Posts Tagged ‘education’

There are things that make schools particularly attractive targets for evil men or crazies who want to inflict harm on others or who want to hurt society: Schools contain large numbers of helpless children and a few adults who can pose no threat to an attacker; Being gun-free zones, schools guarantee that the will be no armed person in a school, with the possible exception of a school resource officer; and, once the slaughter starts, the attacker knows that it will take several minutes for the police to be called and to respond. The attacker also knows that if there is a single policeman assigned to the school, he could get rid of that threat to him by simply removing the officer or distracting him in some way; and even if the officer is not disabled the attacker would simply have to begin his attack in one of the more remote classrooms. For these reasons our children are like lambs in a slaughterhouse
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The only real protection against a terrorist (and no matter their motive, the people who stage these attacks are terrorists) is to have numerous people in all parts of the school who can be first responders to an attack. The outcome at Sandy Hook Elementary School would have been very different had the first teacher who confronted the attacker, and the Principle who confronted him had done so with a gun.
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Schools should be Attack Free Zones; meaning that if an unauthorized person enters a school they are considered a deadly threat and if they do not immediately surrender, they will be shot. This means that schools would have to have the ability to control all access to the school and to identify and control visitors or those on authorized business.
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The two most rational objections to arming school personnel are 1) that they would create a confusing battlefield for police who respond- it would become difficult for the officers to identify the perpetrators as opposed to the armed school personnel; and, 2) School personnel are not trained in the needed skills and procedures. I think there is some valid concern on both points. However, if the arming of school personnel is done properly both these points become moot.
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First the personnel would have to pass the normal gun ownership background checks, second, they would have to pass the concealed carry class, and third they would be required to be trained and sanctioned by the local police department, and would operate under direction of the police department as a reserve unit of the police. This takes away the concern about qualification.
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There are probably several employees at most schools who are already competent marksmen and trained in gun safety. There are likely military veterans or reservists, concealed carry permit holders, reserve officers, or shooting hobbyist on the school staff. These people would be the obvious first class of trainees. The goal would be to have most employees, including administrators, teachers, classified staff, custodians, and bus drivers qualified and armed. Since the reasons schools are such enticing targets for evil or crazy people is because they know they will easily be able to do great harm, having this type of reserve protection would take away that primary attraction as a target.
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The second valid concern is identification of school police reservists. First, since they are under the direction of the police, trained by them, and mingle face to face with officers they would be known by sight to the police. Second they would be provided with a recognizable police vest which they would don in the event of an attack anywhere on the school. The teachers in classrooms would lock down their classroom, direct the children to take cover, and then take a defensive position to stop the attacker from entering.
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Teachers involved in other activities with students would move them to designated safe areas and take up a defensive position to protect the children. Administrators and other non-teaching personnel would don their vests and move quickly to the trouble area, firing on an attacker at the moment they are encountered.
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The reserve officer school personnel would be organized into rank leadership based on competency and training and the senior officer (who might be a teacher or a janitor rather than an administrator) would assume command of the crises until a ranking police officer is on the scene.
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Chances are, that in most cases based on this scenario by the time police arrived all school reservists would be “in uniform”’ the threat would be neutralized, and all arms would be holstered, avoiding the chaos envisioned by detractors.
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Chances are good that this would prevent injury or loss of student life; or at the worst would limit the number of such casualties.
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I will cover reestablishing a healthy American gun culture in Part 3.

By Walter E. Williams

If I were a Klansman, wanting to sabotage black education, I couldn’t find better allies than education establishment liberals and officials in the Obama administration, especially Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who in March 2010 announced that his department was “going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement.”

For Duncan, the civil rights issue was that black elementary and high school students are disciplined at a higher rate than whites. His evidence for discrimination is that blacks are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. Duncan and his Obama administration supporters conveniently ignored school “racial discrimination” against whites, who are more than two times as likely to be suspended as Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Heather Mac Donald reports on all of this in “Undisciplined,” appearing in City Journal (Summer 2012). She writes that between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white students were arrested at school, mostly for battery. In Chicago schools, black students outnumber whites by four to one.

Mac Donald adds, “Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nationally during 2007-2008, more than 145,000 teachers were physically attacked. Six percent of big-city schools report verbal abuse of teachers, and 18 percent report non-verbal disrespect for teachers. An earlier NCES study found that 18 percent of the nation’s schools accounted for 75 percent of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6 percent accounted for 50 percent. So far as serious violence, murder and rapes, 1.9 percent of schools reported 50 percent of the incidents. The preponderance of school violence occurs in big-city schools attended by black students.

Educators might not see classroom comportment as a priority. According to a recent hire, a Baltimore high school now asks prospective teachers: “How do you respond to being mistreated? What do you do if someone cusses you out?” The proper answer is: “Nothing.” That vision might explain why a 34-year veteran of the school had to be taken from the premises in an ambulance after a student shattered the glass in a classroom display case.

Mac Donald reports that a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, Minn., scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline, saying “Anyone in his right mind knows that these (disciplined) students are extremely disruptive.”

