Progressive Idea Nixed By Progressive
Webster’s has several definitions for Progressive, but one I thought most interesting is “making use of or interested in new ideas, findings or opportunities.” Perhaps that should be amended to include items solely desirable by the Left, because it certainly doesn’t fit the column of DeWayne Wickham in Tuesday’s USA Today.
Mr. Wickham’s column is a fairly run of the mill hit piece on vouchers, an idea at which you would think the Left would jump. Never have I seen a group so defined by “choice” and “individual right to choose” for so many other issues, but not for where you can send your kids to school. Perhaps that’s because most on the Left know full well that they run the public schools and everything that’s taught at their little social engineering factories.
His main beef is with a $100 million program of federal tax dollars aimed at allowing vouchers under a different name (Opportunity Scholarships) to be given to parents who want to choose a better public school for their children. He crows that it is a failure before it starts and that these kids don’t need a different school, just a better public school (requiring of course MORE money to an already bloated educational establishment).
His primary evidence? Kids with certain economic, social and racial backgrounds (read: poor minority kids) don’t do well in either public or private schools based on a report from the National Center for Education Statistics. He harps on that point for the bulk of his editorial and carefully skirts another small fact, that while switching to a private school doesn’t turn all underprivileged kids into Rhodes Scholars, it does certainly improve their scores and more succeed under such a system. Those facts, being that they don’t backup his race-baiting hypothesis, are surprisingly omitted, except for a brief mention that “overall”, private schools did better than public schools.
Here’s one you’ll like even better. His primary backup to indicate that “The results…are nothing more than we expected” is Reg Weaver, President of the NEA, a large and well-funded (by you and me) organization that primarily backs leftist causes and political candidates through its control on teacher’s unions. Most teachers in private schools, you may or may not be aware, are not unionized. In public school they are. It shouldn’t take much more than that for you to see the connection. Mr. Weaver states “We know what it takes to improve public education and it’s not vouchers.” Sounds like Nixon and his plan he couldn’t tell us. Well, tell you what Weaver, let us in on your little secret because we’ve been wondering for the past 40 years if you had the slightest idea what in the hell you were doing or how you would “improve” public education.
It wouldn’t be a true hit piece, though, without a backhand at the voucher program by calling it racist. He doesn’t have to come out and say it. Wickham just brings up that vouchers were offered after schools were desegregated (in his example in Prince Edward County in Virginia) to allow white students to be transferred out of integrated schools. So of course, we should hate this because it’s racist. Well, that argument would hold a bit of water other than the fact that NO racial bias is in any of the current voucher plans and in fact it’s been suggested rather tellingly in volumes of research that minorities in poor neighborhoods would be the primary beneficiaries of vouchers. Perhaps there in lies the resistance and the need to lie (not an uncommon thing for journalists these days) to denigrate a program that threatens one of the pillars of the Left’s power base.
At least he does offer what should improve public education, again from the huckster Weaver. “Certified teachers. Smaller class sizes. Adequate and equitable funding. Safe and orderly schools and qualified staffs.” How have we missed this before? The answer was so simple and all we needed was the NEA’s wisdom to guide us. Certified teachers, more appropriately qualified teachers are easy enough. You just have to do away with the unions and start testing the teachers’ proficiency on their given subjects. WAIT. The NEA opposes that. Smaller class sizes are a red herring and have been debunked themselves. Adequate and equitable funding arrived a generation ago. Most schools are funded to what some might “conservatively” call (no pun intended) excess. Teachers aren’t paid that bad and in fact many are paid quite well. Public school union teachers certainly outshine their private school counterparts in terms of salary, no question. The administrations for public schools receive the lion’s share of the funding and use it to fund massive bureaucracies, counselors, lawyers, “experts” and public relations personnel. Considering private schools live without most of those rather successfully, the “adequate and equitable funding” line goes beyond being a joke and more of a flat-out insult to the intelligence of the general public. Safe and orderly schools require more than the federal government can give. They require a restructuring of our society that has been steadily and intentionally broken down since the early 1960’s. Schools can’t do that nor is it their mandate to do it and we’re certainly not going to pay their unqualified selves to do it. Qualified staffs? See above. Submit to performance testing and we’ll talk. Until then, ask your union rep why you’re inadequate.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me, by the way, why the several thousand I pay a year to the local government for holding my land hostage with property tax that they say goes to local schools doesn’t entitle me to determine where my child goes to school. We’re lucky at least, to have access to a good school system, in fact one of the best, but I can’t say I approve of being scolded like a child by a newspaper writer on why I and others don’t need that right.
There’s a popular phrase associated with the late, great Bill Hicks. “Go back to sleep America. You are free to do what we tell you.” I often hear it bandied about when it comes to money going to conservative causes or when the government undertakes some venture the Left isn’t too fond of. But I don’t in those instances see a destruction of individual choice. The axiom could be more easily applied to the Left’s train of thought in cases like this, implying that they know what’s best for us and that we really should leave it to the elitists to run our lives and our money for us. And yes, I know elitists fall on both sides of the political spectrum, but these days the only ones that seem to be impacting my personal freedom and wallet seem to be coming almost exclusively from the Left.
Getting back to Wickham’s column (No DeWayne, I haven’t forgotten you), his argument doesn’t hold water. He played the racist card because he knew his argument was inadequate and his best source is the President of one of the most left-leaning and partisan groups in Washington opposing vouchers; hardly credible in my opinion and definitely full of bias and malice.
Yet, his was not the only Leftist piece to hit the press after this study was released. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to talk about that more later. Til then, take a nap and come tomorrow there should be some other element of society or government ready to tell you how to live your life and how you should pay them to make sure it happens.
