Education reform is tough, complicated business. Read Ravitch’s earlier works for more cogent analysis. In those, she saw the value of reforms she’s now abandoned.

I’ve not watched Waiting for Superman because I can’t bring myself to see it. I’ve heard from too many who have and been emotionally devastated by its story.

I know that story from having worked with parents trying to get what’s best for their kids yet lacking the money to pull their kids from schools that just aren’t right for them. It doesn’t always mean the school’s bad. It’s just not right for every particular child.

Why we continue to insist that children’s education be limited by geography is beyond me. Our current system is based on a model dating back to xenophobic times in the mid 1850s when nativists wanted to control the populace from being influenced by new, mostly Catholic, immigrants. That’s when the first laws requiring school attendance were passed, followed soon after by laws stating which schools children MUST attend (public ones that were drenched in a nondenominational brand of Christianity with hymn singing, praying and Bible reading as part of the curriculum, just not the Douay Bible Catholics favored), and which ones would be free. Prior to the passage of such laws, some communities funded a variety of schools.

When Catholics responded by setting up their own schools where they could use their Bible, prayers and hymns, the nativists tried pushing even further, by attempting to make private schools entirely illegal. Oregon voted to do just that in the early part of the last century. The US Supreme Court struck down that nonsense. (As an aside, a group that started in the 1940s and fights school choice programs in courts today was originally called Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; they didn’t drop the “Protestants and” part until the 1970s.)

It’s well past time we struck down the rest of that 1800s school model and opened the doors to individual opportunity through all kinds of schools – public, private, charter, cyber, etc. And let the money follow the child to the school that works best for him or her instead of forcing parents to pay a financial penalty for choosing a school other than the local public one.

NEW YORK TIMES:  In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, “Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition,” Mr. [James T. ] Kloppenberg explained that he sees Mr. Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in American history.

“There’s John Adams, Thomas Jefferson,  , James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln, and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson,” he said…

 “To critics on the left he seems a tragic failure, a man with so much potential who has not fulfilled the promise of change that partisans predicted for his presidency,” he said. “To the right he is a frightening success, a man who has transformed the federal government and ruined the economy.”… (more) 

I wrote comment #1 and it may be a defeatist attitude; however, I don’t know how anyone with a working knowledge of Lancaster County history over the last 15 years can honestly believe anything else.

Do you remember what John Barley did with the dump? How about John Fry and what he did with a rubber stamp, or waiver, from every regulatory agency and zero oversight.

And how about the piece de resistance…the downtown hotel and convention center. Just last month, while driving up South Queen my wife posed the question…exactly who approved the cockamamie entrance/drive to the hotel that was holding up traffic. I told her no one did.
She asked what I meant. I told her that High got a waiver from the State, who has final say in such matters, and was given Carte Blanche to do whatever the heck they wanted.

Call me defeatist if you like but the Crossings will be built and I would lay even money that sometime in the future, not only will my travels up South Queen be delayed by cars backed up into a deficient drive, but by a trolley as well.

by Ralph Nader

Published on Friday, October 22, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Here are ten questions for Tea Partiers that they want or do not want to answer. I say it this way because people who call themselves Tea Partiers do not have the same view of politics, government, Big Business or the Constitution. Their opinions range from pure Libertarian to actively furthering the privileges of plutocracy. Their income and occupational background vary as well, though most seem to be middle-income and up.

My guess is that most Tea Partiers come from the conservative wing of the Republican Party who are fed up with both the corporate Republicans like Bush and Cheney, as well as the Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

With the above in mind, the following questions can serve to go beyond abstractions and generalizations of indignation and get to some more specific responses.

1. Can you be against Big Government and not press for reductions in the vast military budgets, fraught with bureaucratic and large contractors’ waste, fraud and abuse? Military spending now takes up half of the federal government’s operating budgets. The libertarian Cato Institute believes that to cut deficits, we have to also cut the defense budget.

2. Can you believe in the free market and not condemn hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare-bailouts, subsidies, handouts, and giveaways?

