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Jackson's Opposition to School Choice Hurts Black Families
Topic Started: Oct 29 2012, 08:33 PM (441 Views)
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http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/poll-47-ga-voters-support-charter-school-amendment/nSpf3/
Poll: 47% of Ga. voters support charter school amendment

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Jackson's Opposition to School Choice Hurts Black Families
Friday, March 15, 2002
By Casey J. Lartigue
In a Feb. 26 New York Times commentary, Emory University visiting professor Michael Leo Owens argued that blacks increasingly support school vouchers despite opposition from black politicians.

A few days later, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, on cue, stepped forward to demonstrate how intellectually bankrupt his opposition to school choice is. Jackson warns blacks not to be swayed by radio and television ads touting the success of vouchers.

The Black Alliance for Educational Options, founded in August 2000, hit the ground running with commercials presenting the stories of minority parents who have benefited from school choice. Parents with children in rotten schools are asking a question Martin Luther King Jr. asked in a speech at Montgomery, Ala., when blacks were told they must be patient about gaining their civil rights: "How long?" How long must blacks wait? He concluded, "not long . . . however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again."

The answer from Rev. Jackson, ironically, is that parents today should wait until the public schools are repaired, although he doesn’t answer how long the timeline should be.

Rev. Jackson does ask one very good question: "Why does the voucher proposition persist?" After all, it has gone down to defeat in numerous state ballot initiatives. Predictably, Rev. Jackson blames "rich conservative proponents" for continuing to push the issue. He then adds, "public funds should not be used to underwrite rich people sending their children to private schools."


Data suggest that this is not happening. It is desperate people, the type who formerly would seek help from Jackson and his organization, who are demanding school choice. Surely an old civil rights leader like Rev. Jackson would recognize that people fighting for a just cause don’t easily give up.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund did win the 1954 Brown case, but that was only after battling in the courts for decades when victory was uncertain and opposition was often violent. As education historian Diane Ravitch recently noted about the continued demand for school choice: "Losing an election by more than two to one does not discourage [school choice supporters]--no more than it would have discouraged civil rights leaders to lose a state or local referendum on segregation laws in the 1950s."

Rev. Jackson performs several sleights of hand, most blatantly when he writes that the organizations supporting vouchers opposed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Of course, few if any of the organizations existed then.

And, increasingly, prominent liberals are coming out in support of school choice. Liberal sociologist Christopher Jencks of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government argued as early as 1970 that inner-city blacks should be given education vouchers. Other supporters of vouchers include former Clinton administration official Robert Reich, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Henry Levin of Columbia Teachers College, and BAEO board members former six-term Rep. Floyd H. Flake, D-N.Y., State Rep. Dwight Evans, D-PA, and Willie Breazell (who was ousted as head of the NAACP in Colorado when he announced he supported school choice).

Even Andrew Young, another former King protégé, has come out in support of school vouchers. And former Vice President Al Gore famously admitted that, "If I was the parent of a child who went to an inner-city school that was failing . . . I might be for vouchers, too."

It has been said that generals prepare for the last war, often failing to adapt to new circumstances. Rev. Jackson remains stuck in history, so busy fighting demons from the past that he is willing to handicap black children today. Prof. Owens of Emory University is right: Urban America supports vouchers, despite what its leaders say. The argument that we must "save" the public schools, even at the cost of losing another generation of children to educational mediocrity, is increasingly losing traction, especially when someone like Jackson, who sent his son Jesse Jr. to the ritzy prep school St. Albans in Washington, D.C., forwards it.

Rev. Jackson’s effort to keep children in failing schools will be as futile as George Wallace standing in the doorway of public schools blocking black children from entering. History has not been kind to the segregationists, just as it may be rude to people like Rev. Jackson as he tries to block children from leaving failing public schools.

Casey J. Lartigue is an education policy analyst in the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute .
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The SOLE Controller
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Good drop.

