Peyton Wolcott

I received an email update from Peyton Wolcott on November 24th. I do not update or tend to this BLOG as much as I would like as my priorities are with my one year old and four year old.



Peyton has an excellent site on school accountability. In her email she reported that nationwide a number of schools are posting their check registers online.

She has a piece on her site that I am copying below because it is so great.

"A BRIEF HISTORY: WHERE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WENT WRONG,
OR, HOW THE FROG GOT FRIED*

Over a century ago our industrialist robber barons began pushing for an education system which would produce a compliant working class unable to think for themselves along the lines later adopted by Nazi Germany and the Soviets; prior to that, public schools drilled and pounded facts into students' heads with the result that students were able to draw upon those facts later in life and make their own decisions and start their own businesses. They could and did read the classics and could tell you what 8 times 9 was, from memory.

Business began "partnering" with schools in order to feather their own nests. In addition to the contractors who have inflicted worthless Taj Mahal high schools on our landscape, others were curriculum shills pushing crappy products, unproven programs such as fuzzy math and whole-word reading instruction.

The federal government began dumping huge unsupervised revenue streams on local public schools as a means of pushing social reform (eRate, NCLB, Reading First). The lack of supervision of these monies guaranteed a steep upward spike in corruption.

With God and the classics removed from American classrooms, the stage was set for a consumer-driven culture of senseless greed. We now have college graduates who were stupid enough to fall for adjustable rate mortgages and who worse can't tell you why they voted as they did in the presidential election earlier this month.

If you haven't read it, here's Marc Tucker's "Dear Hillary" letter dated November 11, 1992. Look for: Marc's suggestions for enforcing a new "training levy" for businesses, national exams and national standards.

*How you fry a frog: Lure him into a pan with bait, add lard, then turn up the heat so gradually he doesn't realize what's happening to him until it's too late."


Please be sure to view all the other great information on Peyton Wolcott's site. Peyton said that she has been working on the site for two years I could have sworn I have known her longer than that, but I digress.

Cathy