Vouchers: Eric Zorn Calls it "Pixie Dust" But He Calls For A Stall to Avoid Getting Pinned!

A Stall gets a warning, then penalty points awarded to the opponent and then disqualified.

The financial losses in Indiana this year to public schools and the gains to parochial schools will amount to rounding errors.

But that enrollment limit will grow to 15,000 for the next school year, then the cap will come off the year after that.

So give it a few years. We'll then be able to study firsthand the largest and most ambitious voucher program in the country and see whether, this time, pixie dust has somehow conquered fear and history.

Eric Zorn in chair of Public Education Team Fish.

Pixie Dust? So a State like Indiana denies Gold Dust to the education lobby ( teachers unions, bus companies, vendors, cafeteria's serving tax-funded mandated healthy-choice meals to kiddies, special ed co-ops, and etc.) and therefore a social injustice is prefabricated. Well yeah.

Inquiry, science, data, tests and measures, expectations and outcomes, graphs, and logarithms are pulled out of the John Dewey sandbox and put on display by Diane Ravitch. Awed quiet descends upon the cowed masses. Eric Zorn trucks out the Dewey sand buckets, shovels and rakes once again.

However, Eric Zorn and the opponents of School Reform ( see education lobby above) are not crowing victory and going for the pin on the wrestling mat of public debate.
Nope, Eric Zorn is coaching the pencil-necked geeks on the mat to 'fish' off and stall. The referee gives a warning and then calls penalty points against Team Zorn - Point Vouchers! Stalling! Points get added to the lustier and more honest opponent and eventually The fish of Team Zorn get disqualified.

For a clear assessment of the Milwaukee Voucher Program, click my post title and scroll down to pages nine(9) and ten (10). The lads explain the math. John Dewey, the Daddy of Public Education demands that inquiry is the Alpha and Omega - where you want an argument to end is the beginning of all inquiry.

One very cogent critic of Diane Ravitch's Inquiry states this

Vouchers have seen at least modestly positive results for test scores in several studies, and have boosted graduation rates and college attendance everywhere that question has been studied. (The latest study of Milwaukee found that students who received vouchers for all four years of high school graduated at a 94% rate, compared to 75% for equivalent students who stayed in the public school system. The college attendance rates for the two groups were 54.4% and 34.5% respectively.)

In the overwhelming majority of studies, vouchers have also boosted the performance of public schools as well.

"They do allow more privileged constituents to divest from the education of Milwaukee's inner city children."

It's very odd to describe the recipients of vouchers as "more privileged," given the income limitations. Are you one of those people who classify impoverished inner city residents into the "privileged" and "not-privileged" simply based on who decides to pursue a voucher?

Indiana had the political will enact school reform by making school vouchers and school choice a reality. That scares the bejesus out of the education lobby that is so thick (literally and rhetorically) here in Illinois.

As soon as Charter schools became a reality in Illinois, SEIU and the Chicago Teachers Union went judge shopping and politician corralling in order to 'allow' the unionization of Charter Schools ( Ralph Ellison Charter just west of Catholic Leo High School), in order to bring the blessings of public education to Charters and make them ultimately disastrous public schools.

Catholic, Dutch, Jewish, and Independent schools outperform public schools. Leo High School, where the only privileged person in this hoary structure is me, serves African young men from Englewood, Gresham, Brainerd, Grand Crossing, Chatham and a white kid from Canaryville and sent every one of last years graduates off to great schools armed with scholarship based upon achievment money. Our ACT scores rose by 4.5% points in the last two years. It is not brain surgery, nor is it Pixie Dust.

Public Education is a disaster because it has, nor wants, fairness. All Public Education wants is more tax-payer dollars.

The Stall is for fish in wrestling - kids that are too timid, too weak, and too unskilled to grapple on the mat. The Stall sometimes employed to avoid outcomes - a pin, a decision, a loss. Pixie Dust? Naw, just the rules. If you can't compete, you lose.

Stalling (you get one warning before you are penalized and points are awarded).

