Category Archives: Education

Another Argument In Favor Of Separating Education And The State

Education

This time from Portland, Maine:

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.

King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches. Condoms have been available at King’s health center since 2000.

Students need parental permission to access the school’s health center. But treatment is confidential under state law, which allows the students to decide whether to inform their parents about the services they receive.

This isn’t about birth control or contraceptives, it’s about the fact that the school system has decided to take upon itself a job that, rightfully, belongs in the hands of parents. And, unless, parents can afford to send their children to private school, they have no choice but to accept policies like this even if they disagree with them.

There is every chance that parents will now be left out of the loop, unaware that their child could be having sexual relations. Does this also mean that fewer students will now use condoms, as there will be a variety of contraceptives readily available? This could lead to a spike in cases of STD’s, and if parents are unaware that their children are engaging in sexual activity, they won’t know that they need to take them to somewhere like Priority to get tested. This move by the education officials creates more problems than it solves.

The solution, it seems, is obvious. Get government out of the education business, let parents choose where they send their children to school. And stop this insane practice of turning teachers and school nurses into replacements for a Mom and a Dad.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

State Rep To Students — That’s Not My Porn!

Education, Government Waste, Legal

Considering this happened to seniors in high school, I don’t think anyone was surprised… I’m sure they’ve all seen it before. The guys have invariably all searched for it on their own computers, and the girls have those anatomical features, so I’m sure they’ve seen them. I think the only surprise would have been if the pictures were of someone in the class (which would have been hilarious, IMHO)… So don’t expect me to call for this guy to be tarred and feathered.

But this reminds me greatly of the “series of tubes” incident. If this guy’s not smart enough to understand that you should figure out what’s on a flash drive BEFORE you arrive at the school, he probably shouldn’t be writing legislation…

State rep gives students revealing presentation

Seniors in government class at Norwalk High School might have thought they were in anatomy class Tuesday when a topless photo popped up during a PowerPoint presentation.

State Rep. Matt Barrett, D-Amherst, was speaking to a class when he plugged a flash drive, a portable memory storage device, into the teacher’s computer. A dialogue box and a topless photo popped up on screen, he said.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I didn’t know where it was coming from — if it was coming from the flash drive or what.”

…

After the class, Barrett, the teacher, the principal, the district’s technology director and Superintendent Wayne Babcanec met to discuss the incident. They found an entire directory of inappropriate photos on the flash drive, which Barrett received from a legislative liaison from the state library.

They called the Norwalk Police Department and the Ohio Highway Patrol to look into it as well.

…

“There is no specific individual we’re looking at. At this time, we’re trying to figure out what is on the jump drive and how it got there,” said Lt. Tony Bradshaw of the Ohio Highway Patrol.

Well, don’t worry… Now that the “authorities” are involved, they’re going to make sure a silly situation becomes absurd. The Highway Patrol is going to spend your tax dollars to find out exactly why and how 25 (or so) students, mostly 17 and 18 years old who have worse on their own computers, got a 3-second glimpse of some mammary glands. Well, they won’t likely find out. And even if they do, they probably have no recourse to prosecute. So it’s an expensive exercise in futility, which will likely result in hundreds of man-hours and thousands of tax dollars spent resulting in a case closed without resolution.

But all that doesn’t bother me. I’m not in Ohio, those aren’t my tax dollars, so I’ll just enjoy the schadenfreude while it lasts!

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

School Choice For Me, But Not For Thee

Education

That, it appears, is the attitude shared by a sizable plurality of Senators and Members of Congress who choose to send their children to private schools rather than public schools:

Many Members of Congress value the opportunity to choose a safe and effective school for their own children, yet many of these same Members consis­tently oppose school choice legislation that would give the same opportunity to other families. For example, Senators Edward Kennedy (D–MA) and Hil­lary Clinton (D–NY) have been outspoken opponents of school choice initiatives even though both have sent their children to private schools.

Since 2000, The Heritage Foundation has con­ducted several surveys of Members of Congress to determine how many Senators and Representatives practice school choice by sending their children to private school. In 2007, The Heritage Foundation updated this survey and found that 37 percent of Representatives and 45 percent of Senators in the 110th Congress sent their children to private schools in houston—almost four times the rate of the general population.

Based on the survey results, if all of the Members who exercised school choice for their own children had supported school choice in policy, every major legislative effort in recent years to give parents school choice would have passed. Congress should support policies that give all families the opportunity to choose the best school options for their children.

I don’t begrudge the efforts of Congressman and Senators who want to do better for the children, and who wish to give them an education better than what’s offered in a public school. The question is why they, and the rich people they often talk about taxing to death, should be the only ones able to do make this choice.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Rudy Giuliani Gets It Mostly Wrong On Education

Constitution, Education, Election '08, Federalism

Rudy Giuliani says he believes in school choice, but it’s not the kind of school choice you might think:

MERRIMACK, N.H. (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Friday argued for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private elementary and secondary schools, saying school choice works for the nation’s colleges and universities.

People come from all over the world to attend college in the United States, Giuliani said at a town hall meeting in Merrimack, N.H.

“How is it that we have the best higher education in the world and a weaker K-through-12 system?” Giuliani said. “What’s the difference? Why does one operate so well and the other not nearly as well? American higher education is based on a quintessential American principle – choice.”

As mayor of New York, Giuliani backed vouchers for private and parochial schools in the face of opposition from his own schools chancellor.

“I’d give parents control over their children’s education,” Giuliani told the audience of about 150 people at a solar power products plant. “We’ve got to have competition operating. If we don’t do that, our education system is going to deteriorate.”

As Andrew Coulson points out at Cato@Liberty, Giuliani’s approach completely misses the point of what a true pro-choice position on education should be:

Real consumer choice and competition among schools aren’t just good ideas — they’re essential if we are ever going to see the kind of progress and innovation in education that we’ve seen in every other field over the past few centuries. But if Rudy is saying he’d back a federal school choice program, he’s got the right idea at the wrong level of government.

As someone who touts the merits of limited government, Giuliani should heed the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states and the people powers that they have not delegated to Washington in the Constitution. Last time I checked, neither the word “education” nor the word “school” appears anywhere in that document.

What Giuliani is saying is really no different from what any other Republican has said about education for the past 30 years or more. Heck 27 years ago, Ronald Reagan campaigned on the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.

And what have we gotten ?

Not less Federal involvement in education, but more, as epitomized by the George Bush-Ted Kennedy love child known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

Not a smaller Department of Education, but a larger one.

And, in the end, have we gotten better schools ? Of course not.

For more than 200 years, the government kept its nose out of education, and for good reason; (1) the Constitution gives Congress absolutely no authority over the subject, and (2) it’s impossible for Congressman and bureaucrats sitting in Washington, D.C. to design an education system that is going to work for every school in every town in America.

One can debate whether government should be involved in education at all, and I certainly think that the government monopoly on education should be eliminated, but to the extent it should exist, that involvement belongs at the local level.

Mr. Giuliani, read the Constitution.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com
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