John McCain: School Choice to "Open up the white school. We want to get in the white school. We want to go where the books are or computers are,"

Illinois Rev./Senator James Meeks wants to "Open up the white school. We want to get in the white school. We want to go where the books are or computers are,"

Click my post title for Rev./Senator Meeks redistribution of wealth scam scheduled for the start of school. For those interested, Meeks and his Media parrots at Chicago Sun Times call for CPS students to ditch school on the opening day and join him for a field trip to Winnetka to protest Illinois Education Funding inequities.

Illinois pays a percentage of the cost of educating a child and property taxes pay out the balance. Thus, if you pay higher property taxes based upon the cost of your home, chances are that your local public school will spend more per pupil.

I drive a Chevy, because my income, mortgage, Catholic school tuition payments, and personal debt precludes my driving a Bentley. My wardrobe reflects that economic snap-shot as well. I can not see me parking myself in front of a Barrington Jaguar dealership bemoaning such a lifestyle inequity - not yet anyway.

Now, if someone were to lavish me and mine with six zeroes behind a set of Arabic numerals into my bank accounts . . . I'd probably still opt for the Chevy. I am a cheap, stingy bastard.
Well, Rev. Senator, School Choice will do just that! However, you and other Public School Industry shills will need to get religion on School Choice.

Taking a thousand or so truant Chicago Public School children on an expensive rhetorical event will get you some press coverage, but tax-payers see through the rhetoric to the heart of this redistribution of wealth dodge.

Using the legislature as a pry bar to other peoples wealth is a radical tactic, but one that is proving little more than a stick-up device on gutless politicians and 40 Watt intellects in the Media. Ask a pipefitter, an electrician, a masonry contractor, carpenter, or nurse how they feel about paying more taxes for failed public schools. No one in the media bothers to ask them.

You'll have press conferences aplenty. No change though.

If you are serious about change - I do not believe for a nano-second that you are though( but that's just me) - you will advocate School Choice, Vouchers, for all Illinois families. There will be no 'white this' and 'black that,' only Choice for all.

Catholic schools, the largest system of alternative education options, do the job that public schools wish that they could do for half the cost of educating a child in an Illinois Public School. More competition from Muslim, Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, Jewish and Independant Schools will force public school sinkholes to operate within their means.

New Trier spends $17,000 per student

CPS throws $ 10,500 + at failure

Catholic Schools spend between $5,000 and $8,000 to move kids to success and also save Illinois tax-payers millions of dollars.

If it is all about Race, then that is pretty sad - understandable and easily performed to be sure but sad.

It is about Change, then you are barking up the wrong tree.

John McCain is for School Choice and against Abortion.

John McCain: School Choice v. Redistribution of Wealth Scam of School Funding Inequities

' I got it. I insist!' - words that warm the hearts of people everywhere following a great meal, an evening of music where the tickets are $ 75 a pop, or the price of an item in the checkout line when you find that you are on the shorts and a nice person waiting behind you springs for the difference. People are generous to a fault - for the most part.

People also tend to pay their own way in life - for the most part. If we can not afford something, we tend to save for it. However, Progressives tend to believe that taking money away from people who work and save and give that money to other people through Progressive initiatives is justice. Not really.

The people who live in wealthy suburbs worked and saved to live there and send their kids to schools there.

Some people live in a cycle of poverty and spiritless entitlement that is created by Progressive Programs that suck the soul out of people.

Some people get very, very wealthy by perpetuating this cycle of poverty and misery.

Allowing someone else to pay for something is a learned grace, for most us. It is part of the social gradus that our baby steps treat us to becoming full human beings. Often it is much more difficult to act graceful in allowing another to pay for something. Our pride often gets in the way.

There is no such grace, expected, or learned, in what passes for the Progressive entitlement industry. Government, to the Progressive, must generate as much capital to be wasted through bureaucracy and sinecure through 'social programs' as possible.

The Public Education Industry, which combines Teachers Unions, lawyers, lobbyists, academics, community activists, tin-horn politicians, school service industries ( food, busing, supplies, storage, security & etc.) and the monstrously obese school management system devours taxes like a celebrity off of Jenny Craig.

Rev./Senator James Meeks plans to bus 'thousands' of truant Chicago Public School children to wealthy north suburban Winneta and Northfield, IL in order to enroll students from Chicago and possibly the south suburbs to highlight what People for the American Way and other Progressive deep thinkers perceive to be a social justice issue - inequity in school funding. Meeks 'wants the world to compare New Trier's average 27.1 ACT score and 95 percent graduation rate with 70 percent graduating from college with a bachelor's degree with his Chicago district: a high school dropout rate averaging 63 percent and only six of 100 of those who go on to college graduating with a bachelor's degree.

"I am sure there are a lot of factors, but the main difference is funding," Meeks said. "New Trier received $17,000 per student, and a high school in my district received $10,000 per student. I believe that the state has an obligation in property-poor schools to make up the gap."

From this effort, Meeks said he hopes to team up with the North Shore communities to find solutions to the inequality problem in education.

"I think they would have want to help out us figure this out. Because I think people who live in Winnetka and Evanston, I think they would understand this issue. We want to team up and take a stand, to write letters, to call on the government, to fix the problems," Meeks said."