The first and second time you are penalized, your opponent is awarded one point. The third time you are penalized, your opponent is awarded two points. The fourth time you are penalized, you are disqualified. (Except for illegal starting position or false start - you are cautioned twice, then one point awarded for each infraction, but you will not be disqualified. In the event of Flagrant Misconduct, you are ejected from the match on the first offense, you lose the match, and 3 team points are deducted).


http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2011/09/heres-some-school-choice-for-you-lets-choose-to-wait-and-see-on-vouchers.html

Education is About Vision, Authority and Concern - And Then There is the Department of Education.

On May 9th 1852 in Baltimore, the Pope appointed Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Kenrick who opened the First of Three American Plenary Councils that included six archbishops thirty five suffragan bishops, provincial heads of the religious orders and other prelates.

Twenty Five decrees were issued one of which - the establishment of Catholic schools in each parish to be overseen by the pastor.

Decree 13.Bishops are exhorted to have a Catholic school in every parish and the teachers should be paid from the parochial funds.

Subsequently,

Title ix, Of the Education of Youth.-(i) Of parish schools. Teachers belonging to religious congregations should be employed when possible in our schools. The latter should be erected in every parish. For children who attend the public schools, catechism classes should be instituted in the churches. (ii) Industrial schools or reformatories should be founded, especially in large cities. (iii) A desire is expressed to have a Catholic university in the United States.

And finally,

Title vi, Of the Education of Catholic Youth, treats of (i) Catholic schools, especially parochial, viz., of their absolute necessity and the obligation of pastors to establish them. Parents must send their children to such schools unless the bishop should judge the reason for sending them elsewhere to be sufficient. Ways and means are also considered for making the parochial schools more efficient. It is desirable that these schools be free. (ii) Every effort must be made to have suitable schools of higher education for Catholic youth.

Vision, Authority and Concern were the three legs of the Catholic model that has become the foundation for morphing of public schools - Charter Schools are Catholic Schools without God of course.

Education requires Vision - A view of a systematic approach to teaching the acquired mastery of shared knowledge and wisdom needed; Authority - the dissemination of thought, method and purpose should lie in the care of a master teacher who connects to a higher authority; Concern - an operational organization and oversight that recognizes the shared Vision and Authority.

Then we have the United States Department of Education - “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively; or to the people.”



,

established in 1977, because . . . ?

Where there is no vision, the people perishProverbs 29:18 . . .however, that maxim, or aphorism, or dare I say it proverb is not allowed in public education.

Money is all that is needed by the Department of Education.

Catholic schools flourished in America, because of Vision, Authority, and Concern. The Authority thing is always a sticking point for the John Dewey - "Well, Who's to Say" crowd. "Who's to say that teaching X-Men is not more likely to stop bullying of 'questioning adolescents, than offering Henry V? Besides, Mr. Navel has never read Henry V, or anything by that misogynist Hemingway." The Baltimore Councils banned books that were 'considered' bad for Catholic school kids - bad because they lured innocent, ignorant and independent little minds away from the Vision. That takes Care, or Concern.

Secretary Duncan leads a Federal Department that seems to be lacking vision. Secretary Duncan demonstrates a solid lack of authority in the piece above and who Cares?

Education in American needs radical transformation - witness the recent nonsense at one of America's most prestigious schools -Northwestern. American essayist and retired Northwestern professor Joseph Epstein writes in The Weekly Standard

That so many of the faculty at Northwestern had no qualms about her proselytizing students is noteworthy. But then there is always faculty ready to back up the most egregious behavior of colleagues. In the case of J. Michael Bailey, the Chronicle of Higher Education chimed in with an article by an assistant professor of sociology at Middlebury College named Laurie Essig, who finds the Northwestern sex scandal, as we now say, a great learning moment. Professor Essig is of the view that shaking things up, attacking the status quo, is of the very essence of education, what the whole enterprise is really about.

