Circum Spective

Brother Baa-aa-rock is serving Kool-Aid, if you'd like to join him in a drink. 
Washington (DC) AP -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday dangled $5 billion in federal grants to states willing to undertake a top-to-bottom overhaul of their schools in support of White House priorities.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus bill included the education grants - more money than any president has ever had for overhauling schools - for which states can compete. Only Education Secretary Arne Duncan - not Congress - has control over who gets it. And only some states, perhaps 10 to 20, will actually get the money.

The administration can't really tell states and schools what to do, since education has been largely a state and local responsibility throughout the history of the U.S. But the grants give Obama considerable leverage. He sees the test score data and charter schools, which are publicly funded but independent of local school boards, as solutions to the problems that plague public education.

[Of course, Barack has also been seeing fairies and unicorns flying around the Oval Office, so ... ?]

The national teachers unions disagree. They say student achievement is much more than a score on a standardized test and say it's a mistake to rely so heavily on charter schools.

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The national teachers unions disagrees because they don't want to be held accountable for their laziness and failures. Period. That's why teachers' unions exists: to prevent public school teachers from being held accountable. My experience is: if the pay of public school teachers was actually tied to performance (real performance), then only about one in every twenty would earn enough to pay his or her rent.

The public school system should be abolished for all but the poorest of the poor. Every other parent should have to either pay for their children's education ... or teach them personally.
Yes. It would be a huge sacrifice. The parents' "standard of living" might even drop a level or two (if you measure standard of living by how many "toys" and much junk you can purchase and accumulate over the course of your lifetime). So what? Our real standard of living would collectively improve. The standard that is measured by integrity, sacrifice, building strong relationships with one's children, and passing on lessons of character.

The law? Providing your own children with an education would be mandatory, and one would have to show a case of true hardship to be permitted to send one's child to a "public school". Otherwise,  the free market (and parents' willingness to sacrifice for their children) would determine quality of education. If Bob down the street would rather spend his money on a new car or a gigantic television than on getting his child a better education ... fine. My kids will govern his when they all grow up.
As it should be.

Besides ... the public school system has become the enemy of Jesus Christ. I do not now understand, nor have I ever understood) why any true believer -- any devout Christian -- would send his or her child to a public school. It is an abomination, and shirking of one's duty as a Christian parent. Why not just skip all the pretense and send them to a school that openly teaches them to worship Satan? The people who run the public school systems, who set their policies and approve or disapprove their curricula, hate the God of the Bible.

Now, don't get all offended yet. I'm not referring to every individual teacher or principal or administrator or lunch lady. I am referring to the ones who govern the schools. No, not local school boards. The federal bureaucrats who populate the Education Department, and the lawyers who populate the offices of the ACLU. That's who sets policy and approves or disapproves curricula.