So you already know that means I'll be back, later, to rip it to e-shreds with anti-Blackfolk truths facts and veracity on voucher-racism in the USA
Edited by The SOLE Controller, Oct 29 2012, 09:05 PM.
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Zechariah
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Zechariah
Jesse always has an angle.
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Study Finds One-Third in D.C. Illiterate
Mar 19 11:50 AM US/Eastern


WASHINGTON (AP) - About one-third of the people living in the national's capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia.

Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications.

The study by the State Education Agency, a quasi-governmental office created by the U.S. Department of Education to distribute federal funds for literacy services, was ordered by Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 2003 as part of his four-year, $4 million adult literacy initiative.

The growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who aren't proficient in English contributed to the city's high functional illiteracy level, which translated to 170,000 people, said Connie Spinner, director of the State Education Agency. The report says the district's functional illiteracy rate is 36 percent and the nation's 21 percent.

Adults age 65 and older had the lowest literacy score of any group, the report found.

The District of Columbia Chamber of Commerce, which contributed to the report, said the city lost up to $107 million in taxes annually between 2000 and 2005 because of a lack of qualified job applicants.



"Obama is going to give us jobs!"The question is, what kind of jobs?
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The SOLE Controller
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Unfortunately, a lot of “right-wingers” and even self-described libertarians think that the free-market position on government schools is to introduce vouchers. In their rhetoric, they claim that this will end the public school monopoly, return competition to the industry, give parents a choice, etc. And of course, the free-market guru Milton Friedman himself pioneered the idea, so who could doubt its libertarian bona fides?

But hold on a second. Let’s apply the rhetoric to other areas. “Hey, I think we should give real choice to American families! Everybody should get a voucher, paid for by taxpayers, to spend up to $10,000 on a new automobile. This will give poorer families a real choice, and the competition will spur car producers to offer new options in an effort to capture those voucher revenues.”

Obviously no free-market person would support such a plan; it would represent an unjust wealth redistribution among the population, and it would wreck the car industry. The government would have to continually revise its detailed regulations governing eligibility for the program, lest some shady people set up a scam whereby they would sell cardboard “automobiles” to a voucher recipient, and then split the $10,000 afterwards.

The same is true with formal schooling. If we started from an initial, free market in the “school industry”–with no mandatory attendance laws, no government funds, and no government interference with curriculum–then the voucher idea would smack of pseudo-socialism. It would horrify Tea Party people as much as ObamaCare.

Of course, the big problem is that the government ALREADY intervenes so heavily in the area of formal schooling. That’s why the voucher position seems to be a move back towards liberty.

But is it really? As Huebert notes, the widespread introduction of vouchers could very well destroy what’s left of the independent, private schools. The government would have to establish criteria for which schools were eligible for the vouchers, and which weren’t: Taxpayers would be outraged if Joe Blow set up a “school” where he just popped in DVDs all day, and collected checks from the government.

It’s true, the government currently intervenes in numerous ways with what private schools can do. But the government would have far more leverage if it could make its requirements tied to cash disbursements, as opposed to imposing blanket regulations. For example, if the government simply declared, “It is illegal to mention ‘Intelligent Design’ in the classroom,” there would be an outcry in certain areas of the country. But if the government said, “We will not give taxpayer assistance to any schools mentioning Intelligent Design,” then the opposition would not be as strong.

However, as more and more private schools succumbed to the temptation to accept voucher-funded students, the government’s stranglehold on curriculum would expand. In the beginning, there might be temporary improvements in standardized test scores and other criteria, for all the reasons that voucher proponents cite.

But another immediate impact would be a huge increase in the demand for education tax dollars. Parents who currently send their kids to private schools (or homeschool) would apply for the vouchers. Thus the government would be paying for kids in “public” schools, but also in private. Property taxes would have to go up.

In the end, when everything had settled down, the government would extract a lot more out of taxpayers than it does now. And the difference between government and private schools would have been eroded even further. The government would have effectively taken over all formal schooling.

It is understandable that parents in many areas of the country are disgusted with their government-run schools, and look to vouchers as a “free-market” solution. But this is a grave mistake...

Robert P. Murphy has a PhD in economics from New York University.



