Teacher Unions vs Education Vouchers, Home-Schooling, and Charter Schools
Forty years ago, a debate raged among public school teachers in New York State over the question of whether to affiliate themselves with labor unions.
The debate essentially centered on the issue of whether teaching was a profession or a trade. A compromise was reached with a semantical subterfuge when many teachers opted to continue calling their locals “federations” or “associations,” thereby retaining the illusion of professionalism, and joined the New York State United Teachers, “a union of professionals.”
Forty years ago, the American public education system produced graduates who could read, write, cipher, and think. Granted, we didn’t accomplish those goals as well as our forebears had but they didn’t have to compete with television and cultural and sexual revolutions. Still, we did a pretty damned good job–as contrasted with educators today.
Was the unionization of education the only cause in education’s transparent decline?
Not at all. Many teachers were already members of de facto unions which represented them in the same way they are represented today. Also, there are various outside influences on kids today which were present forty years ago but which hadn’t yet fully blossomed into the negative forces they are now.
And cell phones, iphones, Blackberries, smart phones, personal computers, and the Intenet didn’t exist.
Are teacher labor unions necessarily a bad thing? Again, not at all.
Teachers have greatly benefitted from the powerful clout of statewide and nationwide affiliations and school budgets have ballooned. They are not necessarily a bad thing, unless union extremism as seen in teacher participation in last spring’s riots in Wisconsin and the hardships inflicted on taxpayers by those balloons are factored in.
As a desperate response to failing public school systems often more intent on propagandizing than teaching, parents have resorted to a unique alternative, homeschooling their kids.
Teacher unions and their elected officials have fought tooth and nail against that desperation. Home-based learning effectively served as a denunciation of the inefficacy and the misguided values inculcated in public schools so what else could they do?
Education vouchers allowing parents to shop for the best elementary and secondary schools for their children represented an even greater threat to entrenched union interests and they, too, have been resisted as if they were a creation of the devil.
After all, if parents were permitted to pick and choose, they wouldn’t choose failing schools and would therefore put pressure on districts to compete by raising their level of instruction and discipline and to return to their fundamental pedagogical mission.
Both home schooling and education vouchers undermine America’s public education system and that’s not a bad thing either in light of the fact that system isn’t educating very well.
Another alternative to sending children to public schools that provide, at best, a babysitting service has sprung up in the past two decades: charter schools. If vouchers are the creation of some devil to teacher unions, charter schools must be the creation of Lucifer himself. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12206.)
Showing posts with label home-schooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home-schooling. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Thursday, January 27, 2011
2 Zealous Moms, 2 Education Travesties
2 Zealous Moms, 2 Education Travesties
A frustrated Ohio mom and a religious New Hampshire mother have discovered that educating kids isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Kelley Williams-Bolar was sent to jail by a judge because she wanted her kids to get a decent education and Brenda Voydatch’s child was sent to public school by a judge because she wanted to instill her faith in her daughter and home-teach her.
Aspiring teacher and current teacher aide Williams-Bolar was fed up with the atrocity which passes for public education in America and she did something about it: She cheated, lied and was caught.
Four years ago, frustrated with the poor education her daughters were receiving in her Akron neighborhood schools and fearful for their safety in her crime-plagued area after their home was burglarized, Williams-Bolar tried to scam the system. With the complicity of her father, she registered the girls in the nearby, highly-regarded Copley-Fairlawn School District.
The district hired a private investigator to look into her actual residence and determined that Williams-Bolar’s kids lived in Akron. After refusing to compensate Copley-Fairlawn by paying $30,000. in retroactive tuition, their mother was accused of falsifying records and filing false court papers and jailed for 10 days.
Few would fault Williams-Bolar for her motivations, protecting and educating her daughters. As she said, “It’s overwhelming. I’m exhausted. I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them.” As Copley-Fairlawn officials said, she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it: “Those dollars need to stay home with our students.”
