The Congress Elementary School District in Arizona is tired of having to comply with open record laws, or deal with pesky residents that want to know what they’re doing. The school district is now suing four residents on the basis that their lawful requests amount to “harassment.” No kidding:
The Congress Elementary School District claims that past efforts by these residents to obtain documents such as minutes of board meetings and spending reports amount to harassment that should not have to be tolerated.
But Jean Warren, one of the four defendants named in the lawsuit filed January 28, 2010, said the complaint is an illegal attempt to silence citizens who have questioned the district’s policies and spending practices.
The lawsuit says the defendants filed over 100 public records requests since 2002. That’s barely 10 a year. It then hyperventilates that it is contrary to the “public interest” to comply with the requests “filed by the Defendants on an almost daily basis.”
One hundred requests since 2002 is an almost daily basis? No wonder kids can’t count. They are being taught by morons – thuggish, tyrannical morons who think they have a right to lord it over children and parents alike without ever being questioned.
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States are running out of money. If there was a bankruptcy process for States, many would be going through it. Naturally, this means lawmakers are looking for things to cut and places to save money. An obvious target is the generous subsidies they force taxpayers to give to public universities so little Johnny can sit around playing beer-pong in his Birkenstocks.
And now Johnny is pissed off that the gravy train is slowing down. So what’s a Berkley Progressive to do? Destroy some property, of course!
See how a Berkley student representative defends this leftwing tantrum
Petulant, entitlement-minded tantrums aside, are students right to be upset? No.
They have no right to taxpayer money for their education. Moreover, part of the reason tuition is so high is because government continues to subsidize it, which encourages overconsumption.
Maybe students should target their ire at universities which waste money on silly moonbat courses.
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Congress is considering expanding oversight of charter schools. No big surprise, the standard position of Congress regarding government these days is “more, please!”
It’s not just Congress calling for more oversight. Charter school organizations were also there testifying in support of an expanded effort by Congress.
But in the first Congressional hearing on rewriting the No Child Left Behind law, lawmakers on Wednesday heard experts, all of them charter school advocates, testify that Washington should also make sure charter schools are properly monitored for their admissions procedures, academic standards and financial stewardship.
The president of one influential charter group told the House Education and Labor Committee that the federal government had spent $2 billion since the mid-1990s to finance new charter schools but less than $2 million, about one-tenth of 1 percent, to ensure that they were held to high standards.
“It’s as if the federal government had spent billions for new highway construction, but nothing to put up guardrails along the sides of those highways,” said Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
Charter schools have thrived thanks to the competitive advantage they gain over public schools by being less regulated. They have more room for innovation, and it shows in their results.
So what is to explain their call for more government oversight, which also risks increased regulation? I see two possible explanations.
The argument presented in the article gives us a strong hint. Here’s that argument again: “the federal government had spent … less than $2 million, about one-tenth of 1 percent, to ensure that they were held to high standards.”
It’s all about the money. When government takes responsibility for ensuring the quality of a product, whether it be food, drugs or education, it also bears the cost. So taxpayers pick up the oversight tab, which is itself a kind of marketing. Charter schools don’t want to spend time and effort (money) convincing parents that their product is of a certain quality if government will do it for them.
The other potential motivation for charter schools to desire greater federal involvement is that it simplifies the range of regulations they have to deal with. While most charter schools operate locally or with only one or a small number of schools, the industry is growing and other charter organizations are looking to expand their operations across the country. It would make sense for these organizations to prefer being regulated by one federal government rather than 50 state governments that might write 50 different sets of rules for them to comply with.
This kind of pressure from industry to federalize and standardize regulations is common. And while it makes sense for them as individual business entities, the nation as a whole loses the benefits of having competitive regulatory regimes when that happens. Like all things, governments operate more efficiently and innovate better when they are forced to compete.
As charter school organizations seek greater congressional oversight, they should keep in mind that oversight is rarely not accompanied by increased regulation. That regulation will necessarily threaten the very purpose of having charter schools: to bring innovation to education.
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I’m interrupting my CPAC coverage to mention an utterly outrageous story. A school district in Pennsylvania is being suid for spying on the webcams of students in their homes. The school system provided the laptops to the students, but kept for themselves the ability to turn on and monitor the webcams whenever they pleased.
Michael and Holly Robbins claim they were alerted to the snooping when an assistant principal at Harriton High School warned their son, Blake, in November last year that he was “engaged in improper behaviour in his home”, citing a photo taken on his laptop webcam as evidence.
Mr Robbins said he later verified through the assistant principal, Lindy Matsko, that the school district was able at any time to “remotely activate” the webcam in a student’s laptop and “view and capture” whatever image was in its line of sight, all without the user’s knowledge or permission.