Edited by The SOLE Controller, Oct 30 2012, 10:24 AM.
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The SOLE Controller
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School Choice or Bigger Government?

Milwaukee's Reform Came Wrapped In Red Tape
by Michael Chapman

School vouchers have been sold as a winning way to give parents a choice of how to educate their kids. But vouchers may come with government strings attached.

At least, that's the lesson from Milwaukee's school choice program.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in June OK'd the plan, which the state Legislature had approved years earlier. The public school lobby, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, may appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

For now, though, the program goes on. And pro-voucher players are happy.

"It's a great victory," said Charles Glenn, an education professor at Boston University.

While no doubt a victory for voucher supporters, the ruling opens the door to something else: more government control over Milwaukee's private schools.

"Public controls do follow public money - not necessarily immediately, but eventually," said economist Estelle James, who has studied school choice.

Already, more than 300 pages of state and federal rules have been dropped on the program. Those rules govern admissions, eligibility, "religious activities," student rights, curriculum standards, teacher certification and accountability, among other things.

Sound familiar?

"They are going to look just like public schools," Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Alan Brown said of the private schools that takevouchers.

That wasn't the intent. For those who support vouchers, the rules are ominous.

"There's always a risk, (and) I prefer to see those restrictions removed.... I prefer unrestricted, universal vouchers," Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman, an active supporter of the Milwaukee plan, told IBD.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program will let up to 15,000 kids from low-income families go to the schools of their choice. Each student gets a voucher worth about $4,900.

The vouchers will help kids who come from Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods.

"You're empowering the worst-performing kids to do better," said Richard Komer, a senior litigator at the Washington-based Institute for Justice, a pro-voucher legal group that represents Milwaukee families.

Said Glenn, "If we want to extend opportunities to poor kids and begin to reverse the absolutely devastating education that they're getting, we have to have such arrangements, even if there are risks involved."

Even though government involvement is inevitable with public-funded vouchers, they may be "a way out for motivated low-income people who don't have a way out," James said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling emphasized three touchy points:

Private schools must select students on a "random basis."

Under an "opt-out" rule, private religious schools can't force students with vouchers to take part in religious activity at the schools.

Kids already in private school cannot get vouchers unless they are in kindergarten through the third grade "and meet certain income requirements."

"The inability to pick and choose among students...is one of the reasons public schools are in trouble," said Lew Rockwell, director of the free-market Ludwig von Mises Institute. "Apply the same rule to private schools, and you go a long way toward making them carbon copies of the schools so many are anxious to flee."

Also, the voucher money doesn't go to kids of "middle-class people who actually pay the taxes that support the public schools," Rockwell said. Instead, it goes only to "those the government defines as 'poor.'"

That group already gets big subsidies for health care, housing, day care and food. "Vouchers represent not a shrinkage of this welfare state but an expansion, the equivalent of food stamps for private school," Rockwell said.

A former high-level U.S. Education Department official agrees.

"The schools that participate behave exactly as government schools do. They have no say over who they accept or reject - they lose control over their enrollment," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IBD.

Also, the "opt-out" rule lets kids choose not to take part in religious activities, which may be broadly defined. Is having a crucifix in a classroom or a prayer before math class a religious activity?

"It's a kind of gag order in religious schools about God," said the former Education Department official.

Religious schools in Milwaukee that want to take part in the program are worried, says Howard Fuller, former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and now a Marquette University education professor.

Fuller says the worry is over the 300-plus pages of rules that the Milwaukee Public Schools managed to slap on the program.

"None of these regulations were required by the legislature," Fuller said. "And if there's enforcement of these laws, then we'll have a reluctance on the part of some of the (religious) schools to get involved. Then we'll never know whether this experiment will work because we'll have a program but few sectarian schools will join in."

Dan McKinley, head of Partners Advancing Values in Education - a pro-voucher group - also worries that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction may try to push its luck.

The DPI is charged with overseeing the program and each school's random admission policy.

"DPI believes that every student entering a private school retains the same rights as a public school student," McKinley said.

