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Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?
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Shades of life
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The Jewish Ethicist
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by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!
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Civilization walks the plank
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The Kosher Gourmet
By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto
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The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality
Elliot B. Gertel:
'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?
Nov, 18, 2008
Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason
Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?
Nov, 17, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason
Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?
Nov, 14, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia
Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead
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Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic
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by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla
Nov, 12, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers
Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks
Nov, 11, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?
Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate
Nov, 10, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?
Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist
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Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality
Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy
Nov, 6, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism
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Nov, 5, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors
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Nov, 4, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law
Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East
Nov, 3, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?
Jonathan Tobin:
Was He Wrong About Everything?
March 22, 2007
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Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
March 15, 2007
/ 25 Adar, 5767
Education renewal
By
Cal Thomas
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Congress will soon decide whether to renew President Bush's signature education program "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the goal of which is to bring every public school student to grade level in reading and math by 2014.
Though leaving no child behind may be a worthy goal politically and socially, some are questioning whether it is an obtainable one. Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA, recently told The Washington Post, "There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target." Maybe not, but the poet Robert Browning said that our reach should always exceed our grasp. By expecting more, we get more from our institutions and ourselves than if we were to "settle" for less and get less.
Still, after five years of NCLB, the statistics are not encouraging. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, between 1992 and 2005, there has been an increase in the percentage of 12th-grade students who read below the basic level (from 20 percent to 27 percent since the previous assessment). Only 23 percent of 12th-graders are performing at or above math proficiency levels. As usual, the figures are worse for black and Hispanic students.
I asked U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings about this. She told me that half of the states waited until the 2005-'06 school year to do an annual assessment, but that 70 percent of the nation's 90,000 public schools "are meeting the requirements of NCLB. But for 1,800, which are chronically year after year failing our kids, something more dramatic has to happen."
That "something more" has included local government takeover of some school systems. In New York and Chicago, as well as in the state of Florida, which Spellings describes as a "leader" in education improvement, interesting things" are being done. Washington, D.C., is also debating whether government should take over its poorly performing schools. Spellings said "the state of affairs" in Washington schools is "not encouraging."
Spellings cited one major reason for underperformance I had not considered. When I was in school, she noted, I was taught mostly by bright and accomplished women. As opportunities for women in other professions opened up, many of the best and brightest teachers and potential teachers left or chose other professions because they paid more. "The teachers' unions," she said, "always negotiate the same pay raises for everybody and the superstars say 'forget this, I'm going where I will be recognized as a superstar.'"
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Education in the United States continues to lag behind that of other nations. "When you go to China or India," Spellings said, "they don't sit around arguing about class size. They're starving to death and are motivated for education. We take all the advantages we have for granted." And while America focuses too much on nonacademic subjects sex education, driver's education and the environment and not enough on what employers are looking for, some other nations are graduating young people with real knowledge and skills of the kind we once produced.
A serious school choice program, not more money to subsidize underachievement, is one answer to poor performance. Competition improves everyone's product and service. It's working in those states and localities that have managed to nominally free themselves from the teachers' unions, which seek to maintain the education monopoly for political influence. Paying bonuses to the best teachers is another good idea. According to Spellings, her department has provided $100 million through 16 grants for that purpose. If corporations can pay their CEOs huge bonuses for failure, why shouldn't teachers be paid bonuses for achieving and surpassing education goals?
There is another point no one in government will address. It is that not all children are equally intelligent. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute raised this controversial issue recently in a series of articles he wrote for The Wall Street Journal, in which he noted that half of all children have below average intelligence and that "even the best schools under the best conditions cannot repeal the limits on achievement set by limits on intelligence."
Politically, that argument has no traction and so we are left with renewing "No Child Left Behind," monitoring progress and paying bonuses to the best teachers. Now if we can just get real school choice added to the mix, maybe even some of the less intelligent won't be left behind and we will see even greater progress with the rest. With what we are spending on education, the adults deserve a better product and the kids are entitled to a better education, which is their best chance at a good life.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Cal Thomas is the author of, among others, The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas Comment by clicking here.
Cal Thomas Archives
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