Educational Freedom is a Civil Rights Issue

The following article was sent to me by Bruno Behrend of Extreme Wisdom. Last year in a survey Croydon residents overwhelmingly supported school choice by a near 2 to 1 margin. Residents and nonresidents with clear conflicts of interest are actively trying to fight Croydon residents civil right to educational freedom and their desire to have school choice.

Croydon students are doing poorly on standardized tests, results revealed that 66.7% of students scored proficient or above in reading while 41.7% of the students scored proficient in mathematics. According to the most recent NECAP test results, 31%, 20%, and 78% of 11th grade Newport students scored in the "proficient" level in writing, mathematics, and reading respectively. Croydon School and Newport Schools are failing to educate our students this is a civil rights issue we must give parents a choice as to where to educate their children. We simply cannot force these children to stay in school systems that are failing to educate them. How these children are educated will affect them for the rest of their lives. If parents think that Newport and Croydon schools are so wonderful they will keep them in said schools but the school board should not hold parents hostage and force them to keep their children in a failing system.

The following article appears in the New York Times.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

The Harlem Miracle

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By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 7, 2009

The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.


That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”



Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.

They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,” Fryer wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”

These results are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right. The Promise Academy does provide health and psychological services, but it helps kids who aren’t even involved in the other programs the organization offers.

To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.

To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.

Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

They also smash the normal bureaucratic strictures that bind leaders in regular schools. Promise Academy went through a tumultuous period as Canada searched for the right teachers. Nearly half of the teachers did not return for the 2005-2006 school year. A third didn’t return for the 2006-2007 year. Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.

The approach works. Ever since welfare reform, we have had success with intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values. We may have found a remedy for the achievement gap. Which city is going to take up the challenge? Omaha? Chicago?Yours?

"When you read the study I just referenced, you start to realize that busting the cap on charters is a moral imperative on the order of the civil rights movement. Let me take that one step further, to stand in the way of more charters is immoral, and it is time to start to calling into question the moral legitimacy of any politician standing in the way of rapid charterization." Bruno Behrend

School Board Meeting This Wednesday

There is a school board meeting this Wednesday. It is important that people attend this meeting, let the school board know you are watching how they spend your tax dollars.

You have little control how the state and the federal government spends your money but you do have direct access and some control over how our school board spends our money.



With our President and Congress spending so recklessly don't let the school board get away with wasting one penny.

Today our national debt stands at about 11.2 trillion dollars, our national budget deficit stands at 625 billion dollars, over 13 million people are unemployed and these numbers are growing by the minutes. Control locally and vote out incumbents and any legislator who votes for deficit spending or adding more debt to our government.

I find nothing funny about how our government is recklessly spending and throwing massive debt upon our children and grandchildren so just what is President Obama smiling about in the picture?

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

US National Debt Clock

While at the playground yesterday with the children I heard kool-aid drinking Moms talking about President Obama and what a regular guy he is. First the President of the United States is not a regular guy he is the President of the United States. Second I hope to heck those kool-aid drinking Moms are prepared for what will hit our Country when the economy and the US dollar collapse. Unemployment hitting 8.9 percent is just the tip of the iceberg. Things in this Country are going to get much worse before they get better. How any parent can condone the current level of spending and the tax burden that will be placed on their children is beyond my realm of thinking. These Mom's probably have no ideal that China and the IMF have been hoarding gold and that China wants the IMF to sell their gold so they can buy the gold. Those kool-aid drinking Mom's probably don't even understand the implications to our Country and themselves if this happens.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Visit the U.S. National Debt Clock

Yet another excellent debt clock is at Us Debt Clock.org. This clock lists private debt, unfunded mandates, unemployment numbers, foreclosures and much more.

A National Bailout for Cities Would be Bad, Very Bad for Taxpayers

A national bailout of cities and or states would be devastating to taxpayers. If a national bailout of cities were to occur it would make the current bailouts look like chump change. Part of the problem with city and state budgets are their pension systems. City and state pensions are Ponzi schemes the way in which they were designed dooms them to failure. Employees or employers contribute only 8-10% to the pension system but once the employee retires they take out 75-90% of their salary, the funds in which the pensions are invested do not return the difference needed to remain sustainable. The retirement age of said employees is anywhere from 45-65 this is another structural failure of the pension system because life expectancy is so high. Many retired employees end up receiving pensions funds for a longer time period than they actually worked within the system.

What can a taxpayer do? Vote for candidates who do not support the current system and vote for candidates who will move toward a defined contribution plan. When and if confronted with a bailout encourage legislators and leaders to accept bankruptcy over a bailout.

The current system has created a two-tiered caste system, which may lead to tyranny. Those in the government who serve the taxpayer should be served by social security and not by a non-sustainable pension system.



Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

The following piece appears at Reuters.com.

U.S. cities need national bailout agency: Rohatyn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The architect of the 1970s financial rescue of New York City said on Wednesday the federal government should create a powerful national agency to bail out dozens of floundering U.S. cities.