While the DPI has been cooperative, he said, it has issued a "whole list of student rights that come mainly from federal statutes that the (voucher) schools are supposed to sign off on."

These rules forbid single-sex schools. There are five such private schools in Milwaukee. The rules also include provisions for disabled kids, which some private schools may not be able to afford.

"The purpose of the choice program was not to make the private schools public schools," Fuller said.

Despite the problems, voucher supporters are optimistic.

"The bottom line is that it's the schools' decision" whether to participate, said Clint Bolick, director of the Institute for Justice.

Said his colleague Komer: "The ultimate goal is to move to a system of pure choice for everyone. It's largely a question of, How do we get from here to there?"

Rich Seder, director of education studies at the free-market Reason Foundation, agrees.

"The one saving factor is that the private schools can drop out if they feel that the state government is becoming too regulatory," he said.

Glenn predicts the program will fuel competition between private and public schools. This will give each school greater focus, he says.

But some--including Friedman --believe vouchers are just a half-step toward real reform. They ask: Why have government involved in education at all?

. "A voucher is a wealth-transfer scheme that takes money from the haves and gives it to the have-nots...by the force of taxation," said Marshall Fritz, head of the Fresno, Calif.-based Separation of School & State Alliance. "The name for that is welfare. A free lunch is welfare. A free math lesson is welfare. Public housing is welfare. Public schooling is welfare."

Sheldon Richman, an author who has written extensively on school choice issues, agrees. He notes support for voucher programs is often couched in terms of "social justice."

"Poor people don't have the same choices in cars or country clubs or restaurants," Richman said. "Should we have vouchers across the board? All of a sudden they're egalitarian."


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The "Proof" is in the pudding, here's an example of the pudding!
[/b]

http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2011/07/06/atlanta-schools-cheating-investigation-full-report

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Here's the state's full report about the Atlanta schools cheating scandal
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:11 AM

State investigators on Tuesday released the findings of a probe into the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating scandal that tarnished the system's once-stellar reputation. Led by former Attorney General Mike Bowers and former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson, the investigative team interviewed more than 2,000 peopleand reviewed more than 800,000 documents. Investigators identified 178 principal and teachers who they say were involved in cheating.

"A culture of fear and a conspiracy of silence infected this school system, and kept many teachers from speaking freely about misconduct," the report says. "From the onset of this investigation, we were confronted by a pattern of interference by top APS leadership in our attempt to gather evidence. These actions delayed the completion of this inquiry and hindered the truth-seeking process."

CL obtained a copy of the report from Gov. Nathan Deal via an Open Records Request. All files are PDFs. Enjoy.

Part 1: An overview of the investigation, the CRCT test, erasure analysis and summaries of schools investigators visited, starting with Parks Middle School in southwest Atlanta. Investigators say they uncovered evidence of cheating by 13 educators at the school beginning in 2006.

Part 2: A continuation of the school summaries. Schools where investigators found the most instances of cheating are listed first. A section also highlights the drastic changes on test scores between 2009 and 2010, when school officials were under greater scrutiny about changing test scores.

Part 3: Here's where you turn to understand the big picture. Investigators outline why cheating occurred, detail the "culture of fear" that existed at APS, and probe allegations that school officials disregarded warnings or complaints about cheating. The school system's so-called "Blue Ribbon Commission" convened to investigate the cheating scandal and the business the community also receive some attention. Finally, the investigators reveal their findings.

Note: No charges have been filed against any of the people named in the state's report.


It goes without saying, that all of the "cheating schools", were in the "colored" side of town! Negroes run the school board! :D

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The SOLE Controller
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How does that relate to Black GOP'ers going against the Republican mantra...by requesting vouchers from big-GOVT? Which then puts big-GOVT more into citizen's private lives.

LOL

I can't believe you all are ripping your decades-old marching orders, to shreds, when begging Obama's Bureaucracy to please please come get involved in our lives by giving us educ.-vouchers for our kids.
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kennyinbmore
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Who's Jessie?
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The SOLE Controller
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kennyinbmore
Nov 2 2012, 11:56 AM
Who's Jessie?
Typical white guy comment
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