Exhibit #2

Instead of pumping money into school voucher programs school districts take a Draconian approach.

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.

An illegal immigrant's child can go to a school, but someone living outside the district can't.
That's they hypocrisy of the left's big government statism in schools.
No intellectual consistency, no logic, indefensible.
Give every student a voucher to go where they want, period.
Freedom from the teachers unions and administrators who use their monopoly power to force untold multitudes of students to attend failing schools.

Fight back against big government monopoly.
Put someone else's name on a bill at your house so they can't attend a better school.
Power to the people not the teachers and administrators monopoly over secondary education.

Democrats segregated African Americans from quality education in the South before Brown vs Board of Education, and Democrats have created a substitute system in the 21st century to segregate poor African Americans and Hispanics from quality education today.

Sounds like the law needs to be changed rather than getting rid of public schools. The individual US state school systems have been underfunded for decades, with wealthy neighborhoods able to afford paying to maintain better schools and poor neighborhoods unable to afford the bare minimum. More taxes and less warfare is going to do it, and schools need to be federally supported.

And look what kind of society we have: informers paid money to spy on neighbors? people arrested for at worst a misdemeanor? Can anyone say 1984? Did you ever actually READ it?

And whoever thinks that you're going to get rid of wasted money from public sources, get real. There will ALWAYS be waste and cheating no matter what

School spending has doubled in the last three decades.
The problem is that the money has gone to grossly bloated administration and sweet pension packages for teachers.
The argument that teachers are underpaid no longer has any credibility as teachers make more per level of experience than almost 75% of the private sector.
The last thing schools need is more involvement by the bloated, inefficient federal government.
The simple solution for schools is school vouchers.
Who knows better than parents in a local area where the good schools are and good teachers are, no one knows better.
Certainly no some blind bureaucrat isolated in government.
If parents have vouchers that allow them to pick their schools then bad schools and teachers will eliminated in record time.
I agree that in the public sector there will ALWAYS be corruption.
So reduce corruption by reducing the footprint of the wasteful, cheating, and corrupt public sector in education.

It may have doubled, but it should be 10-fold or 20-fold more.

And there are no simple solutions, my friend.

One more question, how many children do you have and how many are in school at the moment??

I'm a teacher in Canada.
And the American education system TERRIFIES me.
I look at the problems in America as a whole (30%gdp into military, growing fear of research and educated people, massive lower class etc etc) and so many of those problems start with a broken education system.

As for parents knowing good/bad teachers - total horse sh&^. If a teacher disciplines a bad student, or gives a failing mark, suddenly parents think they are a bad teacher. Garbage.

The answer is :
- better training for teachers, and better support on the job in terms of more training and development.
- realistsic pay for teachers (not certain how they are paid in the US)
- and a board of education that bases its pratice on sound research, and on psychology, not on bottom line dollar amounts.
- and educating the public : most people have absolutely no clue what teaching is like, what it takes to be a good teacher, or what education policies are truly like, so tmost people complain, or preach their own versions of "the answer" from a spot outside the situation. Thats like a plumber telling soldiers how to fight.

I wish my brothers in the south all the luck in the world....but seriously, if you want a good education, move to Canada ;-)

A Canadian teacher claims that parents don't know good teachers from bad teachers.

I rest my case.

Throwing money at education hasn't fixed anything.
Accountability fixes problems and there is no accountability in education.
Give parents school choice and problems will get fixed overnight.
Bad schools will be out of business.
Bad teachers will be identified quicker than you can say "Big government control of schools is a disaster."
Breaking the monopoly on public education is the answer.

"School spending has doubled in the last three decades. "

Yeah, but in 1980 I could buy a candy bar for 5 cents.

A public school 'monopoly' isn't bad unless unions control it, hence the problem with america...

I support free education...

Amen to that!

I was a school kid in California in 1978 and watched what Proposition 13 did to the California State school system, the best in the United States at the time. I had a first-class public education in 1978 and then the entire system was gutted by a populist screaming about high property taxes and getting everone riled up. The average middle class family saved a few thousand a year, the large agricultural, oil and mining companies saved millions in property taxes and people like our friend "chew" here wonders why everything with schools has gone to shit 30 years later....

What's with the "canadian teacher claims that parents don't know good teachers from bad teachers" slur?? I mean, Governor 51 and all that but really, you don't have any better more intelligent answers than that??

And HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU HAVE IN SCHOOL AT THE MOMENT, MR. T-CHEW?

You just have to admire the blind conceit of an individual who makes statements like this.

"Most people have absolutely no clue what teaching is like."
Anyone outside the teaching profession criticizing teachers is "like a plumber telling soldiers how to fight."

The conceit is so complete that in Tacoma, Washington 1900 teachers walked out during the school year and have defied a judges order that they go back to work. The judge is listening to arguments that will allow the city to replace all 1900 teachers.
In an economy with so many unemployed this type of conceit needs to be dealt with.

