WSJ: School Closures Damage the Youngest Children

 

By Christine K. VanDeVelde

In the contentious debate over opening schools, there is almost no mention of the youngest learners—children 2 to 5, who attend day care, nursery schools or prekindergarten programs. That’s a terrible omission. What those children need to accomplish can’t be done in isolation or in front of a laptop, and it has to be done during a brief developmental window that closes around age 5 and never opens again.

The learning needs of the youngest students in pre-K programs are easy to underestimate, because their schoolwork consists of playing together— pretending to be a princess or a superhero, playing house, digging in the sand to create a dinosaur park. Just as older students must work to succeed, pre-K pupils must play, and they must play with each other. As the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget put it, “Play is the work of childhood.”

Best Books; Hillbilly Elegy - Crises in the Culture of Poor White America

From American Conservative
By Rod Dreher - July 22, 2016

"I wrote last week about the new nonfiction book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, the Yale Law School graduate who grew up in the poverty and chaos of an Appalachian clan. The book is an American classic, an extraordinary testimony to the brokenness of the white working class, but also its strengths. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. With the possible exception of Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, for Americans who care about politics and the future of our country, Hillbilly Elegy is the most important book of 2016. You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance. His book does for poor white people what Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book did for poor black people: give them voice and presence in the public square. This interview I just did with Vance in two parts (the final question I asked after Trump’s convention speech) shows why."

Trump: Tribune of Poor White People - American Conservative

Charter Schools Do Make a Difference - New York Times

"Charter schools — public schools that operate outside the normal system — have become a quarrelsome subject, of course, alternately hailed as saviors and criticized as an overrated fad. Away from the fights, however, social scientists have quietly spent years analyzing the outcomes of students who attend charter schools.

The findings are stark. And while they occasionally pop up in media coverage and political debates about charter schools, they do not get nearly enough attention. The studies should be at the center of any discussion of educational reform, because they offer by far the clearest evidence about which parts of it are working and which are not.

The briefest summary is this: Many charter schools fail to live up to their promise, but one type has repeatedly shown impressive results."

New York Times - Charter Schools that Work

Tax Credit Scholarship Programs Generate Taxpayer Savings

From the Ed Choice; New Research Report

Tax-credit scholarship programs allow individuals and businesses to reduce their state tax liability by making a private donation to a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships for children to attend private schools of their choice.

What You’ll Learn

Tax-credit scholarship programs have generated at least $1.7 billion in taxpayer savings since the first program was implemented in 1997. The savings could be as much as double that. More than 1.2 million tax-credit scholarships have been awarded to and used by students to attend private schools in the nearly two decades since such programs have been available.

School choice programs generate savings, but it’s up to lawmakers to reallocate that funding. We don’t have a good idea where the savings are going. The 10 programs studied for this report are all different. We took a detailed look at how each one operates, how many students are enrolled and how much taxpayers are saving.

Ed Choice - Tax Credit Scholarships Save Taxpayers

Knowledge Governs Ignorance - James Madison

Illinois By the Numbers; Chicago Tribune

An Opinion Piece today in the Chicago Tribune provides insight into where Illinois stands relative to other states. Several important ideas from the analysis assembled by the Tribune:

• One of the worst states for job creation and business confidence
• The WORST state for funding its employees pension obligations
• The state with the most units of government
• Not effective in providing public education
• 29th in the US out of 50 in voter turnout
• 29% of the state budget (3rd in US) spent on Medicaid (health care for the poor) which provides health services/benefits to 1 in 5 people in IL.

Did We All Fail when the Bridge Collapsed?

First, let me express sympathy for the families that are missing their loved ones in Minnesota.

The possible cracks in the Minnesota bridge reveal the cracks in our democracy that risk the collapse of what we cherish.


I would stand at the front of the line defending our system of government. Yet, it has its deficiencies. Like cracks in a bridge, our system has cracks that we may have noticed in an inspection, but, fail to repair.

The news accounts now inform us that the Minnesota bridge was "structurally deficient" similar to thousands of other bridges that we drive on. Tonight's news revealed that reports in 2005 and 2006 revealed serious concerns. These same cracks were viewable in New Orleans. Also in the anti-terrorism group in Washington. These cracks are clearly visible in our education system (i.e. drop out rates, education achievement, school violence, and poor college persistence).

Defending Don Imus???? Not me

This blogger would never defend Don Imus. Nor any other mouthpieces of slime that exist on the airwaves. The world would be a better place with less of them and more decorum.

However, I am troubled by the piling on that is occurring. Many can easily chastise Mr. Imus, but remain silent and out of sight when other mainstream commentators call for our President's assasination, death to the vice president and demands for annialation of Americans coming from the middle east.

We seem to have lost our moral compass. We no longer know right from wrong. As one analyst said, either it is all ok, or it is all not ok. It would be greatly preferable if there was more simple decency in the world and more self-restraint. It is preferable for the mainstream media to have the common sense and fairness to expect more, expect decency and to denounce all forms of hate speach.

And another thing. Are attacks on Imus being used by some to perpetuate the dieing myth of racism in America today? Perhaps. For sure there are still racists in the America. But racism has long ago slipped from the fiber of many Americans. Now these many Americans want desperately to be fair and be sure that every chance is given to those deserving of it.

But. Where would the defenders of minorities be today without a villain like Imus? Where would they be without the ugly head of racism to drag through the streets? They might have to take up a new crusade to teach decency, hard work, self-responsibility, learning and initiative. But do they know how to teach that? Could they perform that task? There is the question that leads to the simple truth.