“Clearly,” Essig writes, “this ‘live sex act’ triggered a national conversation about what we can and cannot look at.” She goes on to ask “what is it about the fact that there were people there on the stage that makes it different than a film with a sex scene or a book with a sex scene? . . . Why are we so damn uncomfortable with sex that is not mediated by film or text that ABC, CNN, and all the rest of the media outlets can’t stop talking about it?” Essig even wonders if “the live sex act had occurred between a straight, vanilla, normatively gendered and married couple, would we have cared as much?” She concludes: “These all seem like important questions and questions that can be asked because a professor allowed something to happen in his classroom and triggered a national debate about the dangers
of sex and education getting into bed together.”

Professor Essig joins Professor Bailey as one of the university’s shock troops. A student I talked with, who had earlier taken Bailey’s human sexuality course and who did not otherwise speak harshly of him, noted that he seemed more than normally pleased to shock his audience of students. Does Professor Bailey, one has to wonder, thrill to his own acts of épater les bourgeois? Does he, so to say, get off in his combined role as Pied Piper, Krafft-Ebing, and the Diaghilev of the kinky?

Where is the Vision? Where the Authority? Sex toys for a liberal education and grounding in the shared wisdom of ages;teachers of English who can not spell Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Emily Dickinson have become the common feature and money is the only answer. Concern? Who Cares?

Many do.

Like this skilled tradesman who responded to Illinois SEIU's Progress Illinois warning about School Choice 'bubbling up' again in Springfield, Illinois with a voucher legislation proposal,

Vouchers offer a way out of the expanding cost of education in the state of Illinois.

Give every kid a voucher for use at the choice of their parents. Public, private, it should make no difference.

If public school are superior they will overwhelm the private schools. If Private school are superior they will overwhelm the public schools.

Labor unions can organize and represent teachers at whatever school they labor at. Unions fear private school because they're afraid they can't organize them and they don't want to extend the effort to organizing.

Free choices should be available to the citizens of the state of Illinois.

Bob Kastigar
IBEW Local 1220

http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2011/03/14/vouchers-bubble-again-springfield

American Public Education !

I doubt very much that the manager of this Gary Burger King was a graduate of Bishop Noll Institute, Andrean High School, or La Lumiere School in the Gary Diocese.

That is too bad. Were School Choice a Reality, the Sign Might be less Amusing . . .yet Sad.

Hat tip to Detective Shaved of the Chicago Police Department

Dan Proft - The Only Candidate for Governor Offering a Real Solution to School Reform

I love Clout. I'd love to have some. Like my helot neighbors, I watch the checking balance dip close to the danger zone each pay period - mortgage, groceries, McAuley Tuition (paid), McAuley books for one ($ 600 + Paid), gas ( $30 fill-up), Mr. Swifty Dry Cleaning (Priceless), Cable ( $58), ComEd ( a lung), People Gas ( the other lung), ATT ($$$$) and of course my extravagant lifestyle that takes me to the Islands ( Blue Island, Stony Island & if I am very good Treasure Island in Old Town).

Clout is that thing you read about in the newspapers and hear on TV - it is a very good thing. I once witnessed a Cook County Board Reformer bully an underling at City Hall Office of Special Events for his Taste of Chicago VIP passes, only to see him on Chicago Tonight with the nodders as he railed against the Bosses!Bosses? The fact is the only genuine exercises of Clout that I have ever witnessed were performed by the Pilates Class of Reformers -"Do You Know Who I Am?"

Yes, Madam, and what you are!

Well, now Dan Proft is running for Governor as a Republican. I just voted for John McCain and have yet to get over that gum scraping.

However, I have always been charmed - charmed I tells you - by Dan Proft's simple declarative sentences that lack any and all passive/aggression that so clearly marks a Progressive, or a goof.

Pat Quinn is earnest. He always seemed to be too good of a guy to be a Progressive, but he plays ball with them and that is enough to put this boy off his Hungry Man dinner. Poor Pat Quinn is staked out for the dingoes.

Dan Hynes? He'll be fine; he always is.

But Dan Proft is the only man in the race talking the truth about Clout for School Reform. Proft's Clout should get him every vote of every Illinois voter who understands that Public Education in Illinois is a Fixed Deal - an Old Country Buffet of empty calories.

