Friday, May 30, 2008

Sex education gone wild

I read this story and once again received confirmation that sending my daughter to a good, christian school was the right choice to make, expenses be damned!

Now, granted, this is 8th grade, and my daughter's school currently only goes through the 6th grade, but we will likely be transferring her to a christian private school until high school.

If you are not disturbed by this story and interview, please do me a favor and stay away from me and my family. If you are disturbed by the story, but wonder why we are at this point in the world, then allow me to give you my thoughts.

To me, it is real simple. Since the decline of our education system, which I think started in the early 80's, what has changed? We have taken God out of the classroom. We have taken parental choice out of the classroom and have replaced the choice with teacher discretion and teacher union backing. We have taken wrong vs. right answers out of the classroom. We have adopted a PC approach to teaching, where there are no wrong answers and no accountability. Letter grades and red pens are being replaced with smiley faces and partial credit for "thoughtful" answers. Children are no longer seen as innocent and must be inundated with a never-ending barrage of images and material pertaining to sex, drugs, inappropriate behavior, and anti-American view points. All in the name of a "better education". These things are more important than teaching kids how to read, write, perform math, and understand science. Unless of course, it is to teach evolution only.

And what has happened? Test scores are down. Kids graduate from high school without the ability to read. School violence rates increase and we have kids performing mass murder on school grounds. And the parents of these children often point the finger elsewhere, file lawsuits because the system exposes their kids as not being ready to enter the world, and other such challenges arise. Or even worse, change the way the test is written to get scores higher.

Does that make sense? A child cannot pass a test they should have been able to pass between the 8th and 10th grades, so instead of forcing that kid to study and learn, they want to make it easier? What message does that give our children? If you are dumb enough, you will get by? Is this education really better? How about you teach our kids how to read and write and develop skills necessary to compete in the real world and let the parent's give you input on this process, while they also teach their children about the horrors of the real world.

Monday, May 19, 2008

As if we needed any more reasons to build a fence

Are we ever going to really get serious about protection for our citizens? I am not talking about someone who crosses into Mexico. As far as I am concerned, your chances of death double if not triple by crossing over into ol' Mexico.

Drugs are a huge problem, and they are only getting worse. And just because most of the death occurs in Mexico, there is no reason to believe it will not get worse here, particularly int he Southwest. Anyone who honestly believes these killings are not drug related needs to get their heads out of the sand.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Won't somebody think about the children!

I have said it before, and I will say it again. The problem is not with funding, it is how the money is spent on education.

How many times do I have to say it?

$8,610.00 per kid, and still that is not enough. Classroom sizes of 22-25 children are way too large. Chaos! Pandemonium! Outright terror over the education of our children!

And yet . . .

My daughter attends a private school with grades K-6. The teachers make comparable salaries to public school teachers and have decent benefits. Each class averages about 22 students, my daughter has 23 right now in her 1st grade class. WITH daycare provided before and after school, I spend less than $6,000 per year. If I did not require after school care, it would be $4,250.00 per year. Daycare averages to about $2.00 per hour.

And what do we get for this cost? Excellent, kind and caring staff. Decent facilities with good books and learning materials. A functional library. A decent computer lab. An after school study hall program. After school programs which include playground time, an exercise program, a Spanish program, and an occasional science program. Scouting program opportunities. A school musical. At least two field trips per class, per year. And, a christian education.

The school tests better as a whole than over 90% of the other schools in the entire State. My daughter reads at a 4th + grade level and has a 4th grade math comprehension level. The kids are taught cursive in kindergarten, and they do full book reports, including notes, drafts, and an art project in the 1st grade.

Now compare that to the average educational experience of kids in our public school system.

The effects of decreased illegal immigration

I doubt you would see an article like this on any liberal site. Or in most areas of the media for that matter.

Imagine that! Illegal immigrants leave a state and crime goes down. Budget issues are relieved. Hospital waits and care are decreased. Social service costs drop. Unemployment numbers look better. It makes perfect sense, but then again, sensible discussion is hard to come by when speaking to the pro-illegal crowd.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Why trim the budget, let's just spend more in California!

I made mention of Governor Schwarzenegger and his "spend more, reduce none" practices and budget proposals a few weeks ago on this blog.


In case you have been living under a rock, our supposed "conservative, Republican" Governor has turned into a spending machine the last 1.5 years or so, and seems content with the liberal-minded, Democrat thought process on raising taxes whenever the budget calls for it. Forget about cutting pork projects out. Forget about making school districts accountable for their teachers performance and for the horrific results on the education status of our children. Let's just take money from other sources and tax more!

Today, the Governor proposed borrowing against FUTURE state lottery revenue to close the budget deficit gap. While I was thinking about the article, I reminded myself of something discussed in the 1980's when the lottery was a hot topic. Wasn't a big benefit of the lottery to provide revenue for education in the first place? How much is being sent to the budget already?The site for the paper Contra Costa Times http://www.contracostatimes.com had a great proposal to cutting the debt down (sorry, but the link is not up for the site right now). The proposed the government sell unneeded and unnecessary lands. I doubt the Governor will take a look at that proposal. Instead, he wants to find money earmarked for other purposes and use it in a general fund capacity.

