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Poverty Underlies Education System’s Shortcomings
Here’s a letter to the editor in The Hill by Diann Woodard, president of the School Administrators (AFSA), the only national education union representing principals, assistant principals and school administrators.
The failure of our education system lies not within the walls of the public schools that serve children in crisis, but with the policymakers and policies in place that ignore the fundamental causes of low student achievement: unfair funding formulas, poverty and unproven education policies (“For America’s children, education outlook grows only dimmer,” Jan. 23, by Juan Williams).
Families are increasingly falling into poverty, experiencing a lack of housing and unable to provide adequate health care and nutrition for their children. These children need increased services, yet often do not receive them because of budget cuts, bureaucratic hurdles and gross inequities in state and local funding formulas.
Public schools welcome these children, for our doors are open to all. We do not hand-select the brightest, the ones with involved parents, or the students who will make us look good on half-hour media specials. Their time at school might provide their only stable environment, and we provide it with only a fraction of resources afforded to more affluent districts and private schools.
No evidence exists that suggests closing schools is a good thing, and a recent study conducted by Julian Betts and Richard Atkinson concluded that there is little research to suggest that charter and private schools are better than public ones, and that the limited data that are available are not enough to draw accurate conclusions about their long-term effectiveness.
Education makes up less than 3 percent of the federal budget. If a nation’s priorities are reflected in its budget, then to invest so little in education demonstrates we don’t understand or appreciate its value. We need an increased investment with a focus on quality, not just on quantity.
States and districts should be required to conduct a needs analysis and target resources accordingly. Principals need meaningful training, increased resources and support. All schools should be granted immediate relief from No Child Left Behind’s flawed adequate yearly progress, and in a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, schools that serve communities with the greatest needs and challenges should be given the greatest support.
School children don’t vote—perhaps that is why we have not yet seen a genuine, concerted effort by our elected officials to rebuild and strengthen our public education system.
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5 Comments
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Diann Woodard’s letter expresses the sentiment of The Establishment in the parallel old saying of “Keep them barefoot, pregnant and uneducated”. That is the formula for The Establishment to conquer our U.S. Constitution and rip it to shreds, as well as to enslave the working class and to anhilate the middle class.
Through Diann Woodard’s letter, can we all now see the how the policies of the Repugnant commercial-communist mafia cult Party are operating? This is the very essence, this is why we must WAKE OUR COUNTRY’S PUBLIC UP to the facts of the Reugnant propaganda! But also, to the INFILTRATORS in the Democratic Party such as Barack O’Bam-ya !!!
The logical alternative to O’Bam-ya is Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illiniois, but Green Party of our united States is very close to selecting a candidate for 2012, and first choice if there is a labor support for a write-in GENUINE candidate with REAL integrity for me is Jesse Jackson Jr., but if labor will not focus on reality, then the Green Party candidate will be my second choice even though Green Party seldom lives up to its ideal Ten Key Values and its excellent Green Party Platform.
Jessie never knew anything about how to run a beer company until his daddy scared the hell out of the owners. Nice to have pull.
We have to have higher taxes on everyone to pay for education.
Anus-throat never knew anything about the Jacksons, let alone what needs to be done for education, which is to get the Repugnant mafia cult Partisans OUT OF OUR GOVERNMENT so that educaton can be free to flourish again. It’s not the cost of education, it’s the cost of anti-Democracy sabotage by the Repugnants that is the real downfall to our prosperity. But Anus-throat wouldn’t know anything about that in his lunacy.
The ruling class educates the children of the working class to reliably do the work they want done. period. It is not about enlightenment or developing critical thinkers. Right now, it seems they want to develop only an elite minority of the working class as overspecialized skilled workers, mostly to work in the armed forces or the ‘defense’ industry. The great majority can fend for themselves, mostly dropping out and working minimum wage jobs or getting a HS diploma and working minimum or near minimum wage jobs. They are being prepared for the only jobs left – soldier, cop, or prison guard, or making hamburgers. None of those things take very much education. In fact, above the bare minimum, education gets in the way of producing the docile, complacent workforce they long for. That is why every possible method – underfunding, repressing teacher unions, regimentizing and useless ‘tests’ which test nothing more than the student’s shortterm recall of disjointed and meaningless data, expansion of school vouchers and for-profit charter schools, greater class sizes, the importation of foreign teachers willing to work for less, and the requirment that students take some high school classes “on line” – every possible method over the last few decades to dumb down America’s working class youth. Guess what? – Government programs do work! – Just not the way they pretend to hope that they will work. The result – a generation of kids, many of whom have a hard time distinguishing their ass from their elbow. (Forget how vapid, greedy and stupid the children of the ruling class are. They have every opportunity for education, but more often than not end up like George W. Bush – a rich, conniving, factless jackass.)