Education

10. The AP reports that half of the faculty of the University of Alabama will be denied Crimson Tide football tickets for the coming year. Wouldn’t it be better if a college administration really put the brakes on faculty excess by, say, denying tenure to left-wing professors who don’t really teach?

9. Speaking of left-wing professors, what will occur sooner, John Edwards going to the Hair Cuttery or the president of Duke taking ANY action against the “Duke 88” who signed hateful letters against the Duke Lacrosse players? The left wing is firmly in control of American college campuses.

8. Why so little mention that the federal deficit is projected to fall substantially again in 2007 without a tax increase? Could it be that the national media is interested in the deficit only as an excuse to raise taxes? Read more...

For a recess week, there is a lot in the news that deserves commentary, but not a lot of time to write in my blog before I go on vacation. So here are some random thoughts:

•    Richard Cohen wrote a good piece in The Washington Post today about the Supreme Court decision on segregation and education. That follows a similar piece by Juan Williams in The New York Times last week. They both point out that big-city school systems have been resegregated for years, and it has nothing to do with Supreme Court and little to do with spending. It has to do with school quality. By and large, white parents don’t send their kids to big-city schools. They move to the suburbs or they send their kids to private schools. Why? Because the school systems are horrible, and have been horrible for a while. The Bush administration has tried hard to reverse this race to the bottom by insisting on higher quality and higher expectations, but the teacher’s unions and the corrupt bureaucracies have resisted. But it is not just the schools that fail the students. Cohen quotes Barack Obama, who has pointed out that parents deserve some of the blame. It is about time to have a real discussion on school reform and bring parents into the discussion. Perhaps this Supreme Court decision will spark such a debate.  Read more...

In this video, Armstrong Williams says the United States needs to be more aware of the countries around us in a competitive and globalized world.

The United States Supreme Court is moving to reverse long-cherished American notions of constitutional law.

The divisions that plague American society have invaded the sanctity of the court, with angry dissents and at times personal criticism among justices that illustrate both the passions and dangers of the debate.

These events escalate a pattern of extreme actions that violate cardinal American ideals on matters including torture, the Geneva Convention, attacks on the Bill of Rights, presidential assertions of authority to violate statutes with non-binding statements, secrecy of unprecedented scope, the inability of Congress to perform its historic function of preventing executive abuse, and now a bitterly divided Supreme Court that threatens values long thought to be part of our national consensus. Read more...

Now for a quote: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

That of course is the key finding in the 1954 landmark Brown decision, written by the chief justice, Earl Warren.

Now another definition from Webster’s — actually three synonyms — for chutzpah: Nerve, temerity, gall.

Using it in a sentence: “This chief justice, John Roberts, has a lot chutzpah having the nerve, the temerity, the GALL to claim that Brown supports his ruling against the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school programs, which aim to promote DEsegregation.

It is true. Affirmative action, which is what this is, favors one race over another, as a factor in the struggle to achieve diversity. We claim as a nation that we support the idea of races and ethnic groups living together. Read more...

On a stage last night in Washington, D.C., 10 Democratic presidential candidates took turns criticizing this week’s Supreme Court’s decision banning school districts from using race as a criterion to assign pupils to public schools. Those of you who have been asleep for the last 50 years might have thought this practice was banned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but liberals have resurrected the practice in the name of “diversity.” The Supreme Court quite rightly noted such a reason was not sufficiently compelling to invalidate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which liberals in other circumstances have held to be sacrosanct. Read more...

In this video, Armstrong Williams discusses a new initiative by New York schools, giving children financial incentives to get good grades.

I'd like to borrow from the debates and ask everyone who thinks the immigration problem is about to be solved to raise his/her hand.

Oh come on: NOBODY? Congratulations, everybody.

But what we're witnessing is not about fixing this problem. It's about politicians trying to finesse the issue ...t rying to make as much political capital as they can and then moving on to something else.

And of course, we in the media, who have the collective attention span of a gnat, are all too happy to move on to something else. I mean, Paris Hilton is out of jail for crying out loud.

And besides, how many stories can we do about the "Human Side of the Immigration Debate" ("This is Maria ... she doesn't want her name used because she is here illegally, etc., etc. ...")?  Read more...

With her announcement of a $5 billion universal preschool program, Mamma Hillary is daring to tread where Rob “Meathead” Reiner has tread before — and failed. Miserably.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Mrs. Clinton, the self-appointed Village Matron, is proposing a $5 billion domestic program aimed at funding universal “pre-kindergarten” programs around the country for states that want to participate.

This sounds awfully familiar to Reiner’s wildly unsuccessful California ballot initiative in Spring 2006. The initiative — Prop 82 — proposed taxing California’s wealthiest residents and using the revenue to fund universal preschool programs. “An estimated 62 to 65 percent of California 4-year-olds now attend some form of preschool,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle at the time, “but the proposition’s backers said many of those programs are of low quality and would be replaced by better schools with more highly trained teachers.” Read more...

I recently read CBS correspondent Byron Pitts’s admission that he was found to be “functionally illiterate” when he was 12 years old. This propelled me to write about something dear to my heart: education. I have always emphasized that everyone should get a good education and become financially secure. While this journey may be easy for some, it can be more difficult for others.

Statistics, in America’s capital, show that a majority of fourth- and eighth-graders are failing to read or do math at basic levels. It is estimated that four in five schools are not meeting achievement goals under the federal No Child Left Behind law and only 43 percent of students graduate from high school in five years. Low voter turnout for school board elections and sagging test scores have generated a movement for mayors to take control of schools in their respective cities.

One must ask: Are the mayors equipped to take on the communities, the high turnover rates associated with school boards and the superintendents who report to them? Is this takeover contributing to our children’s future? Read more...