Daily Archives: 08/29/2011

News

Indiana voucher program offers hope to low-income students

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From the Courier Press, news of the latest success for Republicans in their long war against public sector teacher unions.

Excerpt:

Kristy Wentworth of Evansville said she was never dissatisfied with public education, and her three children, who attended schools in the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp., were making good grades.

But when friends told her about Indiana’s new private school voucher program, she was intrigued.

After some discussion, Wentworth enrolled her children this year at Evansville Lutheran School, which is near her home. It didn’t take the single mother long to decide her choice was correct. Her children — who are in grades 7, 6 and 4 — are thriving at Evansville Lutheran. Wentworth noted the school’s small class sizes, and she marveled at the frequent communication she receives from her teachers.

“They come home from school excited, they leave for school excited. They can’t wait to get there,” Wentworth said. “(The school) encouraged them to sign up for Boy Scouts and volleyball, and on the first night they made the kids feel so welcome.”

Wentworth recently lost her job, and she said she couldn’t have afforded a private school without the voucher program, which proponents say helps overall educational achievement and closes achievement gaps along socioeconomic lines.

And these private schools help children to perform better in testing.

Can greater competition among schools help? That’s what state education officials are banking on. While scars from the lengthy spring debate over vouchers heal, they are encouraging local school districts to embrace the new environment.

Local nonpublic schools have courted voucher students. As of Friday, 114 were awarded to students in the EVSC district — the fourth highest number in the state.

Officials with the EVSC, meanwhile, point to recent academic progress, its network of community partnerships aimed at meeting students’ most fundamental needs and classroom innovations.

Delaware Elementary School, which is in the same neighborhood as Evansville Lutheran, has made strides in several areas in a short period of time, said Heather Ottilie, parent of a Delaware third-grader.

Delaware is in its second year as an EVSC “equity school.” Along with two other schools of similar socioeconomic demographics — McGary Middle School and Evans School — Delaware is free to have longer school days and longer school years and has more leeway in curriculum and rules. The three equity schools all showed gains on the spring ISTEP.

Ottilie said Delaware has placed heavy emphasis on independent reading. Other innovations include the use of netbook computers and iPod Touches in classrooms, world language instruction and new learning programs such as LEGO robotics, which emphasize problem-solving skills.

“I love it,” Ottilie said. “Everything is hands-on … the kids aren’t just doing worksheets.”

What is the conservative plan to help the poor? Is it wealth redistribution? Does that even work? Or is there a way to produce better results for the poor through free market capitalism? Those who advocate big government never bother to ask these questions. For those who take the time to study economics, the answer is clear – what works to reduce costs and raise quality is choice and competition.

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News

Breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen gives $569,159 to Planned Parenthood

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Story here on Life News.

Excerpt:

Affiliates of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation gave more than half a million dollars to Planned Parenthood in 2010, according to federal tax records.

The American Life League obtained copies of the financial documents, which totaled donations from 18 Komen affiliates at $569,159.

Affiliates in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington all gave money. You can view a full spreadsheet of the donations here.

According to the data, the Dallas County chapter donated the largest amount, giving $68,000 to Planned Parenthood of North Texas. The Orange County, Calif. chapter gave the second-highest amount at $58,754.

Nevertheless, the $569,159 tag is lower than the donations from 2009, which totaled $731,303.

[…]Rita Diller, director of the American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood initiative, told Life News that aside from the abortion issue, it doesn’t make sense for Komen to donate money to Planned Parenthood when the organization does not provide any kind of advanced breast care, including mammograms. “Komen’s support of Planned Parenthood is defeating its own mission of fighting breast cancer,” Diller said. “In the first place, Planned Parenthood is not licensed to do anything beyond Level 1 breast examinations….Add to that the fact that Planned Parenthood’s two big money-makers, abortion and contraceptives, are directly linked to breast cancer by numerous studies conducted from the 1960s through the present.”

[…]A Jan. 2010 study from the Seattle Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center called abortion a “known risk factor” for breast cancer, reporting a 20 to 50 percent increased chance for cancer among women who had had an abortion compared to women who carried their pregnancies to term

Don’t give money to Susan G. Komen for the Cure if you are pro-life.

UPDATE: Wow! Steve Ertelt of LifeNews left a comment linking to this follow-up story. Please read.

Related posts on Planned Parenthood

Commentary

Is evolution compatible with Christianity?

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Denyse O’Leary found this article at the Washington Post about a Christian woman who discovered Darwinian evolution through the works of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. She found it to be incompatible with Christianity. (H/T Uncommon Descent)

Excerpt:

But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That’s not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare that if God chose to create us using evolution, that’s fine by them. I used to be this kind of Christian myself; but I must confess that my blitheness was only possible because I had only the vaguest possible idea of how evolution works and certainly didn’t know enough about it to realize that unguided-ness is central to it.

While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject.

And:

Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. … Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place.

That’s the understanding of evolution that she got from Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne.

Denyse O’Leary mentions that there is a group of “Christian” Darwinists who have no problem at all with the scientific claims made by atheistic Darwinists. They oppose intelligent design – the idea that science can detect effects in nature, like protein sequences, that are best explained as the result of intelligent causes. When it comes to what the science can show, atheists and “theistic evolutionists” agree: God didn’t do anything. So why are these “theistic evolutionists” pushing a theory that leads people to become atheists, when properly understood?