Baltimore Sun: Lawmakers looking favorably on cuts in education funding: A first step might be easing counties’ obligation

I don’t get it. We mandate by federal law No Child Left Behind, then pull funding from schools to ensure that the only thing teachers can teach are the ways to pass the tests mandated by NCLB. Who wins here? Certainly not the kids.

I want to rant all over this but I’ve got a headache and I’m trying to work on too many things around here. I could flail around wildly trying to affix blame for where we are educationally, but there’s very little point and in the end I won’t have accomplished anything useful.

Education should be this country’s number one priority. Without it, our kids won’t be able to get themselves out of our houses, and we’ll fall even farther behind the other countries in our ability to compete and grow. If a kindergarten teacher can’t even take the time to help teach a kid to tie his shoelaces, then we’ve done something terrible to our educational system. Driving teachers out because we can’t afford to pay them, increasing class sizes because we can’t afford the teachers, making teachers follow strict guidelines over what they should teach and when burns out all but the most dedicated (or least flexible) of people.

When are we going to wake up and do something about this?

How blindingly stupid can we get?!?

Comments:

CS:
Stupid, or maybe evil. Sometimes I think that certain people, having failed to get prayer into public schools, are now trying to destroy them.

Down here the state budget shortfall is resulting in furlough days for state employees, including public school teachers. If there were teacher unions down here they’d have a much more difficult time of it.

Back in Reagan’s time the conservatives wanted to “starve the beast.” Well, there may be times when smaller government is a good idea, but starving the beast to death is insane. Do these people really want to get elected to the government in order to destroy it? Isn’t that treason?

BJ:
Sadly we can get pretty darn stupid. Neither political party wants to work together because that would mean compromise and that would mean a loss of power. Cant they seem it is not productive to play us verses them? and hat is sadder is that it seems the majority of people can’t see that they are playing a divide and concur game. And the ones who really pay teh price are the children.

RP:
I’m afraid it will only get worse. As a voting bloc, parents of school-age children will lose out to retiring baby boomers within the next 10 years. Guess what parts of the budget will become untouchable?

LS:
Yeah. I have a rant going in my head but it’ll just make my head explode if I let it out. So yeah. Pretty effin stupid, is the answer to your question.