Tag: education

"Oh, it doesn't bother me one bit. I love it."

That is my response to a question asked by MSU labor and industrial relations professor Richard Block.

"The question of compensation is always a difficult one. What is the right amount?"

"Levels of compensation are a function of the responsibility of the person, the culture of the organization as well as what other local officials are getting."

[...]

"It may not bother the membership, and the membership is paying the bills, so why should it bother us?"

Race to the Top is an incentive program designed by the Obama administration to encourage state departments of education to make what it feels are necessary educational reforms. The incentive is cold taxpayer cash, borrowed from the Chinese, to be repaid by the grandchildren of the kids needing a decent education.

Michigan, like forty other states and the District of Columbia, rushed to push through a number of changes to make it more likely to receive the promised cash infusions. As we all know, if there is one thing that Michigan needs, it is some free federal dollars.

Many of the worst performing school districts were all for the state's application and signed on even before their next check could bounce. Many other districts refused to sign on, particularly those who noted that the checks might come with the big fat mandates that the checks might not cover.

The goal of becoming recognized as one of the best school districts in Michigan is not as difficult to achieve as you might think.

Sure, that recognition can be realized the old fashioned way by working hard in the classroom and honestly getting the standardized test scores up, but a much easier way can be found.

The K-12 education budget in Michigan counted on the Federal Government for about one percent of its budget just 10 years ago.  In the last ten years, the funding has grown to account for 10% of the Michigan education budget, or $1.3 billion.  Most teachers detest NCLB and it has not proven itself to be the magic bullet for student success that was promised.  

I would have thought, errantly as it turns out, that at least one member of our esteemed Michigan Senate would have considered getting back to basics in education when looking at the crushed state of our economy and the embarrassing condition of our largest public school district.

Alas, not a peep. Maybe later, but not on this particular vote.

Instead the Senate passed by a unanimous 37-0 tally, a revision to the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act. This is the act that, among other things, encouraged children to monitor the air pressure of school bus tires, to clean the coils of refrigerators and freezers, to caulk around and place plastic on windows, and to lower water heater temperatures by one degree all in the pursuit of an enlightened "Green" rating.

In fact, there is finally a book, and now movie, that gives the honest social progressive view of American history. The People Speak is a documentary to prove just how sexist, racist, and elitist America is.

Howard Zinn wrote A People's History of the United States and now brings us The People Speak. He is portrayed as a revolutionary, except that now most standard textbooks mirror his view of American history. The History Channel is showing The People Speak; and it may be coming to a classroom near you. The movie is social progressiveness at its best. There is a stream of Hollywood faces, including producer Matt Damon.

Here is one example from the movie:

"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally "Life, Liberty , and Property." According to Howard Zinn, the "Property" label proves the Founding Fathers were elitists. He claims that the Constitution was designed so that slave owners could run the country; also that the Bill of Rights was only added after protest, against the original intent of the Founding Fathers.

The reality is that "Property" was changed to "Pursuit of Happiness" because the Founding Fathers didn't want further the cause of slavery by giving more credence to the terrible institution. The Founding Fathers originally wanted to include the term "Property" because without the right to own property, people cannot be free.

Do we need to hear voices of dissension to honestly look at our Nation's history? Yes. But the history so many of our children are learning is almost entirely voices of dissention. What has fallen out of fashion is teaching about the good in our history, the heroes.

Howard Zinn tries to bring down the American heroes and undermine the greatness of our country. Yes, America is flawed- because people are flawed. But I, like so many of you, believe that America is great. America has always held the promise of liberty. That is why so many fight to come here.

What frightens me most about this one-sided negative view of America being taught as truth and beauty is that if we give up the will to fight for our country, we will surely fail. If we feel like offering apologies is more appropriate than fighting for freedom, we will fail. And if we believe this view of American history, we are more likely to land on the side of apology.

What kind of stories would have been in this book if written 100 years from now?

1. Cindy Sheehan, just a mom who wanted to stop an "unjust" war.

2. Nidal Malik Hasan,the misunderstood Muslim who shot 13-people in Fort Hood , TX .

3. Dr. Tiller, the great fighter for women's rights, unless of course you are a baby girl.

A lot of finger wagging and heady pontification takes place down in Lansing whenever the focus turns to Michigan's public schools. Heated debate is more than understandable too, as there has been little positive news concerning any part of that whole disaster in quite a long time.

As parents have incrementally abdicated their responsibilities to the all-caring bureaucrats of Lansing and Washington (and lets be honest here, our kind overlords have done more than a fair share of wresting responsibilities from parents resistant to this abdication,) test scores have worsened, districts have found it increasingly difficult to keep the buses running, and unions have dug in their heels against reforms integral to correcting problems that affect not only the test scoring, but the finances as well.

These problems are all well documented, and recent events aren't likely to change the headlines.

The largest school district in the state was rocked this week with the results of a national standardized test that placed it dead last among all schools in the nation that took the test. Honestly, that stark assessment does not go nearly far enough. The results recognized the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system as not only the worst performing system on this particular test, but as the worst performing school in the history of the test. These shameful test results, owned by the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan, are a monument to failure on an historical scale.

I don't much like squirrels. They look too much like rats to me and rats, frankly, even bushy tailed ones, creep me right out. I know people that hunt squirrels during small game season that would happily make a meal out of their little rat-like legs. The day one of you yahoos ever tries to force feed me rat legs for dinner is the day you better start arsenic testing your drinking water.

So, I didn't really lament the squirrel's life that was lost a couple months ago one afternoon as I drove home from town, accidentally squishing the creepy little rodent underneath my driver's side front tire. For the record, I will lightly brake for squirrels but draw the line at swerving. It isn't that I celebrated the little guy's death because I generally like animals, but this little fella didn't give himself much of a chance.

If a bullet has ever had the name of a victim scrawled across its brassy casing, this squirrel's Latin surname was marked on my tire, for this was a squirrel destined to die on that day. He darted across the road in front of me, got nearly off the road on the opposite side, panicked, backtracked, got nearly to safety again this time on my side of the road, and then backtracked one last fateful time before terminally meeting my Michelin near the center line. Having never owned a squirrel and having never spent a lot of time studying them in the wild, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this one wasn't the valedictorian of his senior class.

We have all seen animals do this sort of thing countless times without ever revealing so much as a hint of motivation. With all apologies to Nike, they just do it.