See the story and an ABC News clip here: http://tiny.cc/1jnga
There’s a larger issue in all this, and that issue does not involve discrimination against Williams-Bolar and her daughters because they are black. Without specifically alleging bias, that implication was made by Williams-Bolar who claims she was “singled out,” a claim reinforced by a supporter and by the empathetic ABC News commentators.
In point of fact, some hundred other students were investigated and found to reside in other districts. Three families agreed to pay tuition to Copley-Fairlawn, others withdrew their kids, Williams-Bolar fought back and went to jail because of it.
The larger issue is the sorry state of Akron schools as well as many other inner-city schools which are so atrocious that parents resort to subterfuges and illegalities in order to get their children safely educated.
Brenda Voydatch encountered an entirely different, combined educational-judicial travesty. She didn’t want another school for eleven year old Amanda. She wanted to insure her daughter not only received an education but that it was a faith-based, Christian education . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3505)
A frustrated Ohio mom and a religious New Hampshire mother have discovered that educating kids isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Kelley Williams-Bolar was sent to jail by a judge because she wanted her kids to get a decent education and Brenda Voydatch’s child was sent to public school by a judge because she wanted to instill her faith in her daughter and home-teach her.
Aspiring teacher and current teacher aide Williams-Bolar was fed up with the atrocity which passes for public education in America and she did something about it: She cheated, lied and was caught.
Four years ago, frustrated with the poor education her daughters were receiving in her Akron neighborhood schools and fearful for their safety in her crime-plagued area after their home was burglarized, Williams-Bolar tried to scam the system. With the complicity of her father, she registered the girls in the nearby, highly-regarded Copley-Fairlawn School District.
The district hired a private investigator to look into her actual residence and determined that Williams-Bolar’s kids lived in Akron. After refusing to compensate Copley-Fairlawn by paying $30,000. in retroactive tuition, their mother was accused of falsifying records and filing false court papers and jailed for 10 days.
Few would fault Williams-Bolar for her motivations, protecting and educating her daughters. As she said, “It’s overwhelming. I’m exhausted. I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them.” As Copley-Fairlawn officials said, she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it: “Those dollars need to stay home with our students.”
See the story and an ABC News clip here: http://tiny.cc/1jnga
There’s a larger issue in all this, and that issue does not involve discrimination against Williams-Bolar and her daughters because they are black. Without specifically alleging bias, that implication was made by Williams-Bolar who claims she was “singled out,” a claim reinforced by a supporter and by the empathetic ABC News commentators.
In point of fact, some hundred other students were investigated and found to reside in other districts. Three families agreed to pay tuition to Copley-Fairlawn, others withdrew their kids, Williams-Bolar fought back and went to jail because of it.
The larger issue is the sorry state of Akron schools as well as many other inner-city schools which are so atrocious that parents resort to subterfuges and illegalities in order to get their children safely educated.
Brenda Voydatch encountered an entirely different, combined educational-judicial travesty. She didn’t want another school for eleven year old Amanda. She wanted to insure her daughter not only received an education but that it was a faith-based, Christian education . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3505)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Obamamedia and Home-Schooling
Last week, I said to a liberal friend that, “Well, you won’t see that picture on ABC, CBS, or NBC.”
I was referring to that shot of Obama rushing out of the White House to greet the media after his conciliatory beer fest with Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard prof, Henry Louis Gates.
It was left to Crowley to assist the disabled Gates down the White House steps while Gates’ good buddy sprinted ahead to meet the press.
The friend seemed dubious, wondering why I would think the Obamamedia would censor such pictures. The answer is as obvious as those ears on Obama’s head: Nothing gets publicized by the drive-by, liberal, Obama-idolizing media that could in any way be interpreted as casting a negative light on their hero.
The media don’t, they can’t, admit to censoring such stories and pictures; they prefer to call it selectivity as to what is deemed newsworthy.
GWB, along with former VP Dick Cheney, even after 8 months in Obamaland, considered Nirvanaland by much of the media, continues to be a favorite liberal pinata.