Proft wants to make every Illinois school child and their families Clout Captains. Proft is a hard kid. He will brook no guff or back sass from the Nose Gays in the News Business or the Cadillac Commies of SEIU. He has taken some hard hits and yet always manages to get a nice Knuckley one between the lamps of the cheap-shot artists.

Wouldn't you like to have the same "clout" as the politically-connected,
particularly when it came to the education of your children?

Are you tired of a system that discriminates against families based on
their income and address?

Well, under a Proft administration, you have been pre-selected for the
"clout list".

With 13,000 Chicago Public School families with children on waiting
lists to attend charter schools, is it any wonder that a few parents
with political connections would try to get their children into one of
Chicago's elite schools? Of course it isn't. It is entirely natural for
parents to want the best education possible for their children.

Instead of scrambling over a pile of other politicians and media elites
to more vociferously denounce the CPS clout list, I pledge to do the
opposite: I will formalize it and to expand it. It's as simple as this:

If your name is in the phone book, your name is on the clout list.

As governor, I will create a Universal Clout Program.

In a Proft Administration every family, regardless of address or income,
that is currently faced with the prospects of sending their children to
schools that we know will fail them, would be able to send their child
to the school of their choice. Instead of sending education dollars to
centralized bureaucracies like CPS, a Proft Administration will attach
those dollars to the students, allowing their parents to choose which
school is best for their child.

As governor, I will invest in children, not Soviet-era bureaucracies
like CPS.

Competition works.

I like Clout. Hope we all get some.

Steve Huntley - Sun Times' Last Man Standing for Balance

whalen wrote:
Boo hoo, Steve. The Neanderthals lost the elections in 2008, remember? Pardon our dust as we rush past the Cro-Magnon years to enact much-belated initiatives before it is too late for all of us!

Well, Whalen - the last time Progressives had such a 'Pardon Our Dust' victory was the advent of Prohibition. From 1919 until its Repeal, America was set-back on its heels, Whalen.

Sorry, I can be prickly . . .Whalen , or as some Progressive might opine. without the adverbial ending there. With John Dewey*-esque devotion to 'inquiry' over fact, a Progressive Whalen responded to Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley - The Last Man Standing - over his revelatory column on Progressive Force-feeding of the Government Goose.

John Dewey is the father of radical progressive thought in America and the beauty who's views on education slaughtered Public Education**. Let it be pointed out -Oh, do - that John Dewey established a Lab School for the elites, while the unwashed masses could serve as lab-rats in an educational philosophy that pushed Public Education to eliminate the guts of education.

The study of how the American Government ( local,state and federal) has all but vanished; the canon of American Literature and British Literature has been diluted to a watery and sugary and under-nourishing swill; that for the Dewey Public Schools "inquiry" is the ethic - child should do as opposed to learn and they do not learn. With each new Hegelian/Marxist doctoral thesis comes a further murder of thought and history.

For Dewey and Progressives 'Inquiry' upon which an a priori goal - Gay Studies, Identity Politics in general, Group Thought is achieved and put in place. If you do not know a Concordat from a Magna Carta, a Peace of Wesphalia from a Piece of the Pie, then it is a fair chance that you are Public School Alum of the last forty years.

In that case,let's take this slowly - John Dewey was a philospher of education, society, and psycholgy at the University of Chicago, who was heavily influeced by the German thinker Hegel. who is actually the granddaddy of Marxist thought. John Dewey believed that 'inquiry' is the most important thing in life so long as the outcomes agree with that inquiry. Thus, if we inquire into poverty as rooted in Racism; all poverty results from racism. If failure results from poverty. racism caused failure & etc. Progressive inquiry arrives at a Pre-Determined outcome.

Gay Marriage is good; all opposition to Gay Marriage is evil; Gay Marriage is good.

Abortion is Women's Reproductive Health, Uterine Cancer is a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; Uterine Cancer . . . Hey, get me a good Nuancer over here!

Dewey made the Artificial, Natural.

Take a look at the Media which offers a "Let's Look at Race Relations!" series.

The outcome is fixed - Systemic Racism, Imperialism, Class ism is always the conclusion. Whites are always bad and people of color are always good. Hence, no Race Crime can be committed by a person of color. Why? Don't matter just is and that is Dewey. Dewey Agree!

