Why Johnny Can’t Read
July 8th, 2005 | by Craig |We haven’t thrown enough money at the school, is what this opinion piece says.
One of the arguments she advances seems to be that since the school is not spending as much as allowed by statute, we should go ahead and kick in some more.
In another tortured twist of logic, she says that even though there is no guarantee that things will get better, we should go ahead and pony up the cash anyway, after all, it’s only $30 year on a $100,000 house.
The closing graf was my favorite:
Who will tell students who cannot read that they must wait another year or longer before they can be helped? The Billings School District 2 School Board will not, in good conscience, quit before it even tries.
Who will tell the students that the district has been horribly mismanaged over recent years and has lost the confidence of the voters?
6 Responses to “Why Johnny Can’t Read”
By Randy on Jul 8, 2005 | Reply
Why are you worried?
Mary Jo is one of the “new Generation” of school trustees and I’m sure she has ALL the answers.
All she needs to do is get on a district phone and do a little fund raising or is that not allowed?
By Tony Rosen on Jul 8, 2005 | Reply
Through money at me, and I won’t be a problem any longer.
By Gman on Jul 8, 2005 | Reply
The gov’t breaks up monopolies in the private sector, but ignores monopolies in the public sector. There is no compelling reason that education should be funded by gov’t.
By Scott Dowdle on Jul 8, 2005 | Reply
Just what monopolies have the government broken up in the last few decades? The last one I recall was done during the Carter administration… AT&T. Do you remember the days when you had to buy or lease your phone from AT&T? There was no such thing as a third-party phone and you certainly couldn’t go to the store and buy one… unless it was an AT&T store. If you wanted to hook up a modem to your phone, you had to get permission from AT&T.
Let’s see. Bill Clinton’s people started to slap Microsoft on the back of the hand and then George Bush’s people basically only barked rather than biting.
Sure, there are some large corporations that have had to pay big fines for breaking laws and ethics in the persuit of competition… but the pro-big-business administration we have had for a while now only helps build monopolies.
There isn’t any compelling reason for public education, eh? Next you are going to tell me there isn’t any compelling reason for public lands, public roads, public sanitation, fire and police protection and drinking water. Yeah… yeah… EVERYTHING should be privatized. NOT! The only problem with privatization is that it almost always reduces the quality of service and increases the costs… but other than that I guess it is fantastic.
I’m certainly not trying to say that our schools don’t need improvement. In fact, they need a lot of improvements. They need creative people who can solve problems and who care. They need more parents worrying about their children’s education and doing something about it. Having a bunch of people who want to get out of paying for schools isn’t part of the solution. You have to understand that several countries in Europe have free education including one or more levels of higher learning. In this country, getting a quality high school education is challenging. Why is that?
When 1/5th to 1/4rd of the federal budget is spent on interest payments on debts… you’d think tax payers would be interested in having a government in control that doesn’t think it is a good idea to give tax breaks to the rich while at the same time starting unncessary wars and spending more on the industrial military complex than everyone else in the world combined. Just think how much taxes could go down if we got rid of the debt, gave peace a chance, and bought butter rather than suitcase nukes?
By Rocky Smith on Jul 12, 2005 | Reply
I think we’re trying to protect our citizens from suitcase nukes, Scott. That costs money.
By starbird on Jul 13, 2005 | Reply
Johnny cant read becuase they are too busy making him into a big time eco-freak at these worthless schools run by the NEA(Nazi Educators Association)and he is learning to be a gay vegetarian learning to hate this country why dont we just return to home education and eliminate the Dept of Education and get the weirdos and freaks out of the schools until it happens