Felix Rohatyn, the chairman of New York's Municipal Assistance Corp. from 1975 to 1993, said at the Reuters Infrastructure Summit that policymakers should look to the Reconstruction Finance Corp. created in 1932 as a model to aid cities and states as they confront their biggest deficits in decades.



"I think this all is unfortunately virgin territory," he said, referring to the impact of the 17-month-old national recession on state and local governments.

Rohatyn, author of "Bold Endeavors," a history of landmark U.S. infrastructure investments, said the depression-era reconstruction bank was a successful lender to local governments, banks and businesses.

The 1930s bank bought preferred stock from the institutions it helped; this let taxpayers share in any future gains.

Rohatyn suggested this kind of funding model might work for the new national agency he outlined.

Today, scores of cities and states are running billions of dollars of deficits. Some have suspended non-critical services by furloughing workers to save money. California and New York state have raised taxes, unpopular steps in a recession.

Unlike the U.S. government, which can print money to close deficits, states and cities are required to balance their budgets.

Rohatyn said hard-pressed state and local governments should be temporarily allowed to run deficits instead of curtailing vital services.

If these governments cannot solve their deficits by themselves, then a national agency could step in, he said. That was how New York state's control board solved the city's budget crisis in the 1970s.

"I think there is a yawning need for a serious look at urban and state problems," Rohatyn said.

In addition to leading the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which sold debt for New York City during its near-brush with bankruptcy, Rohatyn helped lead the state Control Board, which wielded huge power over city budgets.

The board stepped in after New York City's elected leaders were unable to agree on measures to balance the budget.

Rohatyn recalled that tens of thousands of city workers were laid off in just a few years while subway fares doubled.

(Reporting by Michael Connor, Karen Pierog, Joan Gralla, Jim Christie and Ciara Linnane)

A Real Threat to Free Speech

Localism through the FCC will be a back door into the fairness doctrine and doing away with free speech through local boards made of people from Acorn and other far left groups. This is about destroying conservatism and the conservative voice in America. Read "Censorship the Threat to Silence Talk Radio" Brian Jennings Whether on the right or left free speech should not be opposed. Sign the petition at Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio.

Ignorance, apathy and so called "compassion" will be the downfall of America. Giving a man a fish is just a form of slavery, teaching him to fish will set him free.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

New Hampshire Retirement System Unfunded Obligations

This report originated from the Josiah Bartlett Center but came to me via the Sullivan County GOP. The numbers may be new to my readers but the current status of the retirement system should not be new to my readers. Look at the final number and think of how many people live in New Hampshire. How do you think the state will meet those obligations? The only solution in my eyes is the state must go bankrupt.


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

New Hampshire Retirement System Unfunded Obligations
Seven Billion Dollars

The New Hampshire Retirement System (NHRS) is facing a crisis stemming from unfunded pension obligations that threaten the fiscal health of the state. The New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, an independent, nonpartisan organization that pursues data-based research on public policy matters, estimated in September, 2007 that “Legislative promised made to state and local government employees and retirees will be increasingly difficult to honor without increasing state and local taxes.”

The 2003 and 2005 NHRS valuation reports show that within just a two year period, the actuarial funding ratio of the NHRS fell from about 80% to 60%. The chart below shows the unfunded pension obligations of the State of New Hampshire as of 2006:





From 2000 to 2006, the accrued liabilities of the pension fund increases by almost $3 billion, while the net assets held for benefits increased by only about $800 million.

However, this underestimates the overall shortfall of the retirement system. In 2008, in its General Obligation Capital Improvement Bond Statement (November 4, 2008), the State of New Hampshire disclosed the following overall retirement system obligations (figures in millions):

Unfunded Pension liability $2,519.3 million
Additional asset decline, from 6/30/2008 to 10/24/2008 1,430.0
Postemployment Health Benefit liability 494.7
Other Postemployment Benefits liability 2,559.5
Judicial Retirement System liability 4.3

TOTAL $7,007.8 million

Will Summer School at Newport Schools Improve Student Performance?

In the past has summer school improved Newport student performance? How much will summer school cost Newport taxpayers? If summer school has not shown to improve student performance why continue the program? Will testing be done at the beginning and end of summer school to evaluate program effectiveness? If the program is not effective will Newport terminate said program? I can guarantee one thing Newport Teachers will have more taxpayer dollars in their pocketbooks at the completion of the summer school program.

In a prior post I revealed how summer school unless implemented correctly will not improve student performance. I suggest Newport schools test students at the beginning and at the end of the summer school program if no student performance has been achieved than the teachers are not paid and Newport taxpayer dollars will not have been wasted. If the schools are so confident that this summer school program is so effective they will have no problem accepting this challenge, if not don't waste Newport Taxpayers hard earned dollars.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

A story about the Newport Summer School program appears in the Eagle Times.