A post by Maynard
It boggles the mind. The NAACP slanders and vilifies a man who’s trying to save minority kids from attending dysfunctional schools and falling into dysfunctional lives.
When public schools fail, people with money take their kids out of the system. People without money are stuck, and their kids miss out on much of their potential. That’s a crime in my book. Many experts argue, and I agree strongly, that vouchers are part of the solution. Vouchers help motivate the complacent monopoly, and give poor kids an opportunity that would otherwise be denied to them. Vouchers are a big step in the direction of leveling the playing field. Vouchers deliver results that true liberals should applaud. This is supported by research (for example, see the Friedman Foundation website).
Vouchers are strongly opposed by entrenched special interests, such as the NEA and the NAACP. These organizations are cynically protecting their own political and economic turf, at the cost of the causes they presume to support. Interestingly, my understanding is that most of the poor people the NAACP supposedly speaks for would dearly love to have access to vouchers. Just another case of the leadership being out of touch with the rank-and-file. (Do I need to mention that these organizations carry a huge amount of political weight, especially with the Democrats?)
In this particular news item, Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne argued that the public school monopoly was setting poor kids on the path to ruin. He was trying to save these children, but the NAACP takes a few of his words out of context and accuses him of plotting genocide.
Jeanetta Williams, a voucher opponent and president of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch, said the comments shocked her and she believes Byrne meant that minorities who don’t graduate should be burned or thrown away.
So we see the saviors vilified while self-serving corruption is lauded. And then we wonder why our problems seem intractable.
As totalitarians, Democrats and their allies such as the NAACP and the NEA know it is necessary to keep as much of population as ignorant as possible in order to keep them from protesting as the chains and slavery are slipped on them.
It’s obvious Jeanetta Williams failed High School English. She doesn’t understand the concept of a metaphor.
Here in Utah the NEA is really fighting hard to fight the vouchers. TV and radio are flooded with ads which themselves are filled with lies. Unfortunately those in favor of vouchers don’t really have the money to fight them. And this latest smear campaign by the NAACP comes as no surprise at all.
It’s sad, really. This will be an interesting election day.
Rudy loves telling the story of how, in NYC, a privately funded fund offered 2,500 school choice scholarships to children in New York City. Over 165,000 applications came in from local parents for those slots. By my quick mental math, that’s about 66 applications per slot. In contrast, Harvard’s 2011 class took 1 out of every 11 applicants or about 2000 out of more than 20,000.
Two thoughts: (1) The people are voting with their feet (to reference JFK and Berliners) and (2) it used to be that empowering minorities meant them gaining entrance to public schools even if meant beating down a phalanax formed by white southern politicians. Now, civil rights has come full circle it seems and empowering minorities means getting kids OUT of public schools, past a phalanx formed by union hacks and corrupt black “civil rights leaders.”
naacp is a racist organization to begin with. One of the road blocks that keep blacks from achieving their God given dreams is this organization itself.
I noticed a couple of years ago that some of the most vocal opponents of vouchers on Capitol Hill all send their children to private schools.
I wish this kind of stuff still surprised me.
As a black woman I’ve never been interested in joining the NAACP. For that matter no one in my family has joined. For me I found the organization to be counterproductive. Because they refuse to change with the times, we have a situation where they are still have fighting the Civil Rights Movement. So they’ve created an atmosphere where every comment a white person makes is seen as racist. Even when that person is stating a truth. Even Bill Cosby has been criticized for calling out the poor state of black America.
And let’s not start with their crude political affliation with the democratic party. I think this has single handedly destroyed any means of improving the lives of inner city blacks. And don’t forget about the so called “leadership” that perpetuates victimhood. Most are so inept and corrupt, they’d be out of a job. They need this; people have become like sheep. Too ignorant to see the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are playing them like fiddles. Don’t forget about the corruption scandals of the NAACP back in the 90’s with Benjamin Chavis. I don’t want to relive that crap!!
Rational observers can come to the conclusion that the NAACP has become a poor parody of what it once was without thereby concluding that vouchers–of whatever they’re being called this time around–are a good idea. One can hold that opinion without being a mindless minion of the teacher’s unions as well.
We know that the emperical evidence on the miraculous performance of private schools vs public schools is anything but definitive and conclusive, yet some persist in claiming that sending students to private schools through the vehicle of vouchers is a panacea. It’s just not. Sorry. Nor is that urge to voucherize a conservative notion despite the fact that many who might consider themselves to be conservatives support it.
As a teacher (full disclosure: I’m not a union member and would be considered by most to be a conservative), I understand clearly the difficulties facing me in teaching well. None of them can be addressed by taking scarce money away from me and my kids and giving that money to private schools (yeah, yeah, you’re giving it to deserving kids–whose parents hold the money for a few days and then give it to a private school). I already spend at least $1000.00–often twice that–per year on supplies such as printer cartridges, books, and other essentials. Take too much more money out of my school’s budget and I’ll be buying desks and paying electric bills.
If you want to give public funds to private (yes, overwhelmingly sectarian) schools, be honest and say up front that you just think that’s a good thing, and be honest and admit that you’ll have to amend the Constitution to do it legally.
Anyone suggesting that vouchers equal greater achievement or some kind of solution to nebulous “problems” in public education is either uninformed or being disingenuous.
Attach 100% of educational funds to the student and allow parents 100% flexibility in determining which schools they send their children to. Schools that cannot attract students will not get a dime. Let private interests buy them and open their own schools and compete for the student dollar. This shift in motivation should solve most of the problems we have in our system today. I think this could even work if we completely eliminated public schools all together.
One thing though, the plan here in Utah does not take money from the public schools to use on the vouchers. Such money actually comes from the general fund. So, money isn’t being taken away from the students.
Vouchers sound good in theory, but I contend that vouchers will destroy private education as we know it. Think about the courts, while contemplating the following:
Private schools can accept or reject anyone they want, or don’t want now, and if the kid does something crazy, or is uncontrollable, the private school can throw him out, sorry no refund. Could this important diciplineary lever remain under a voucher system?
Special services cost schools (taxpayers) a bundle. I’m sure that the courts are going to enforce voucher accepting schools to provide the same services as tax supported schools eventually.
Once a private school starts taking taxpayer money in the form of vouchers, will the parents of voucher kids demand, and the courts enforce State Curriculum guides, standard tests, sensitivity training, diversity classes, tolerance classes, etc., and all the other things that do little to educate kids, but fill time?
Will the state require all teachers to hold state teaching certificates to work in private voucher schools?
Vouchers are not the panacea the’re made out to be, and it’s going to be tough for a truly private school to be stay away from accepting them, including religious schools, and I can just imagine the fallout from court decisions on schools that incorporate religious training into their curriculum.