Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (2212)	1/22/2002 12:05:43 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

I thought W left the state in debt. When W announced his "education package on tv", he said, "every child can learn" in his introduction. Well, every child can't learn as Jeffords has pointed out. There wasn't much money in that education package for special education. Since you are a dad, I am sure you know very well that children don't learn equally. I've seen several articles that were critical of the education bill. Jeffords wrote one. I didn't copy it though. Another example in which a child cannot learn was Woodrow Wilson. He had a reading disability. Fortunately, his father taught him the speeches of great orators and spent much time with him. When Wilson was 16 he learned short hand and that is how he coped. He went on to graduate from honors from one of ivy league schools, and to become its president. We think the university was Princeton. If not Princeton, it was Yale.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (2212)	1/22/2002 12:11:13 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Rich School, Poor School The New York Times January 8, 2002 By TED HALSTEAD WASHINGTON -- The much-hyped but disappointing bipartisan education bill that President Bush will sign into law today reveals the extent to which both political parties are caught in a trap that prevents them from addressing the deepest problems in our elementary and secondary education system. The trap is the legacy of localism in school funding, which creates dramatic disparities in per-pupil funding across the country. Schools in Mississippi spend an average of $4,000 a year on each student; in New Jersey, the comparable figure is more than $9,000 — even after adjusting for differences in the cost of living. Disparities of this magnitude are also common within many states. They result from our antiquated practice of financing schools primarily through state and local taxes, which translates vast socioeconomic differences between neighborhoods, counties and states into vast differences in school funds. This legacy of localism binds the neediest students — and our elected leaders — in countless ways. First, it quite literally traps students who live in the poorest neighborhoods into inferior schools with marginally qualified teachers, large classes and crumbling buildings. At the same time, it ties the hands of our national leaders. How can any president claim to be the "education president" when less than one-tenth of school funds actually come from the federal government? As long as school financing is determined locally, Washington will never have a significant role in education policy. This puts Congress and the White House in untenable positions, given that education reform is the top priority for many voters. Caught in this trap, leaders from both parties have perfected the art of substituting symbolism for substance. The new bill includes requirements for annual school testing that will undoubtedly confirm what we already know: that some of our schools, particularly in suburbs, are terrific, but many others, particularly in inner cities, are appalling. This attempt to set national standards can hardly be meaningful when there are profound disparities across the land in what schools can spend. The bill also sets a timetable mandating that teachers be proficient in the subjects they teach, but there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure this proficiency. The bill does provide marginal increases in funds to the poorest school districts, but not nearly enough to begin leveling the playing field nationwide. The legacy of localism also prevents both parties from accomplishing what they really want in the education sphere. For Republicans, the ultimate goal is school choice. For Democrats, it ought to be ensuring equity in educational opportunity. Neither of these goals is attainable given the minuscule role of the federal government in financing schools. The only way to achieve relative parity in per pupil expenditures nationwide is for the federal government to step in as the leading source. This step would also be required to reach the Republican goal of meaningful school choice. Broadening school choices is a politically appealing idea, but it cannot be accomplished until a considerable degree of equality in school finances is attained. President Bush, for example, proposed federal financing for vouchers of $1,500 to help children escape failing schools. This may be the best he could do given the limited funds at his disposal for education, but the subsidy amounted to only about a quarter of the cost of educating the average child, and his proposal was dropped. In order to enable both parties to achieve their educational priorities, America must take the bold step of equalizing school funds nationwide, by severing the link between school financing and state and local taxes. While this may sound like a radical idea, most modern democracies finance primary and secondary education mainly through the federal government. In the American context, the politically feasible approach would be to pursue national equalization of school funding together with a real system of school choice. Critics may be quick to argue that national equalization of funding could undermine local control. But by combining this equalization with school choice and stipulating that the money flow directly to parents rather than to school bureaucracies, Congress would ensure that parents would be