. He followed established pandemic protocols, and his initial instincts were correct.
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/
Only the “T” in LGBTQ want to change anything. The rest would be happy the way they are if conservatives would stop assaulting them.
“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.
—-
“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.”
—-
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.
You can help by taking your message to inner cities and showing the children and parents just how wrong things are and how to fix them. Or do you believe your magical thinking will fix that problem?