Luz Shosie and Ned Vare

Freedom and Choice
Go Hand in Hand

(please copy and distribute -- no attribution needed)

The government is failing to educate our children. In (name your state), the
failure follows the national pattern. The school system is not doing its
job. Taxpayers¹ money is being wasted while the children are being denied an
education. More money will not change it. Sending kids to suburban schools
won¹t change it because all the public schools in the state are run by the
state Department of Education by the same rules, methods and mandates and
all offer the same poor quality schooling. It's bad by design.

The public schools are failing everywhere because they don¹t have
effective programs; they have no standards and no goals; they use inferior
methods for instruction (i.e., ³Whole Language² a proven failure instead of
Phonics a proven success); their bad teachers are virtually impossible to
fire thanks to the power of the teachers¹ union; the system has a captive
audience of consumers instead of parents with choices. The situation allows
the schools to fail without losing any customers or funding. In fact, the
worse the schools perform, the higher their funding gets. The Hartford CT
schools prove that -- they are among the nation¹s worst, and yet their per
pupil cost is among the nation¹s highest.

Government school systems are bureaucratic monopolies with one constant
objective: to enlarge their budgets. Their structure and practices guarantee
poor performance. There are no incentives to improve the schools; no rewards
for good teaching and no penalties for incompetence. The system can blame
its customers and ³society² for its own failures -- that¹s convenient but
dishonest -- while its cry remains, ³Give us more money.² Taxpayers are its
captives; the children are its victims.

Ned Vare

Tia Leschke

>Freedom and Choice
>Go Hand in Hand
>
>(please copy and distribute -- no attribution needed)

Copied and distributed - - to my recycling bin.
Tia

What you think of me is none of my business.
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Tia Leschke leschke@...
On Vancouver Island