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/wilmette/news/1082032,wi-meeks-073108-s1.article

According to People for the American WayHowever, Illinois only pays about 36 percent of all school expenses, far below the national average of 50 percent. The state relies heavily on local property taxes, and on average, local property taxpayers fund about 53 percent of school expenses. The remaining 10 percent or so comes from federal aid.


In 1990, seventy of Illinois’ school districts sued the state, challenging the constitutionality of the school funding formula. The plaintiffs argued that the average tax base in the wealthiest 10 percent of elementary schools was more than 13 times the average of that in the 10 percent of the poorest schools. Such disparities severely impacted a school’s educational quality including teacher quality and academics.9 The case was heard by the state supreme court, which—while acknowledging that the present school funding scheme was unwise—felt that the issue should be handled by the state legislature and not the courts.10


http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=15549

Meeks two biggest contributors to his political life are layers and lobbyist followed closely by Public Sector Unions ( Teachers & SEIU). Taxes mean income to these folks.

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate.phtml?si=200614&c=417339


New Trier: Taxpayers spend $17,000 per student to launch kids toward great achievements

CPS - Spends $10,000 + per student to do very little for them.

Now here's the payoff - for the difference between the two, which is much, much less than either by the way - Catholic schools spend a little less than $ 7,000 per student to do even better for much less:

Compared with their public-school counterparts, more than twice as many minority Catholic-school graduates from urban areas finish college: 27 percent of the Catholic-school graduates finish college, while only 11 percent of minority public-school graduates receive their degrees. And while 62 percent of minority students at urban public high schools graduate, 88 percent of students from the same background complete high school when enrolled in Catholic schools, according to the study.

The opportunity to attend Catholic schools could play an important role in overcoming poverty among urban minorities, Neal said. "In today's labor market, young adults who finish high school -- even if they do not finish college -- earn at least 15 percent more than high school dropouts. Those who finish college earn even more." Higher college completion rates suggest that urban Catholic-school students actually learn more than similar public-school students who complete the same amount of formal schooling, Neal said. "Urban minorities receive significant benefits from Catholic schooling because their public-school alternatives are substantially worse than those of whites or other minorities who live in non-urban areas."

White students also benefit from attending Catholic schools, but the difference in completion rates between white Catholic-school students and those of their public-school counterparts are less dramatic. While 87 percent of white students in urban areas graduate when enrolled in Catholic schools, 75 percent of the white public-school students receive their diplomas. Among white Catholic-school graduates, 42 percent of those who enter college receive a degree, while 31 percent of the white public-school graduates who enter college finish their studies.

Scholars at the University have studied Catholic schools for many years. The late James Coleman, Professor in Sociology, identified strong school communities as one reason for higher achievement in Catholic schools. Anthony Bryk, Professor in Education and the College, has found that a strong core curriculum gives Catholic schools an advantage.

Neal's study is among the first to look at college completion as a measure of the

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/970306/catholic.shtml

Lord Have Mercy!!! The University of Chicago said that?

School Choice and School Vouchers are the only way to fix public schools - tax dollars just feed its gluttonous appetite for more.

Let's save 'I 'll get this one!' for our friends and family and let's have government do the right the thing. Cut the Bull$hit! Back School Choice!

John McCain: Meeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Education as a Redistribution of Wealth Scam

Rev. Senator Meeks of Illinois plans to bus thousands of truant CPS students* to Winnetka's New Trier School District and enroll them in the affluent northern suburb.

Given the cost of gassing up the buses need to take his expected 'thousands of children,' Rev./Senator Meeks is going on the hip in a huge way to bring focus on what he believes to be a two-tiered funding inequity in how education dollars are spent.**

New Trier spends $ 17,000 per student and CPS spends $ 10,000 per student, according to a piece in Salon.

Meeks said he expects several thousand Chicago students to travel in a caravan of buses to New Trier Township High School in the leafy, North Shore suburb of Winnetka, where they will attempt to enroll.

State statistics indicate that the New Trier district spends around $17,000 annually on each of its students compared to the roughly $10,000 a year spent for each student in Chicago public schools.

"We, as a civilized people, can't do it this way," Meeks said. "We're doing irreparable harm to hundreds of thousands of kids."

A civilized solution, Rev./Senator Meeks, is school choice. You oppose School Choice.

School Choice would give your constituents and all Illinois families the choice of where to send their children.

It will save you thousands of needed dollars wasted gassing buses, feeding the children, providing chaperons, security to protect the children up there in Winnetka.

Keep it real, Rev./Senator! Get behind School Choice. End this social justice issue.

John McCain is all about School Choice.

Rev./Senator Meeks will not get behind School Choice. He and Senator Obama are behind a redistribution of wealth strategy for education - noted in the Salon article. The Annenberg Challenge's Billy Ayers is the true craftsman of this 'education reform' dodge. Senator Obama, Rev. Senator Meeks Senate colleague, was the first Chairman of the Chicago Challenge. Redistribution of wealth is at the core of this scam and itr has nothing to do with the safety of children or reforming education.

Overhauling how public schools are funded in Illinois has been hotly debated for years — but to little avail. Critics want the state to move away from a system where money for local schools derives largely from local property taxes, saying the status quo results in vastly better funding of schools in property-rich neighborhoods.

That is socialism, Rev./Senator, not social justice. Keeping it Real.

* Rev./Senator Meeks is calling on CPS students to skip school and go on his field trip.

** Who is springing for the trump to take the kids to Winnetka? Will they be ticketed as truant?