No room for education reform in spending frenzy
Remember the D.C. voucher minority education program that saved money, improved math scores, and that parents loved? In the omnibus spending bill that just passed, Democrats ended it. I guess it’s a spending bill, not a saving bill.
Hat tip to Gabriel Malor at the Ace of Spades HQ.
- January 1, 2010: Blogs fight resegregation in DC?
-
The Democrats have officially killed the successful DC scholarship program. Now some bloggers are considering setting up a private scholarship fund to resurrect it. This is a great idea, and a great way to start off 2010. I pledge at least a hundred dollars to it right now.
The Anchoress has some ideas, too:
I’d like to be in on the creation of such an effort. I think this is a terrific and positive note on which to begin a new year, particularly one in which governmental leadership suggests itself to be moribund and completely mad.
And I also like her ideas on vocational training:
If something like this were to succeed, it could even be expanded to include vocational training and apprenticeships for those who would prefer to learn the sort of blue-collar, non-outsourceable and completely respectable jobs that so many of our young people no longer consider because the “you’re nothing without a degree” narrative has become so all-consuming.
The DC voucher program was a good idea at the time, and it’s still a good idea. This was a small program; it lies within the grasp of grassroots donations. The program is 1,716 students, at $7,500 a student, for just under $13,000,000 each year. I’ll be happy to provide my hundred dollars a year to help fund it. Can we get 129,999 more people to do that? I think we can.
- D.C. voucher students show gains
- D.C. voucher students show increased learning at lower cost; parents happy. Washington Post not as happy.
- $410 Billion Spending Bill Passes Senate; On Its Way To the White House
- “Killing a small school choice program that gave minority children hope and throwing them back down the public school well makes me officially realize that Congress is a complete cesspool of humanity.”
More education
- Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave
- Not only does slavery make life worse for slaves, it doesn’t make life better for slave-owners. And the ultimate freedom is freedom to learn.
- Teaching kids to fail
- Are schools designed to teach kids to fail?
- ACLU enables Texas textbook takeover
- If you give the government a gun, some politician or bureaucrat somewhere is going to pull the trigger. Make sure that whatever powers you cede to the government are powers you want them to exercise.
- Blogs fight resegregation in DC?
- Can bloggers resurrect a successful education program that beltway Democrats killed?
- Government food courts
- Imagine there’s no grocery… it isn’t hard to do… nothing to grill or fry for…… and no bacon too…
- 10 more pages with the topic education, and other related pages