“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Urgency on education
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byNo increase in the charter cap. No urgency to put back into place an accountability system that Governor Patrick zeroed out in his first budget. No urgency whatsoever to do more than talk about the achievement gap.
This is when criticisms about “just words” begin to make sense. We have seen great gains in education, but none of it is attributable to anything this administration has done. For they have not done anything but talk about education policy. Consider the difference between the Governor’s record on education, as we head into year three, and the urgency of Mayor Adrian Fenty, of DC, who has made change in education the number one priority of his administration.
Perhaps the quickest way to get that sense of urgency in DC is to listen to Michelle Rhee before the Education and Labor Committee in July. A couple of quotes gives you a sense of the full scope of what she is after:
Rhee notes that she is seeking to make the
Finally, her impatience with the glacial pace of reforms is front and center in this line:
Obama-Day Mind-Meld
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /by Liam DayTo a comment left on a post on state budget cuts I made the other day at Blue Mass Group, I suggested that federal stimulus dollars might only exacerbate the structural problems in the Commonwealth’s budget because money that flows in this year that is applied to operating expenses will, eventually, have to be supplemented once federal stimulus is off the table. As I wrote,
Well, now, in a meeting with the Washington Post’s editorial board, President-elect Obama had this to say when discussing Social Security, Medicare and the country’s long-term budget deficits:
It’s scary, isn’t it? It’s almost like we’re one mind.
Someone please strip of him of his chairmanship
/3 Comments/in Blog, News /by Liam DayIt seems Edolphus Towns, the incoming Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is calling for hearings on college football’s Bowl Championship Series. He’s even considering subpoenas for NCAA officials, coaches, players, athletic directors and college presidents.
So, let me get this straight. The economy’s in meltdown, Israel has launched a war on Hamas in Gaza, we’re fighting two wars of our own, Russia’s doing it’s annual cut-off-the-gas-to-Ukraine routine, no one seems able to account for the first $350 billion distributed during phase one of the financial sector bailout, the national debt is about to cruise by $10 trillion at 65 mph, if there’s a single state out of the 50 that isn’t staring a yawning budget gap in the face, I don’t know about it, none of this takes into account the public employee pension and health care liabilities that are just waiting to explode at every level of government or the fact that health care spending now accounts for roughly 16% of GDP, and its heading north, not to mention that despite spending billions of dollars on public education in this country too many poor and minority children, particularly males, have a greater chance of winding up in jail than they do going to college. Yet we need hearings because, in the Representative from New York’s own words,
By all means, let’s tackle the hard stuff first.