empowered at the expense of the school bureaucracies. The end result would not so much be to shift control from the local level to the federal level, but rather to shift it from school boards to individual families. Can the federal government afford to take primary responsibility for school financing? One possibility would be to create a new progressive national consumption tax, with the revenues to be rebated directly to the states on a per-pupil basis, provided that the states reduced their taxes commensurately. Through this kind of revenue sharing, equalization of school financing could be achieved without increasing taxes overall, unless we as a nation decide to bring all school districts up to the spending levels in New Jersey. Until our national leaders muster the courage to address the financing problem that lies at the heart of our educational predicament, America will remain stuck with an education system that confines our options to little more than rhetoric and symbolic remedies. Ted Halstead is president of the New America Foundation and co-author, with Michael Lind, of "The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics." nytimes.com

To: TigerPaw who wrote (2212)	1/22/2002 12:15:28 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Criticism for Bush's Education Plan Wednesday January 9 3:46 AM ET By GREG TOPPO, AP Education Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Some school officials say the big improvements in education envisioned in a bill signed by President Bush (news - web sites) come at too high a price for most states and school districts, given their shrinking budgets. ``We are being held more accountable than ever,'' said Val DeFever, a Kansas State Board of Education member. ``But we are not getting that promised funding, so we are suspicious.'' At 1,084 pages, Bush's plan is thicker than two big-city telephone books, representing what Undersecretary of Education Eugene Hickok calls ``a culture shift'' in education policy. Generally, the plan offers schools more freedom over how they spend at least part of their federal funding. In exchange, schools must show better results in the form of constantly improving test scores and graduation rates. The plan allows schools, for instance, to spend funds to improve teacher training, better salaries or hiring more teachers. That could benefit rural school districts, which could offer signing bonuses to entice teachers away from suburbs. ``I think that's positive,'' said Benny Gooden, superintendent of the Fort Smith, Ark., school district. ``That gives local communities and states some options.'' He and others also like the provisions that give more money to schools with large numbers of poor students. But the plan doesn't provide the large increases in funding, especially for the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, that superintendents had sought. It leaves them to pick up most of the bill for special education, estimated at $50 billion to $60 billion annually. ``The fact is that a lot of our local budgets are being dictated by the mandates of IDEA,'' Gooden said. The plan authorizes $26.5 billion for K-12 education next year, about $8 billion more than this year. Democrats fought unsuccessfully to nearly double education spending from $18.4 billion to $33 billion. The American Association of School Administrators, which represents the nation's 14,000 school superintendents, withdrew its support for the plan last November, saying the federal government's overall share of education spending - about 7 percent nationwide - doesn't justify the demands. It also said the plan sets ``an impossible task'' by requiring that every public school teacher be certified in his or her subject, either by a test or coursework, by 2005. If a teacher is unqualified, schools must send a note home to parents. Schools must also test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight. The costs of developing and giving all those new tests are what schools officials worry about the most, said New York State Regent James C. Dawson. He said Bush's prescription seems like overkill. ``As far as we're concerned, the state can identify those buildings that are in trouble by doing statewide tests at the fourth and eighth grade,'' he said. New York tests those two grades and provides state-funded after-school, weekend and summer tutoring for students in schools that don't raise scores, as the federal measure would require. DeFever said Kansas tests fourth-graders in reading and fifth-graders in math. Under Bush's plan, the state would have to develop about 13 new tests in the next four years, spending millions of dollars. ``Our concern is that, until we see the money, this is another unfunded mandate from Washington,'' said DeFever, a former elementary school teacher. After polling its members on their testing programs, the National Association of State Boards of Education last spring estimated that states would need to spend as much as $7 billion over the next seven years to develop, give and score the new tests. Education Department officials say that figure overestimates the cost of administering the tests. Schools have until the 2005-06 school year to begin giving the tests; they must also begin giving science tests in three grades. States may opt out of the testing if the federal government doesn't provide $370 million in funding each year. In the end, observers say, governors may simply ask the federal government to let them keep their testing programs largely unchanged. Email this story dailynews.yahoo.com