Tag Archives: Teacher Union

News

Feds give $888,000 to Chicago public schools to teach Arabic language

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Story here from the Chicago Sun-Times. (H/T Verum Serum)

Excerpt:

The Chicago public schools will expand its Arabic-language program to three more high schools, thanks to a three-year, $888,000 federal grant announced this morning.

[…]Already, Arabic is offered at three Chicago high schools — Lincoln Park, Roosevelt and Lindblom.

It’s also offered at seven Chicago elementary schools — Durkin Park, Agassiz, Belding, LaSalle Language Academy II, Marquette Tech and Volta.

In all, about 2,000 students take Arabic in Chicago’s schools.

The new federal grant, on top of $1.6 million in state and federal funds the schools already have gotten, will fund the expansion to three additional high schools that have yet to be identified.

Wasteful government spending is the reason why we have 10.2% unemployment. Democrats think that massive federal grants to public schools stimulate the economy. On the other hand, George W. Bush cut taxes by 2.2 trillion, and unemployment dipped down below 5%.

News

New study reveals how school choice benefits the poorest students

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Article in the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Jay P. Greene)

Excerpt:

Opponents of school choice are running out of excuses as evidence continues to roll in about the positive impact of charter schools.

Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently found that poor urban children who attend a charter school from kindergarten through 8th grade can close the learning gap with affluent suburban kids by 86% in reading and 66% in math. And now Marcus Winters, who follows education for the Manhattan Institute, has released a paper showing that even students who don’t attend a charter school benefit academically when their public school is exposed to charter competition.

Mr. Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students.

[…]One of the most encouraging findings by Mr. Winters is how charter competition reduces the black-white achievement gap. He found that the worst-performing public school students, who tend to be low-income minorities, have the most to gain from the nearby presence of a charter school. Overall, charter competition improved reading performance but did not affect math skills. By contrast, low-performing students had gains in both areas, and their reading improvement was above average relative to the higher-performing students.

Conservatives love choice and competition, especially in education. We oppose equalizing outcomes regardless of individual liberty and responsibility. Liberals want government to run everything to make sure that everyone gets the same crap level of service. This is what the lazy teacher unions prefer. But conservatives want teachers to be responsive to their customers – the children.

Videos

Eleven schools teaching children to praise and worship Obama

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Story from John Nolte Big Government.

Excerpt:

Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.

Maybe “epidemic” is a better word.

Each one of the videos below is creepier than the last because the further down you go, the younger the children — brace yourself for kindergartners –  except for the last and most disturbing video, which you have to see to believe.

Young captive minds, easily influenced, eager for direction, enlisted into a cult of personality focused on an individual who, other than being the first black president, has yet to accomplish anything of significance.

But Obama’s skin color has nothing to do with this. Does anyone interested in retaining their merit badge for intellectual honesty really want to argue that Condi Rice or J.C. Watts would’ve spawned a dozen-and-counting tribute videos?

This is about brainwashing our children into Leftist identity politics. Sure, the schools can argue that they had some kind of parental permission — which, if true, is somehow even more disturbing — but who even considers doing something like this with young minds? That’s a rhetorical question.

[…]Each video has also been transcribed so you can follow the bouncing ball…

My concern is that teacher unions will use their power and influence to brainwash children into supporting bigger and bigger government, which will in turn increase teacher salaries.