3. Can you want to preserve the legitimate sovereignty of our country and not reject the trade agreements known as NAFTA and GATT (The World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland) that scholars have described as the greatest surrender of local, state and national sovereignty in our history?

4. Can you be for law and order and not support a bigger and faster crackdown on the corporate crime wave, that needs more prosecutors and larger enforcement budgets to stop the stealing of taxpayers and consumer dollars so widely reported in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week? Law enforcement officials estimate that for every dollar for prosecution, seventeen to twenty dollars are returned.

5. Can you be against invasions of privacy by government and business without rejecting the provisions of the Patriot Act that leave you defenseless to constant unlawful snooping, appropriation of personal information and even search of your home without notification until 72 hours later?

6. Can you be against regulation of serious medical malpractice (over 100,000 lives lost a year, according to a study by Harvard physicians), unsafe drugs that have serious side effects or cause the very injury/illness they were sold to prevent, motor vehicles with defective brakes, tires and throttles, contaminated food from China, Mexico and domestic processors?

7. Can you keep calling for Freedom and yet tolerate control of your credit and other economic rights by hidden and arbitrary credit ratings and credit scores? What Freedom do you have when you have to sign industry-wide fine print one-sided “contracts” with your banks, insurance companies, car dealers, and credit card companies? Many of these contracts even block your Constitutional access to the courthouse.

8. Can you be for a new, clean system of politics and elections and still accept the Republican and Democratic Two Party dictatorship that is propped up by complex state laws, frivolous litigation and harassment to exclude from the ballot third parties and independent candidates who want reform, accountability, and stronger voices for the voters?

9. If you want a return to our Constitution—its principles of limited and separation of power and its emphasis on “We the People” in its preamble—can you still support Washington’s wars that have not been declared by Congress (Article I Section or giving corporations equal rights with humans plus special privileges and immunities. The word “corporation” or “company” never appears in the Constitution. How can you support eminent domain powers given by governments to corporations over homeowners, or massive week-end bailouts by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department of businesses, even reckless foreign banks, without receiving the authority and the appropriations from the Congress, as the Constitution requires?

10. You want less taxation and lower deficits. How can you succeed unless you stop big corporations from escaping their fair share of taxes by manipulating foreign jurisdictions against our tax laws, for example, or by letting trillions of dollars of speculation on Wall Street go without any sales tax, while you pay six, seven or eight percent sales tax on the necessities you buy in stores?

Let’s hear from you Tea Partiers. Meanwhile, see the work of video-journalist, Steve Ference, who has interviewed and given voice to those among you in his new paperback “Voices of the Tea Party” published by Lulu.com on July 4, 2010.

From the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:

With the battle for Harrisburg coming to a frenzied finish, Republicans on Tuesday have a chance to turn back the political clock in Pennsylvania by winning the governorship and taking total command of the legislature.

Not since the 2002 election have Republicans held full sway in the Capitol. They could achieve that if Tom Corbett, who has led in polls from day one, beats Democrat Dan Onorato for governor, and if the GOP adds control of the House to its lock on the Senate.

The outcome might be in the hands of the state’s 4.5 million Democrats. They outnumber the Republicans by 1.2 million, but polls suggest they are showing far less voting interest than in 2008, when they swept President Obama and a multitude of Democrats into key offices…

Click here to read the full article.

Article “Not making the grade” is super headed “Unhappy parents pull honor students out of a Lancaster school.  Officials say concerns about behavior have been addressed, hope demographic changes aren’t driving complaints.”

Fortunately,  by the time the youngsters reach McCaskey High School, parents and children have acclimated and calmed down.   With three youngsters at McCaskey this year (a son and two grand daughters), the Watchdog has not heard a complaint about discipline.

Two wags of the tail to the Sunday News for the , gumption and professionalism  to discuss a  controversial local social problem in a constructive and thorough manner.  Hopefully, this will not be the last article dealing with the subject of discipline in school districts.  Without a public consensus being formed, the teachers and principals are left without proper community support and requirements.