Shots of Bush bumping into a door or flubbing his lines are favorites while Obama bragging about campaigning in all of America’s states never see the light of the drive-by media day.
When a story such as this erupts, “Home-schooler Ordered to Attend Public School, http://tinyurl.com/mqc6ne, we can be certain the mass media will initially ignore it as the disturbed rantings of nutty conservatives.
They said the same thing about Monica Lewinsky until her blue dress became too public to ignore and Bill’s spill, so to speak, hit the fan.
As reported by the Washington Times, the tale of 10 year old, New Hampshire 5th grader, Amanda Kuroski may have tipped the balance on the issue of who “owns” our kids. Actually, no one owns kids, least of all any governments.
Amanda, however, is being treated as if she is the ward of the State of New Hampshire, that former bastion of Republicanism and conservatism, which in its infinite wisdom has decreed that her mom’s religious “rigidity” is a negative influence on the child.
No allegations are being made that her mother was teaching her the Flat Earth Theory or that only white people will be entered into the Kingdom of Heaven.
It’s just that District Court Judge Lucinda V. Sadler felt in her heart of hearts that the poor kid’s “vigorous defense of her [Christian] religious beliefs . . . suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”
If I interpret that sentiment correctly, Judge Sadler feels Amanda is more than a tad “vigorous” in her religion, therefore she needs other points of views in her young life, and, ergo, she should be torn from home and hearth and tossed into the maw of the Laconia, N.H. public school system.
Who the hell is this jurist to think she has any judicial or constitutional basis to pass judgment on a parent’s right to do what’s in the best interests of her child? . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
I was referring to that shot of Obama rushing out of the White House to greet the media after his conciliatory beer fest with Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard prof, Henry Louis Gates.
It was left to Crowley to assist the disabled Gates down the White House steps while Gates’ good buddy sprinted ahead to meet the press.
The friend seemed dubious, wondering why I would think the Obamamedia would censor such pictures. The answer is as obvious as those ears on Obama’s head: Nothing gets publicized by the drive-by, liberal, Obama-idolizing media that could in any way be interpreted as casting a negative light on their hero.
The media don’t, they can’t, admit to censoring such stories and pictures; they prefer to call it selectivity as to what is deemed newsworthy.
GWB, along with former VP Dick Cheney, even after 8 months in Obamaland, considered Nirvanaland by much of the media, continues to be a favorite liberal pinata.
Shots of Bush bumping into a door or flubbing his lines are favorites while Obama bragging about campaigning in all of America’s states never see the light of the drive-by media day.
When a story such as this erupts, “Home-schooler Ordered to Attend Public School, http://tinyurl.com/mqc6ne, we can be certain the mass media will initially ignore it as the disturbed rantings of nutty conservatives.
They said the same thing about Monica Lewinsky until her blue dress became too public to ignore and Bill’s spill, so to speak, hit the fan.
As reported by the Washington Times, the tale of 10 year old, New Hampshire 5th grader, Amanda Kuroski may have tipped the balance on the issue of who “owns” our kids. Actually, no one owns kids, least of all any governments.
Amanda, however, is being treated as if she is the ward of the State of New Hampshire, that former bastion of Republicanism and conservatism, which in its infinite wisdom has decreed that her mom’s religious “rigidity” is a negative influence on the child.
No allegations are being made that her mother was teaching her the Flat Earth Theory or that only white people will be entered into the Kingdom of Heaven.
It’s just that District Court Judge Lucinda V. Sadler felt in her heart of hearts that the poor kid’s “vigorous defense of her [Christian] religious beliefs . . . suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”
If I interpret that sentiment correctly, Judge Sadler feels Amanda is more than a tad “vigorous” in her religion, therefore she needs other points of views in her young life, and, ergo, she should be torn from home and hearth and tossed into the maw of the Laconia, N.H. public school system.
Who the hell is this jurist to think she has any judicial or constitutional basis to pass judgment on a parent’s right to do what’s in the best interests of her child? . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
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