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Get the Feds Out of the Schools! One of President Bush’s legacies that will be judged harshly in the future is his No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program that presumably was going to bring America’s school systems up to a national standard of performance. The first mistake, however, was made in 1979 when President Carter signed the Department of Education into existence. The Constitution recognizes that education is the business of the States and local communities. Not once is education ever mentioned as a responsibility of the federal government. NCLB is one of those horrid monster federal programs that is always devoted to noble goals, spends tons of money, and achieves nothing of value.
The Act is up for reauthorization and, as of this writing not much is happening. Chairman George Miller of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee has been circulating changes designed to combat what he calls "the soft bigotry of low expectations." That is clever rhetoric, but all parents and all teachers have high expectations. NCLB is the great leveler of expectations. Most certainly NCLB, for all its threats of retribution against any school that failed to improve, has proven "more shadow than substance" according to an article in U.S. News & World Report. Equally damning is the revelation by the Cato Institute’s Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, who recently wrote that, "While NCLB hasn’t improved achievement or closed the gaps, it has succeeded in making public schools far more expensive to operate…we seem to have wasted almost $100 billion since NCLB was enacted." In effect since 2001, the nation’s school administrators and teachers have long since learned how to game the NCLB system, but the losers are the students. Whether it is students for whom English is a second language and need extra help or whether it is exceptional students, both end up losing out because NCLB forces a single standard of proficiency on all students and schools. Tom DeWeese, founder of the American Policy Center, points out that NCLB (1) forces teachers to ‘teach to the test’ rather than raise student achievement levels; (2) enforces accountability to federal agencies rather than to parents, voters, and the local community; (3) is a federal curriculum robbing local control of schools; (4) requires yearly progress demonstrating all students achieve at a certain level, thus insuring that certain levels will either be impossible for every student to achieve or so low as to be meaningless. Or both. And, finally, (5) NCLB insures compliance with international United Nations programs that have no place in U.S. classrooms. Anyone who has ever taught will tell you that students learn at their own rates and, in urban schools, students face a wide range of obstacles beginning with broken families and dangerous neighborhoods. As U.S. News & World Report notes, "To be fair, most schools are not failing. But federal auditors recently found that the number of schools facing federal sanctions is growing. This affects more than two million children, about eight percent of all federally funded schools." If a school is failing, that’s the chief concern of the local board of education. It should not be subject to some federal program. The amount of money the federal government spends on education is low compared to the amount spent at the state and community level. Education is one of the prime elements of property taxes throughout the nation. These are local matters. The intrusion of the federal government into the education of children is just one more example of how big government has a genius for making anything worse than before.
Accountability for education should be to parents, voters, and taxpayers. NCLB literally removes the power of those most concerned from being involved in the process of their children’s education. Finally, as noted, the goal by 2014 of having all students achieve a certain level is either going to be impossible or be set so low as to be meaningless, or both. The best thing that Congress can do is to admit NCLB is a bad, flawed, failed program that should be discontinued. The worst prospect will be that more money will be thrown at it and the education of America’s children will be laid waste when Congress reauthorizes it. I want to thank those who have begun 2008 with a donation to the Center. Our website and communications program enables us to have an impact on public policy issues that is entirely dependent on your donation. The link is a secure one and your way of participating in the work of the Center. Thank you. Terrorists? Not Us, Say Muslims As the result of the assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, it is necessary once again for those in the West to gain some insight into the culture of Islam and, in particular, of the Middle East. What can be easily observed is the abject refusal to take any responsibility for anything done in the name of Islam.
