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"End Them, Don’t Mend Them"
Jun. 21st, 2010 12:22 pmBY P. J. O’Rourke
"Here’s my proposal: Close all the public schools. Send the kids home. Fire the teachers. Sell the buildings. Raze the U.S. Department of Education, leaving not one brick standing upon another and plow the land where it stood with salt."
Snerk.
Go read here.
"And the possibility that someone’s child may not receive any education is an improvement on a certainty that the child won’t."
Thank you for saying it, Mr. O'Rourke, no one listens to me when I do.
I've always been annoyed by the argument that homeschoolers must be monitored by the powers that be to make sure that every last homeschooled child gets a proper education (I mean, gasp, some of those people who care enough about their kids to spend all day long with them and often give up having a secondary income in order to find that extra time, might just be trying to cheat the system! /end sarcasm). No one seems to remember at that time how many public schooled kids fail to get an education - with all that government oversight, even.
"The District of Columbia’s per-pupil outlay is claimed to be $17,542. The real number is an astonishing $28,170"
"And the extraordinary expense of the D.C. public school system produced a 2007 class of eighth graders in which, according to the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], 12 percent of the students were at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent were at or above proficiency in math."
So 88 percent were below proficiency in reading, and 92 percent were below proficiency in math. Even in the best states "Massachusetts (fifth in spending per student) and Vermont (first) do lead the reading proficiency list with 43 and 42 percent respectively." and for math "Massachusetts leads with 51 percent. Second is Minnesota at 43 percent." Only one state (and only in math) are more than half (but barely) the children not abjectly failing.
Ummm...nosy people who can't abide by having people not tightly controlled by the federal or state government, leave us the hell alone....at least till you fix your own problems first.
And we all know that's not gonna happen, to quote my dear hubby, "no matter how much money you throw down the rat hole that is public education."
"Here’s my proposal: Close all the public schools. Send the kids home. Fire the teachers. Sell the buildings. Raze the U.S. Department of Education, leaving not one brick standing upon another and plow the land where it stood with salt."
Snerk.
Go read here.
"And the possibility that someone’s child may not receive any education is an improvement on a certainty that the child won’t."
Thank you for saying it, Mr. O'Rourke, no one listens to me when I do.
I've always been annoyed by the argument that homeschoolers must be monitored by the powers that be to make sure that every last homeschooled child gets a proper education (I mean, gasp, some of those people who care enough about their kids to spend all day long with them and often give up having a secondary income in order to find that extra time, might just be trying to cheat the system! /end sarcasm). No one seems to remember at that time how many public schooled kids fail to get an education - with all that government oversight, even.
"The District of Columbia’s per-pupil outlay is claimed to be $17,542. The real number is an astonishing $28,170"
"And the extraordinary expense of the D.C. public school system produced a 2007 class of eighth graders in which, according to the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], 12 percent of the students were at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent were at or above proficiency in math."
So 88 percent were below proficiency in reading, and 92 percent were below proficiency in math. Even in the best states "Massachusetts (fifth in spending per student) and Vermont (first) do lead the reading proficiency list with 43 and 42 percent respectively." and for math "Massachusetts leads with 51 percent. Second is Minnesota at 43 percent." Only one state (and only in math) are more than half (but barely) the children not abjectly failing.
Ummm...nosy people who can't abide by having people not tightly controlled by the federal or state government, leave us the hell alone....at least till you fix your own problems first.
And we all know that's not gonna happen, to quote my dear hubby, "no matter how much money you throw down the rat hole that is public education."