The lawsuit also argues that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions” including “various stages of undress”, the lawsuit adds.
At least we can thank our government monopoly education system for showing once again why governmen cannot be trusted.
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Well-paid Rhode Island teachers get the heave-ho for refusing to work more to improve student outcomes:
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000…
The school superintendent has responded to the union’s stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
If they won’t do the job that’s asked of them, I’m sure there are plenty of knowledgeable people currently unemployed who will. There is no reason to keep pandering to these teachers unions.
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It’s not just exaggerated political rhetoric, the American left really does look fondly upon the blood-soaked socialist ideology:
The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.
Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.
The propaganda of state-run education is at least partly to blame.
So how much blood and misery must an ideology cause before the left abandons it?
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This story seems like one of those “teachable moments” I keep hearing so much about:
The University of Oregon student body has been learning some useful lessons in liberty as the campus debates what to do about an extremely controversial group’s presence on campus. Last week, the student government narrowly voted to defend free expression when it voted down a resolution designed to push the group off campus for good.
The organization is the Pacifica Forum, a discussion group hosted on campus by an emeritus professor, as permitted by university rules. The group is so controversial, it appears, because every so often it discusses topics that a lot of people on campus find extremely offensive—such as the swastika or Nazism—well, not just because of the topics, but because some of the participants appear to the critics to be voicing far too much sympathy for ideas of white supremacy. You can find this criticism of the Pacifica Forum in full force on the Facebook.com group “UofO students and community members against the Pacifica Forum,” and you can find defenses of the group’s right to free expression in reasonably good order on the website of student publication the Oregon Commentator.
…The group met at the university’s Erb Memorial Student Union until a few weeks ago, when it met in a larger space than usual because of the expectation of hundreds of protesters for the discussion of the swastika on January 15. The protesters came and disrupted the event.
The disruption appears to have been organized by student government president Emma Kallaway, and Vice President Getachew Kassa who, according to the Oregon Commentator’s January 25 issue, helped to coordinate a rally prior to the disruption:
“We wanted to create fear and anger in the forum, and we accomplished that today,” said Kassa.
According to campus newspaper the Oregon Daily Emerald, the disruption was severe enough that law enforcement officers had to remove several protesters from the room.
And that is how not to deal with “bad” speech.
Some people have bad ideas. Some people subscribe to hate, and they seek out like minded people to discuss these views with. That’s just a part of life.
At issue is how you deal with such people. If all they’re doing is exercising their rights to speech and association, then theatrics are the wrong way to go. Protesting, disruption, temper tantrums – all just serve to bring attention on the target group.
The best way to deal with bad speech is with more speech. If people are listening to their ideas, then use your own speech to say why they are wrong. Don’t toss aside your own principles to have them silenced.
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While quite possibly setting a new record for hyperbole in a press release, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus argues that it is “radical” to grant college students the Constitutional right to defend themselves by bearing arms.
Contrary to the claim of their name, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus isn’t actually campaigning to keep guns off campus. How can they? Banning guns didn’t do anything to stop the Virginia Tech massacre. Their objective is merely to keep legal guns off campus, so that only trouble makers and those intent on bloody murder will be armed.
They should change their name to The Campaign to Lead College Kids to Slaughter.
See here for a list of dangerous colleges that advocate the outlaw of self-defense, so you know where not to send your kids.
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An Orwellian task force called the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group has proposed that each teacher recognize the suffering of minority students under “white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.” FIRE reports that education students would be made to ”discover their own privilege, oppression, or marginalization”; “develop a positive sense of racial/cultural identity”; and “recognize that schools are socially constructed systems that are susceptible to racism … but are also critical sites for social and cultural transformation.”
The proposal, already being implemented, looks to make race, class and gender issues the “overarching framework” of all teaching courses. Teachers that do not assimilate the appropriate leftwing attitudes would be forced into remedial “re-education” classes. And if that didn’t succeed in wiping out all independent thought, they would be prevented from receiving degrees.
The government monopoly on education not only forces a curriculum of leftwing propaganda and brainwashing on our children, but controls all the inputs into the system, including teachers. It selects for those most likely to conform to its distorted views of society, even going so far as to control the higher education process of those who want to become teachers. The stranglehold that government monopoly education has on our society and culture must end.
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Or “Equity Teams,” as they prefer to be known:
As part of its plan to comply with a federal desegregation order now decades old, Tucson’s school district adopted racial quotas in school discipline this summer. Schools that suspend or expel Hispanic and black students at higher rates than white students will now get a visit from a district “Equity Team” and will be expected to remedy those disparities by reducing their minority discipline rates.
That is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read. The insidiousness of identity politics and the hyper-racial practitioners who thrust it upon society cannot be overstated. These race-mongers are a menace.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