On December 27th I received an email from the London School of Islamics with a text by Iftkhar Ahmad titled "Terrorist V Terrorism." It is a window into the mind of Muslims living in the United Kingdom. "The recent events have strengthened the prejudiced belief that ‘Islam is the religion of the sword", said Ahmad who asserted that, "Islamophobia is not only a cause of discrimination against Muslims, but also an open threat to world peace." The peace of the Middle East has once again been put in jeopardy by the instability of Pakistan. One might conclude that American and British troops are in Afghanistan because of an open threat to world peace posed by al Qaeda and the spread of Islamism, but not Ahmad. So far as he was concerned "There is not a single day when Islam and Muslims are not attacked by the mainstream news media outlets." Apparently, reporting on Muslim atrocities around the world constitutes an attack. It is worth noting at this point that no Muslim community in America has suffered an attack and I cannot recall any reports of comparable attacks in England. Who then is afraid of another suicide bombing? It is Americans and British citizens who are not Muslim. With considerable irony, on December 13, a Federal judge in Miami declared a mistrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the trial of six men accused in 2006 of plotting to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago and several other government buildings. A seventh suspect was acquitted in what analysts describe as a setback for the US government's domestic counterterrorism program. Jury selection for a retrial of the other six suspects will start next month. The group was described as being "inspired" by al Qaeda. A new trial will try to find a jury that will look at the overwhelming proof of their intentions. Meanwhile, in England, according to Ahmad, "There is an undeclared World War III going on in the name of (the) War on Terrorism. The fact of the matter is that Islam is all peace and hence this war is (a) war of terrorism and not against terrorism." A person has to be seriously deluded or making a serious effort to delude others to conclude that, "Islam is all peace." Just consider the victims of Islamist attacks from Bali to London to New York, to name just a few places where Jihadists have killed people who were not at war with them. Ahmad, like a great number of Middle Eastern Muslims is easily offended by anything. He cited that uniforms of the Milan Italy soccer team whose uniforms sport "Crusader-Style red crosses which is offensive to Muslims." In his view, the crosses "symbolized ‘western racist superiority over Islam." He also railed against the "republication of Danish cartoons (that) clearly shows the prevalent ignorance about Islam." It is hard to be ignorant of the many Islamist terror attacks in recent years. Ahmad concluded that, "It is the fundamental duty of Muslims settled in the west to raise awareness of spirit and core of Islam." I think the terrorist attacks have done that. Ahmad was far from finished in his diatribe. He attacked the UK’s National Curriculum in which "There is no mention of (the) Muslim contribution in the world." And what might that be, given the centuries of oppression that have existed wherever Islam is the dominant religion. These days, Arab Christians are literally fleeing for their lives from Iraq and other nations where they are under constant attack, including murder.
Ahmad concluded with the proposal that, in "those state schools (in England) where Muslim pupils are in majority may be designated as Muslim Community Schools, managed and controlled by Muslim Educational Trusts and Charities." There’s a Yiddish word for this. It’s called chutzpah! The Islamists in England, throughout Europe, and here in America do not lack for nerve. Indeed, they are carrying out a process by which Islam has imposed its will wherever the Muslim community has achieved a near majority or majority status. It is reflects the intention of Islam to subjugate any nation in which Muslims gain a population foothold. Where Islam is the dominant religion, it also expects to be the law of the land, rejecting a secular approach to government. This is its threat to Western nations whose tradition of tolerance permits juries to deadlock over trials of terrorists, whose loss commitment to their own religious beliefs allows the nation to be undermined by claims of prejudice. Islam was never the religion of England, though the schism between Catholics and Protestants had its bloody chapters. The English by any definition are Christians. If Ahmad and his deceptions succeed, they may yet see their nation fall into the pit of ignorance, corruption, and oppression that defines Muslim nations to this day. Finally, it should be noted that many of the terrorist acts perpetrated in England were by Muslims who were born and raised there. It’s a warning sign to all of Europe and to America as well. Have you visited my blog yet? If my weekly commentaries inform and entertain you, the daily blog will as well.
©
2008 Alan Caruba. |
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EdWatch, a non-profit organization has been struggling for years to put the spotlight on a whole range of awful things being done to children in our schools, from encouraging the drugging of students deemed "over-active" to the introduction of a United Nations program teaching a one-world concept in conflict with the values of national sovereignty. 
While the memory of September 11, 2001 recedes for Americans, our British cousins have been subjected to a number of Islamic terrorist acts since then. On July 7, 2005, there were four separate suicide bombings in London that killed 56 people and injured 700. More recently, on June 30, 2007, there was the attack on the Glasgow International Airport in Scotland.