But you hear the same retread arguments that teachers and their advocates always trot out.
State school systems have been underfunded
More taxes
Schools need to be federally supported
Parents knowing good/bad teachers - total horse sh&^
Realistsic pay for teachers
Most people have absolutely no clue what teaching is like
Blah Blah Blah.

The same old broken record of failed excuses.

Levelhead,

Four kids through all the way through college.

And did you live in a white, well to do middle or upper class neighborhood, or somewhere else?

I always chose where I lived based on the quality of schools, and I advocate giving every single child the chance to choose their school as well with a voucher program.
If the best schools aren't in any childs neighborhood they should be allowed to attend the school of their choice.
The monopoly teachers and administrators have over school isn't the answer.
Freedom to escape incompetent teachers and poorly run schools based on the good sound judgment of the parents is the answer.

Now tell me levelhead how does the number of children I've raised or where I live have anything to do with the argument I put forth.
The answer is nothing at all, but when an argument frustrates individuals they often choose not to deal with it and instead decide on another avenue that is irrelevant.

I grew up in poverty at the beginning of the baby boom in the South in a one parent household so I've seen education from a wide variety of angles including the consulting business that I run with my partner.

Now I could care less about how many kids you have, where you live, where you are from, or any of that irrelevant BS.
I'll judge your argument, and your argument is that we need to increase funding 10 to 20 times.
I find that the tired simplistic "throw money at it" dogma that has repeatedly failed.

Chew, you make me laugh.

What experiences or education do you have that makes you an authority on teaching?

As for "you have no idea what teaching is like" - so then whats it like? How many hours does a teacher work? What regulations do they have to follow? What education do they need? How often and in what manner are they evaluated?

In Canada, most people think like you do. They have no clue whatsoever about this profession, and think teachers dont get evaluated. We do. Do you have even the faintest clue how or when?

Do you know how much money is put into schools? Do you know how much $$ it takes to run a school? Do you know what resources research has indicated create a better learning environment?

And - how would a parent know a good teacher from a bad one?

Macchiavelli, you last post didn't present any kind of argument at all.
You don't strike me as a teacher at all. A teacher would respond to a point with a counter point.
You don't.
You also present laughable claims of evidence "In Canda most people think like you do."
What kind of teacher would make such a ridiculous claim resting only on personal opinion without any basis in fact?
You don't offer any statistics on home much money is put into schools or what it takes to run one or what resources are needed to create a better learning environment.
Your entire post is shallow and ambiguous in addition to being ad hominem.

If you are a teacher, which none of your posts indicate at all, you are a fairly poor one judging from the content of your posts.
No wonder you would last out against school choice.

My entire argument is that school choice should rest with the parents for their children.
If you are so smart, as a teacher, and they are so stupid as just parents, what are you scared of?
You'll be able to convince them to put their children in your care. LOL!

Machiavelli, sorry for the typos in my post.
One of your students build my keyboard.

Ah, *chew*

If you do not like my posts or my threads you can make them vanish from your view of the forum with simple clicks.
You can mute this thread by clicking on the "mute thread" option in the first post of this thread.
If you want to mute me you can click on my user name and click on the volume symbol.You will never see anything I have to post again.

No if you are interested in controlling what gets posted on the forum free speech seems to be the rule of the moderators. Especially since you can totally control what you see.

If you are interested in silencing viewpoints you don't like you can either refute my arguments or get together in a mob and impose censorship.

There are enough moronic marxists, leftwing liberals, and ignorant fools on this site that they won't be able to refute my arguments so they will resort to the mob approach.

The mob is what marxists, leftwing liberals, and ignorant fools always resort too.

WTF are you mumblin' 'bout? Geez, you gotta an axe, go grind it!

Sorry to frustrate you leverhead, but not unexpected. When you post total falsehoods you'll get frustrated.

According to the United States government per student spending since 1970 has increase from $4,060 in 1970 to $9,260 in 2008. Those numbers are adjusted for inflation too.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_171.asp

More than twice the money spent producing worse results.
It isn't hard to figure out why. More money going in to administration and other overhead instead of towards teaching kids in the classroom.

Sorry that your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny Leverhead.

spening more money is the not the answer. We spend more per student then any country in the world, and the results are awful.

In detroit alone, they spend more per studen then Japan, and the results in Detroit are so horrid, that they have just about suspended all AP classes now.

Why is it where there is a problem, we throw money at it? Money just disappears down the gullet of more corrupt officials. The system is terribly broke. Trust me, I used to be a teacher, and I am not for a very very good reason.

On the subject, there's a very good TED talk - http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

....and.. TC uses the typical strawman. Well done sir. Zoning regulations in schools suck, therefore we MUST throw the whole thing out the window. PRIVATIZE!