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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (155485)	6/24/2001 3:09:56 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Our local congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez was on Fox with Bill O'Reilly. She claimed the amount spent on students in k-12 was $5000 per year and that taxpayers are stingy. The official number is nearly $8000 (and rising) according to Pacific Research Institute when federal, local and lottery money is added in. Quite a difference between the congresswoman's claims and reality. Not to mention that Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown's administration delivered a highly thought of system for $3000 (real $'s adjusted) in the 60's.

To: KLP who wrote (155485)	6/24/2001 7:01:37 PM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 769667

I can speak to this, <<<WHY do you think the PS are poor??? Is it the teachers...? >>> since I have a sister and daughter teaching in Public Schools, and my mother and father were both actively involved in the PTA (both served as President of my gradeschool chapter) back before it became politically correct. One reason some public schools are poor is that the administration is often made up of failed teachers who can't handle the classroom. Some of them are gutless and can't stand up to a problem kid or a problem parent--or a problem teacher. These administrators insist on social promotions when the teacher (and sometimes even the parents) want the kid to stay back and grow up. A good teacher threatens them, so instead of rewarding the good teacher, the administrator makes life miserable for them. Poor teachers are rewarded for mediocre performance. Teachers are selected for political correctness, which can take the form of racial criteria that have nothing to do with ability to perform. Irresponsible parents are another reason why public schools under perform. These parents threaten teachers (sometimes physically) because the teachers try to hold a child accountable for poor performance or behavior. Social policies are another reason why public schools under perform. A lot of their class time is taken up with behavior management and they are not learning the basic skills needed for later success in school and life. I've seen the handiwork of kids in our local schools. There is a VAST difference between the work of kids who tow the line and the ones who just fill up space, and I'm afraid the preponderance is in the latter. Frankly, if I were a teacher or a parent of some of these kids I would be ashamed to see that work on display. Another reason for poor performance of public schools is kids are not held accountable for much of anything. At our local schools there is a large bin of lost and found stuff. Jackets, gloves, overshoes, books, you name it. LOTS of stuff. Who isn't requiring those kids to take care of their belongings? Public schools are sometimes the victims of revisionist policies that require them to replace perfectly good books with ones that promote some irrelevant topic such as accepting homosexuality as just one of the options of lifestyle. Sometimes teachers are retained to teach subjects in which they have no competency because they can coach athletics. I saw one of the test papers my son was given for high school math. Several test questions were impossible to answer correctly because they were written INCORRECTLY. The teacher said the kids knew how to answer the question because that's how they were taught. However, no mathematician in the world could solve the following equation: x = y +- 1. The correct equation of course is x = y +(-1), but the wrestling coach did not know that. Public schools are designed to handle only the kids one standard deviation from the mean. They can't handle kids that are extraordinarily bright, and they can't handle kids that need more help because the politically correct philosophy is "mainstreaming" everybody. The bright kids aren't allowed to progress as fast as they can and unless the parents are vigilant they will get bored and rebellious. The slower kids are just pushed through to get them out of the way and claim success. Finally, and I have now idea how this happens, kids today have too much money. My wife ran the cashier at the federal building cafeteria. The high school was a couple of blocks away, and often the kids would come for lunch or to play hooky. The money they had in their pockets was unbelievable. Some of them spent $15 or $20 a day on french fries and soft drinks. They had more money in their jeans than either I or my wife had. There are enough reasons that public schools can be bad, and George Bush is working on all of them. Anybody who isn't helping him but just carping because Gore lost is just taking up space.