In response to the higher disciplinary rates for minority students, the St. Paul school district has spent $350,000 for teacher “cultural-proficiency” training sessions where they learn about “whiteness.” At one of these sessions, an Asian teacher asked: “How do I help the student who blurts out answers and disrupts the class?” The black facilitator said: “That’s what black culture is.” If a white person made such a remark, I’m sure it would be deemed racist.

Some of today’s black political leaders are around my age, 76, such as Reps. Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Conyers, former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, Jesse Jackson and many others. Ask them what their parents would have done had they cursed, assaulted a teacher or engaged in disruptive behavior that’s become routine in far too many schools. Would their parents have accepted the grossly disrespectful public behavior that includes foul language and racial epithets? Their silence and support of the status quo represent a betrayal of epic proportions to the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors in their struggle to make today’s education opportunities available.

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Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

By Rich Abdill
Broward-Palm Beach Times
Congressman Allen West gave a 25-minute speech on his 2012 platform over the weekend — expect more in the coming days. Today, though, we tackle education.
“Washington has a good day when it manages not to screw things up too badly. That is equally true when it comes to education. No one is well-served when the federal bureaucracy tries to impose top-down controls on our schools,” West said. “Teachers end up hamstrung, parents end up shut out of the decision-making process, and students, our next generation, end up as collateral damage.”
It was at this point he said that teaching at Deerfield Beach High School was worse than working in Afghanistan.

His solution to all this hamstringing and shutting-out was simple: Give the power back to parents and the local school boards.

”I know that we can do better. If we really want to, we can get the federal government out of these South Florida schools. We can take ownership of our own kids’ futures back,” he said. “A nation that refuses to invest in the next generation is paving its way to decline. But that investment does not need to include wasting taxpayer dollars on more bureaucratic policies either. That’s why I support giving parents the ability to choose the school best able to meet their child’s needs. It’s why I support taking power away from teachers’ unions.”
There you have it: Invest in the next generation, but not with… money.
Predictably, the Broward Teachers’ Union disagrees.
“It’s probably one of the most completely inaccurate statements I’ve heard in a long time,” said BTU administrator John Tarka. “We are, of course, interested in representing our members, but we know too that public education is one of the cornerstones of our community… It’s kind of an unwarranted attack on teachers’ unions.
“We really do want to see schools improve,” he continued. ”We’ve always said we’re interested in what’s good for children and what’s good for educators.”
He also added that federal oversight is necessary to ensure a “constant and consistent curriculum” — and to make sure schools are getting the support they need. He said state and federal funding was keeping afloat school districts across the country that were in impoverished districts that can’t afford quality education.
“They shouldn’t get state support, support from the federal government?” Tarka said.
“Some communities are wealthy; some communities are very poor… Does the congressman mean that district rely only on their community for support?”
He conceded that West was right to criticize portions of No Child Left Behind but added that the American Federation of Teachers fought that legislation too.
“It’s the kind of statement that’s so inflammatory and so baseless… There’s a place for criticism, as long as it’s constructive criticism.” Tarka said. “That kind of a statement by a member of Congress, I think, is irresponsible.”

by Roger Hedgecock, former Mayor of San Diegoby Roger Hedgecock, former Mayor of San Diego

I live in California.

If you were wondering what living in Obama’s second term might be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now.

California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.

California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it “Medi-Cal.” Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, with smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago.

Good job, Brownie.

This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown had to confess that the “balanced” state budget adopted five months ago was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated.

After trimming legislators’ perks and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren.

California government needed more money.

Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners currently pay 50% of the state’s income tax.

California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning over $47,056 a year.

Income of more than $1 million pays the “millionaires’ and billionaires’” surcharge tax rate of 10.3%. Brown’s proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000.

A million-dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that’s just for the state. Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up to 7.75% to as much as 10%. Both tax increases will be on the 2012 ballot.

The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest from the Left. Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, “We’ve paid enough. It’s time for millionaires to pay.”

At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California. The governor’s proposals are the most conservative.

The Obama way doesn’t end with taxes.

The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley. But hey, if we build it, they will ride.

And we don’t want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt them. Can’t happen here because we’re already insolvent. If we get into real trouble with the train, we’ll just bring in the Chinese.

It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was rebuilt with steel made in China. And, workers from China too. Paid for with money borrowed from China . Makes perfect sense.

In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich. Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing’s too good for our guests.

To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty.

Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of illegals from California .

Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws he won’t enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration law?

California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of de-industrialization.

After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly, for example, air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California ‘s future.

The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and guarantees a further job exodus from the state.

Even green energy companies can’t do business in California.

Solyndra went under taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it. No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In fact, more and more of California ‘s public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for that land.

Unless you’re illegal.

Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will, bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying guns no California citizen is allowed to own.

The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the workers’ open campfire started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade.

It’s often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen in your state. You’d better hope that’s wrong.

Roger Hedgecock’s nationally syndicated radio show originates from KOGO 600 AM, San Diego daily.