Schwarzenegger has also recently backed away from the most of the sound school cut proposals, which previously trimmed bloated school district staff positions and made the school districts and teachers unions more accountable for their membership and the results in the classroom. the purpose was to help get the budget under control. Instead, he will be INCREASING funding by $1.8 billion. The article mentions that there is still a $4 billion decrease because of no pay raises.


No pay raises? What about retaining the best teachers for the best education, which usually means a good salary with benefits? Why does the teacher always seem to get the first beating when it comes to budget cuts? Those are the questions which ALWAYS arise when education is discussed. Before you pull out your hanky and shed a tear over the poor teacher, consider how the budget is actually spent. Indeed, the average pay for teachers in this state is the highest in the nation (see page 2 of link).


In case that argument is not good enough, how about pay based on results, as it is in the rest of the real world? The concept is real simple. FOR EXAMPLE: When I go in for my yearly performance review, any salary increase for the following year is based on numbers: how many cases I closed, how my file reviews went, how the employers I work for rate my work product. The math is simple: the better the numbers, the better the raise. The worse the numbers, the lower the raise, to possibly no raise at all.


A lot has been said recently about where California ranks as far as per student funding. I read a relatively even-handed report last month from San Diego's local paper, which commented on different reports and method's for determining the per-student funding. You can read it here. The article makes brief mention of school performance, which bolsters my argument over merit pay. But what the article, does not mention, and what will almost never be mentioned in any article, ANYWHERE, is what amount of the per student money actually makes it to the classroom.


The California education bureaucracy is gigantic, the biggest in the nation. And on average, almost 50 cents of every dollar (1/2 of every dollar for the readers educated in the public education system) never makes it to the classroom. I would be very interested to see the report which compares that figure to the bureaucracy costs of each state in the union. I have yet to find that report, but I can guarantee you we are one of the worst in the nation. I would also be so bold as to assert that the other state education systems which have poor student results would have the same problem.


And while I am on the subject, make one more point, then touch on a taboo subject. I understand larger classrooms = more student problems and lower testing rates, for the most part. However, if you are educating 24 as opposed to 22 students, does the difference really matter at that point? The classroom received the extra $7 grand per student, yet the results are significantly lower? That does not seem to make sense to me.

Now, the taboo subject- illegal immigration and the effect on education. When my daughter needed to enter into the education system, her mother and I discussed public versus private education. During that discussion we both agreed that the school system in the area she was living was terrible, as was the school district area North of her home, and South of her home. My area had a pretty good district. The area to the East of me was not great, as was the area South. The area East to me and North had good testing and education marks. I checked each area with State figures and testing results.

What did all of these areas have in common? The areas with schools that had poor performance and overall district problems all have high illegal populations, high Spanish to English immersion figures and very high minority populations, the majority being Hispanic. The areas with good to great districts has the opposite. You can argue that this is an over-broad opinion and that my comments are racist in nature, or flawed in some manner. And I encourage you respond and comment on how I am incorrect. But like it or not, illegal immigration is a huge problem on the education system, and I challenge any reader to point out different. If you would like, I can give specific cities and specific districts.

Does this mean all minorities are the problem? Absolutely not! Does this mean that this trend is the same all over the state? Absolutely not! There are many minority students who are exceeding and doing well, illegal or not. There are districts doing well which may have a significant number of illegal students. There are districts with large numbers of Caucasian students who are doing poorly. What I am merely pointing out is that there is the 500 lb. gorilla in the room that is illegal immigration and people don't want to address it for fear of being called a racist or a bigot. But like it or not, a good hard look at the problem shows a big issue under the surface.

The solution to our State education and budget woes does not lie with tax increases and robbing the lottery revenue. It lies with cutting unnecessary bureaucracy positions and forcing the government to live within its means. Put in enough money to actually teach kids while limiting the bureaucracy cut, put in enough money to pay infrastructure improvements and maintenance, put in enough money for health and safety services, and then see what extra projects can be completed. And on top, quit pandering to Unions!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Bernie Ward- A story about a liberal you won't see on liberal sites

When a prominent conservative is accused of a sexual crime, no matter big or small, it appears on every liberal web site, one of the top stories.

When it pertains to a prominent liberal, you really won't see it anywhere.

And people say there is no liberal bias.

When this story first broke and Ward indicated he was only using the images as research material for a book, I went on more than a few prominent liberal sites, which had entry after entry of people who cried out that Ward was being framed, or he really was just doing research, or this was just a smear job. And my favorite, bringing up the likes of Senator Larry Craig and Mark Foley, two other idiots who should have been tossed long ago.

There, I said it- get rid of Foley (done) and Craig (pending). Does that make a lib feel better tonight? Will they sleep better knowing that there is a conservative out there who agrees with you? I hope so, now let's get back to the issue at hand.

Does the fact that there are disgusting Republicans and conservatives out there detract from this animal and his antics? No, it does not!

Now that the truth has come out, we know that Ward was not storing pictures for research. He was too busy sending the images along with some naughty chat to an online dominatrix to finish that book he was writing.

Come one, come all. Who will be the first former liberal defender of this animal to admit they were wrong?

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Taxes, taxes, and more taxes for California

I read this gem of a story, about some areas for proposed new taxes from our "liberal-in-a-conservative-clothing" Governor.

perhaps rather then spending more and wasting millions, Governor Schwarzenegger should actually "cut up the credit card", like he previously stated.