Visitors to the State Store, euphemistically named “Wine and Spirits Shoppe” at the Hawthorne Center on Fruitville Pike, were greeted by stacks of wine cartons stacked three high ever six to eight feet in the middle of the narrow aisles throughout the entire store. 

Moving about resembled an obstacle course, and pushing a cart a driving test.  Shoppers politely waited for others to make selections since there was no way to pass.

An outspoken older ‘gentleman’(giving him the benefit of the doubt) asked to see the manager.  When queried, the manager-on-duty said it was necessary to restock the shelves.  It was pointed out to her that there were better times to restock than at 5 PM on Saturday afternoon and, in any case, there would be no reason to stock the entire store simultaneously.

The displeased customer went on to express his opinion that this was a marketing effort instigated by a dull witted executive in Harrisburg or the local manager.   In any case, he observed stacking cartons in the middle of narrow aisles was likely violations of both the local fire code and almost certainly the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The customer only did a portion of his intended shopping, finding the experience of dodging carts and delaying other shoppers unpleasant.

Perhaps the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has been infiltrated by saboteurs who want to bring about the systems long threatened privatization.

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: An article by Diane Ravitch entitled “The Myth of Charter Schools” virtually dissects the recently released documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’” and what remains on the lab table appears to be one huge piece of propaganda.

Among the score of informed and trenchant observations:

1)      “77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the questions was first asked in 1985.”

2)      Much of the assertions are based on the CREDO study which evaluates “student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school.”

3) “The propagandistic nature of “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is revealed by [Director David] Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools.  There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools.  Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools?”

4) “The film claims that 70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level.  This is flatly wrong.”`

5) “Guggenheim skirts the issue of poverty by showing only families that are intact and dedicated to helping their children succeed.”

6) “Another highly praised school that is featured in the film is the SEED charter boarding school in Washington, D. C.  … But SPEED spends $35,000 per student, as compared to average current spending for public schools of about one third that amount.”

7) “While blasting the teachers’ unions, he points to Finland as a nation whose educational system the US should emulate, not bothering to explain that has a completely unionized teaching force.”

The article is not an attack on charter schools, which are portrayed as being good, average and poor as are public schools, but rather on the integrity of the movie’s presentation.  Nevertheless, “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is creating a sensation in important places, including the White House.   The Watchdog encourages the reading of Ravitch’s article as a balance to viewing the documentary.

Comment #1)  I am somewhat surprised they did not get every penny they asked for but give them time…it will come through for them in the end.

Comment #2)  To the writer of Comment #1: Your comment shows a defeatist attitude. What you need to do is to contact JAMES COWHEY, executive director of the Lancaster County Transportation Coordinating Committee (cowhey@co.lancaster.pa.us (717) 299-8333 Fax : 717-299-3659) and tell him that you don’t want any tax dollars going to pay for the infrastructure for High’s planned Crossings shopping center. Tell him that the public opposes the Crossings because of its closeness to Park City and Long’s Park, also because many other shopping centers in the area have vacant stores.

Tell Cowhey that the Rt. 30/Harrisburg Pike interchange, even if it is not perfect, does a reasonably good job of handling the traffic it has now. Other roads and intersections are in greater need of immediate work, including basic repairs. Tell him that there is something wrong with PennDOT if they can’t plan for more than a 10-year life on a major project such as the $45 million reconstruction, completed in 2001, of the Rt. 30/Harrisburg Pike interchange..

Also, after next Tuesday’s election, write to the newly-elected state and federal officials and tell them that you any oppose any government funds being allocated to rebuild the Rt. 30/Harrisburg Pike interchange.

AOL NEWS:    A handful of McDonald’s employees in northeastern Ohio received handbills in their most recent paychecks suggesting they vote for three Republican candidates.

“If the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels,” the insert said. “If others are elected we will not.”

The fast food chain’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., distanced itself from the action by Canton franchisee Paul Siegfried, saying it was not reflective of the company’s position. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the Democratic elections chief, said she was launching an investigation because the action appeared to violate Ohio election laws… (more)