WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A BAD REPORT CARD? - Just A Minute Radio for Friday 100903

            Schools are starting up again… if we can dodge the coastal storms about. And find our way back from the beaches and the mountains and wherever we (not me – you) went traveling.

 

            In addition to the clash and clamor of politics – we have a bump-and-hustle high school football season underway… and another conflict and bonfire into which has jumped the L.A. TIMES, owned by the New York Times seeming to pick a fight with the second largest school district in the nation?  Don’t we have enough conflict going on already? 

 

            Seems like lots of schools are being questioned in these days of BIG BUDGET deficits and questions of ”Where are we going to get the money?”  as the schools take up the task of educating young people. 

 

            Certainly we don’t want to neglect children’s education. And there are big arguments over sex-ed and revisionist history books et cetera. – But educating the young in these days is an important issue and one that must be attended to.

 

            There’s a big mixture of home schooling, Charter schools, public schools and private schools – all circulating around the same pot… and all needing more money to pay teachers and administrators.  But there is little question that education unions… the AFT and the NEA are the two biggest … have LOTS of political clout which does not go unnoticed in this electoral run up – and politicians are always ready to join in the fray to point fingers or pat one another on the back.

 

            All of that doesn’t solve the problems nailed to the school house door. We’ve come a long way from the one-room schools of yesteryear and one teacher for all the grades. We can’t and won’t go back there – at the same time the educational needs of young people are even more expansive than they ever have been.  What’s the answer? 

 

            Well, given the general scope of what’s happening all across America and indeed the world… it’s an issue we cannot ignore… and have to address… I suggest we ask the Lord’s help in meeting this absolute need.  I know that will generate sneers and jeers from the skeptical crowd… but let them come up with a better answer and the dollars or wampum or whatever to pay for it rather than just stomping feet and conducting boycotts or marches on the school authorities.  WE are the people – and these are our children and grandchildren.  If not us – who?  Are we going to warehouse the children as New York City currently does for the teachers it can neither fire nor get to work within the system? 

 

            It’s a big and important problem folks.  It exists everywhere.  We need to buckle down and address it right here at home.

 

            Cordially, IN HIM

 

            Jack

 

Delayed audio link:

 

http://www.wmuu.com/blog/category/audio/just-a-minute/

 

 

“JUST A MINUTE”

WHAT TO DO WITH A BAD REPORT CARD?

Just a Minute: -- All the ladies in my family are, or have been, teachers – so I’m certainly not going to be critical of them -- but teacher accountability is a growing battle-cry in these days of budget cuts and mountainous deficits.

The CATO institute reports Los Angeles spending almost thirty thousand dollars per pupil including construction costs every year. Yet the LA School District graduates just slightly over forty percent of high school students – second worst in the nation among large districts.

Kindergarten through 12th education expense has grown by 191 percent since 1990. So The L.A. Times says it’s just doing a public service by publishing evaluation reports of six thousand teachers.  Angered, the local teachers union is planning a boycott and protest outside the Times offices later this month. Less than two percent of teachers are denied tenure but their web page got something like 230 thousand hits within hours after publication. So somebody wants to dig into it.

<> I’m Jack Buttram. (END)

Jebco Editorial Service

www.wmuu.com

e-mail n4zhk@arrl.net