Dewey had clout ( Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman,I.F.Stone W.E.B. DuBois & etc.). Radical Progressive clout saw Dewey's Philosophy as a burglar bar with which to loot American History and geld American Education. Inquiry is not method it is a goal in Dewey Education.

Steve Huntley represents a mind-set that is valued by most Americans. The old Benthamite view of 'the most good for the most people.' Common Sense.

In Steve Huntley's June 26, 2009, he outlines the Progressive Agenda and the force feeding by the Democratic Leadership in the Congress at the direction of President Obama's White House:

Congress, driven by President Obama's ambitious political agenda, is out to be a jack of all trades. Just look at its to-do list for this year -- health-care reform, clean energy legislation, overhaul of financial regulation, a rewrite of immigration law, stimulus spending to prod the economy toward recovery. Whew! And with six months left in 2009, who knows what else might be added?

That list doesn't include such major business as considering a new U.S. Supreme Court nominee or a host of less sweeping but still significant bills, like a just-passed measure giving an overburdened Food and Drug Administration the duty of regulating tobacco. . . .
With Democrats in total control of the House and close to it in the Senate, fierce partisanship, long-cherished liberal goals and the pent-up energy of the Democratic left are driving the transformational agenda. There's no argument many of the bills address problems needing a fix, but that's best achieved with at least a degree of bipartisan support. Yet we're being force-fed a liberal prescription. A crowded agenda controlled by Democrats and a White House push for quick action crowd out competing views.

Regrettably, the major national media have been compliant. For example, this week ABC News offered an hour in prime time for Obama to monopolize the national discussion on health care.

Yet polls consistently show public discomfort with the implications of greater government control of medical services, worry about the costs and a high-level of satisfaction with their current health care among the majority with insurance. Recent news reminds us a public insurance option would open a new avenue for abuse of the taxpayer. Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of the northwest suburbs has started a "medi-fraud blog" tracking corruption and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. His latest entries note that in just the last week prosecutors broke up schemes in Detroit and Miami to defraud Medicare of $150 million.

Another issue is energy. Some of us think the emphasis should be more on energy security than green goals. Yes, we all want a cleaner planet, but our national security and economic future require the exploitation of abundant fossil fuels such as domestic coal and offshore oil as well as expansion of nuclear energy while we develop solar, wind and geothermal for the long term.

Similarly, the economic meltdown naturally leads to new regulation. Yet remember the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002, after the accounting scandals, saddled business with expensive and complex regulations making U.S. enterprises less competitive.

The focus on regulation ignores government's role in the housing collapse. The Wall Street Journal reports Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who encouraged the mortgage excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is at it again, urging the agencies to lower lending standards for condo buyers. Sounds like another dose of the easy credit that wrecked home values.

Obama and Democrats insist Congress works for the good of America in taking on so many projects. But the jack of all trades, as you may recall, is the master of none. Is that how you want the future of your health care or energy supply to be determined?

Columnist Steve Huntley, investigative journalist Tim Novak and Pultizer Prize winning cartoonist Jack Higgins maintain some semblance of thoughtful inquiry for Chicago, because they know that inquiry is not a goal upon which people are forced to agree.

Winning an election is only the beginning of government. The end of government is the preservation of the American Republic. Democrats and Republicans have been doing just that, until these last few months, it seems to me. Dewey has replaced the Founders Fathers for the Progressives. For now.

History has a way of Repealing itself!

*

Dewey is “attractive to those how are more impressed by our new control over natural forces than by the limitations to which that control is subject,” finding that Dewey’s philosophy “is in harmony with the age of industrialism and collective enterprise.” But it is Dewey’s underlying hubris that Russell singles out as “the greatest danger in our time” because “it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster,” however unintentionally.

Russell’s fears, at least in part, have been realized. There are many who would, without hesitation, describe public education, in combination with other social, economic and political forces, a “vast social disaster.” There are, of course, many more that disagree.

http://home.earthlink.net/~fheapblog/id28.html

**

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language.

I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature. . . I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. ( emphasis my own)

I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator.

I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.