Webster’s has several definitions for Progressive, but one I thought most interesting is “making use of or interested in new ideas, findings or opportunities.” Perhaps that should be amended to include items solely desirable by the Left, because it certainly doesn’t fit the column of DeWayne Wickham in Tuesday’s USA Today.
Mr. Wickham’s column is a fairly run of the mill hit piece on vouchers, an idea at which you would think the Left would jump. Never have I seen a group so defined by “choice” and “individual right to choose” for so many other issues, but not for where you can send your kids to school. Perhaps that’s because most on the Left know full well that they run the public schools and everything that’s taught at their little social engineering factories.
His main beef is with a $100 million program of federal tax dollars aimed at allowing vouchers under a different name (Opportunity Scholarships) to be given to parents who want to choose a better public school for their children. He crows that it is a failure before it starts and that these kids don’t need a different school, just a better public school (requiring of course MORE money to an already bloated educational establishment).
His primary evidence? Kids with certain economic, social and racial backgrounds (read: poor minority kids) don’t do well in either public or private schools based on a report from the National Center for Education Statistics. He harps on that point for the bulk of his editorial and carefully skirts another small fact, that while switching to a private school doesn’t turn all underprivileged kids into Rhodes Scholars, it does certainly improve their scores and more succeed under such a system. Those facts, being that they don’t backup his race-baiting hypothesis, are surprisingly omitted, except for a brief mention that “overall”, private schools did better than public schools.
Here’s one you’ll like even better. His primary backup to indicate that “The results…are nothing more than we expected” is Reg Weaver, President of the NEA, a large and well-funded (by you and me) organization that primarily backs leftist causes and political candidates through its control on teacher’s unions. Most teachers in private schools, you may or may not be aware, are not unionized. In public school they are. It shouldn’t take much more than that for you to see the connection. Mr. Weaver states “We know what it takes to improve public education and it’s not vouchers.” Sounds like Nixon and his plan he couldn’t tell us. Well, tell you what Weaver, let us in on your little secret because we’ve been wondering for the past 40 years if you had the slightest idea what in the hell you were doing or how you would “improve” public education.
It wouldn’t be a true hit piece, though, without a backhand at the voucher program by calling it racist. He doesn’t have to come out and say it. Wickham just brings up that vouchers were offered after schools were desegregated (in his example in Prince Edward County in Virginia) to allow white students to be transferred out of integrated schools. So of course, we should hate this because it’s racist. Well, that argument would hold a bit of water other than the fact that NO racial bias is in any of the current voucher plans and in fact it’s been suggested rather tellingly in volumes of research that minorities in poor neighborhoods would be the primary beneficiaries of vouchers. Perhaps there in lies the resistance and the need to lie (not an uncommon thing for journalists these days) to denigrate a program that threatens one of the pillars of the Left’s power base.
At least he does offer what should improve public education, again from the huckster Weaver. “Certified teachers. Smaller class sizes. Adequate and equitable funding. Safe and orderly schools and qualified staffs.” How have we missed this before? The answer was so simple and all we needed was the NEA’s wisdom to guide us. Certified teachers, more appropriately qualified teachers are easy enough. You just have to do away with the unions and start testing the teachers’ proficiency on their given subjects. WAIT. The NEA opposes that. Smaller class sizes are a red herring and have been debunked themselves. Adequate and equitable funding arrived a generation ago. Most schools are funded to what some might “conservatively” call (no pun intended) excess. Teachers aren’t paid that bad and in fact many are paid quite well. Public school union teachers certainly outshine their private school counterparts in terms of salary, no question. The administrations for public schools receive the lion’s share of the funding and use it to fund massive bureaucracies, counselors, lawyers, “experts” and public relations personnel. Considering private schools live without most of those rather successfully, the “adequate and equitable funding” line goes beyond being a joke and more of a flat-out insult to the intelligence of the general public. Safe and orderly schools require more than the federal government can give. They require a restructuring of our society that has been steadily and intentionally broken down since the early 1960’s. Schools can’t do that nor is it their mandate to do it and we’re certainly not going to pay their unqualified selves to do it. Qualified staffs? See above. Submit to performance testing and we’ll talk. Until then, ask your union rep why you’re inadequate.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me, by the way, why the several thousand I pay a year to the local government for holding my land hostage with property tax that they say goes to local schools doesn’t entitle me to determine where my child goes to school. We’re lucky at least, to have access to a good school system, in fact one of the best, but I can’t say I approve of being scolded like a child by a newspaper writer on why I and others don’t need that right.
There’s a popular phrase associated with the late, great Bill Hicks. “Go back to sleep America. You are free to do what we tell you.” I often hear it bandied about when it comes to money going to conservative causes or when the government undertakes some venture the Left isn’t too fond of. But I don’t in those instances see a destruction of individual choice. The axiom could be more easily applied to the Left’s train of thought in cases like this, implying that they know what’s best for us and that we really should leave it to the elitists to run our lives and our money for us. And yes, I know elitists fall on both sides of the political spectrum, but these days the only ones that seem to be impacting my personal freedom and wallet seem to be coming almost exclusively from the Left.
Getting back to Wickham’s column (No DeWayne, I haven’t forgotten you), his argument doesn’t hold water. He played the racist card because he knew his argument was inadequate and his best source is the President of one of the most left-leaning and partisan groups in Washington opposing vouchers; hardly credible in my opinion and definitely full of bias and malice.
Yet, his was not the only Leftist piece to hit the press after this study was released. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to talk about that more later. Til then, take a nap and come tomorrow there should be some other element of society or government ready to tell you how to live your life and how you should pay them to make sure it happens.
posted by Rob Beck | 6:33 PM
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