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See other Home Schooling ArticlesTitle: Daily Action Report 09/23/06
Source: Laptop America
URL Source: http://www.laptopamerica.net/satrudaydar.html
Published: Sep 23, 2006
Author: Bryan Malatesta
Post Date: 2006-09-23 13:12:35 by Bryan M
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Views: 236
September 23, 2006
Norman Thomas, an early leader in the American socialist movement promoted the concept that Americans would never knowingly adopt socialism but, under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened!
Dear Laptop American,
"I have not yet begun to fight!" shouted John Paul Jones when the captain of the British ship Serapis asked if he was ready to surrender. They were so close cannon muzzles touched and masts entangled, yet the American ship Bonhomme Richard, named for Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, refused to give up.
When two cannons exploded and they began sinking, Jones lashed his ship to the enemy's to keep it afloat. After 3 more hours of fighting, the British surrendered. This was September 23, 1779. Called the "Father of the American Navy," John Paul Jones was given command in 1775 of the Continental Navy's first ship, the Providence.
With 12 guns it was the most victorious American vessel in the Revolution, capturing or sinking 40 British ships. In 1778, sailing the Ranger, Jones raided the coasts of Scotland and England.
On February 13, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote: "The remains of Admiral John Paul Jones were interred in a certain piece of ground in the city of Paris...used...as a burial place for foreign Protestants... The great service done by him toward the achievement of independence...lead me to...do proper honor to the memory of John Paul Jones."
Laptop FREEMail …
Detroit Public Schools are Caving from Within: Seperation of School and State Has Opportunity to Shine!
"We're looking at an institution that the public is losing faith with," he said. "It's inconceivable to me that we're really watching the death of a school system -- I suspect that's what's happening."
A 16-day teacher strike may have cost Detroit Public Schools 25,000 students, district officials said Thursday, a potential loss that would mean a cut of $190 million in state aid and almost certainly another dramatic downsizing of schools and employees.
The gloomy estimate, which school officials acknowledge is not exact, comes in advance of Wednesday's official count day, when enrollment numbers are used to determine the amount of state funding to be allocated to districts across Michigan.
The district is embarking on a massive campaign to woo students back, with phone calls and letters to every student's home, enlisting the help of community groups and churches, in addition to count-day pizza and ice cream parties to make sure students are in school Wednesday.
Superintendent William Coleman III made a "fervent appeal" Thursday to parents who left for nearby districts and charter schools during the 16-day teacher strike to "come back to DPS."
Just before 1 p.m. on Thursday, Detroit Public Schools Attendance Officer Marvin Bodley approached a two-story brick duplex on the 3000 block of Monterey, just around the corner from Central High School. Bodley, who's been tracking down truants since 1984, hoped to find out why four school-aged children who live in one of the units weren't attending school.
He met father Harold Williams, 43, who explained the family only owns two uniforms, so the children have been attending school every other day. Bodley handed Williams a $195 Value City voucher to buy the children, ages 8, 9, 11 and 16, each a new uniform, underwear and socks for school.
Williams agreed to get his kids back into school every day. The three younger attend MacCulloch Elementary, while the oldest boy attends Central.
Most of the district's 125 schools, meanwhile, are planning ice cream and pizza parties and raffles next week to entice students to attend school on Wednesday.
Bruce Short of the Exodus Mandate said:
"The government school system was designed by leftwing Unitarians and secular socialists, was originally sold to the country at large on the basis of anti-Catholic animus, and is destroying our children, our families, our churches, and our culture. This obscenely expensive and spiritually, morally, and academically corrupt system was conceived in sin and is going to collapse. Christians have a choice: they can sin against their children by continuing to offer them as living sacrifices to the Moloch of government schools, thereby prolonging the process of collapse and allowing the government schools to inflict vastly more damage, or we can rescue our children and the children of others by creating Christian education alternatives that will allow for an orderly transition from the failing government schools to a new Christian education future. The gathering crisis can lead to revival and renewal. We need to seize the opportunity."
Local columnist Daniel Howe questions if "this is a PR ploy to pressure more state funding from the Democratic incumbent governor who needs Detroit voters to get re-elected. Or maybe it's more front-office overkill to bloody the Detroit Federation of Teachers, which may be too militant for its own good even if its members do have legitimate beefs about how badly the district is run."
"Or maybe it's just the cold, hard truth, real evidence that public education and its partners in organized labor aren't any more immune to market forces than their counterparts in the auto or steel industries."
Mr. Howe continues:
The fiscal reality of Detroit's schools is that its enrollment dropped 23 percent between 1994 and 2005 but its per-pupil revenue increased 94 percent -- more than three times the GDP price inflation for the same period, according to a recent study by Anderson Economic Group.
The slide is accelerating, fueled by a teachers strike, administrative bungling and a recognition that the schools won't get any better so the only plan is an exit plan. Be it 11,000 students or 25,000 a year walking away, the net effect is the same: the infrastructure and those staffing it soon won't have reason to be.
In business, that's a one-way ticket to liquidation. In Detroit's schools, that's reality.
Forty years ago the sociologist James S. Coleman made clear that there's no reliable connection between the resources going into a school and the learning that comes out. Fifty years ago economist Milton Friedman made clear that in education, as in other spheres, monopolies don't work as well as markets. That's why most Republicans and some Democrats favor school choice in its myriad versions and why many, like us, have also embraced today's other important education reform strategy: standards, testing and tough accountability for schools.
Ever since the Commission on Excellence in Education declared in 1983 that America is "at risk" because of the lagging performance of its schools, this country has been struggling to reform its K-12 system. The education "establishment" has wrongly insisted that more money (or more teachers, more computers, more everything) would yield better schools and smarter kids; that financial inputs would lead to cognitive outputs. This is not so.
For more than 220 years - from the 1620s to the 1840s - most American schooling was independent of government control, subsidy, and influence. From this educational freedom the American Republic was born. It is time to go back to the fundamentals.
TAKE ACTION NOW..
Click here to send your FREEMail to the Detroit News writers Catherine Junn and Daniel Howes asking them to continue to expose the Detroit Public School system!
They said it …
"Ever since the Commission on Excellence in Education declared in 1983 that America is "at risk" because of the lagging performance of its schools, this country has been struggling to reform its K-12 system. The education "establishment" has wrongly insisted that more money (or more teachers, more computers, more everything) would yield better schools and smarter kids; that financial inputs would lead to cognitive outputs. This is not so."
To Read More Click here…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001587_pf.html
They said it …
There is one thing we do know. Congress has done absolutely nothing to develop domestic resources, to make America energy independent. The President presents energy plans which Congress rejects, summarily. And there is no executive follow-through. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day. Of this, 12 million barrels are imported.
To Read More Click here…
http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2006/060809.asp
Laptop Video of the Day - To View Click here…
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.freedom-force.org/videos/video.cfm?&player=2-1-05mandrake
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