“We” have to give the schools more money. “We” have to pay the teachers more. “We” have to get parents more involved in their children’s public schools. “We” have to get parents more involved in their children’s homework. “We” have to find a way to close the achievement gap between white children and black or Latino kids. “We” have to demand accountability from our public schools and teachers. “We” have to end the drugs and violence in our public schools. “We” have to improve our teaching methods so our children can read their own diplomas when they graduate high school. “We” have to teach our children environmental propaganda about saving the earth and global warming. “We” have to teach kids to “respect” other people’s lifestyles with classes about homosexuality in their sex-ed classes.

And on and on it goes. Every “we” pressure group is at each other’s throats about what “we” have to do to “improve” the congenitally-incompetent public schools and our children’s education.

Do you notice the one common factor in all these disastrous problems with our children’s education in public schools? Right you are — it’s the “we” part. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking education is a collective “we” enterprise that must be run by governments that “we” elect. Since “we” are all taxpayers, and our taxes pay for the public schools, all of us “we” have the right to input our demands, desires, complaints, and suggestions about how to “fix” the system. Hence the endless bickering, fighting, backstabbing, grab for “public” tax dollars, power plays, and government-induced incompetent education.

What’s the real solution to finally giving our kids a decent education? Get rid of the “we.” Education must be made a private concern of individual parents, NOT a collective “right” of education run by a government-education monopoly called public schools. Let each parent educate their own children in their own way, paying whatever they can afford, in a quality, low-cost, fiercely competitive, private/independent school system. Each parent should be responsible for their own children’s education in this free-market, private-school system, just as each parent is responsible for feeding their children with food they buy from private grocery stores and supermarkets.

The problem with public schools is that they are “public” and run by government. The problem is that these government-run public schools exist in the first place. Government is the PROBLEM, not the solution to our children’s education. Get government out of the education business, and the problem is solved quickly and permanently.

No more “we” taxpayers demanding a say in the collective, government-run education system called public schools. Make it illegal for any local, state, or Federal government to own, operate, or collect taxes for any school system.

Put an end to the ridiculous notion that “we” all have a “right” to an education, so “we” need tax-supported government schools to enforce that “right.” There is no such thing as a “right” to an education. Education doesn’t grow free on apple trees. Schools, books, and teacher salaries all have to be paid for by someone. That’s what tuition is all about in a private school — to pay for these expenses. To claim that your child has a “right” to an education, is to claim that you have the right to steal from your neighbor to pay for your child’s education, through school taxes imposed by your local government.

Ask yourself this. Do you have the right to put a gun to your neighbor’s head and demand money from him to pay for your child’s sneakers or Wheaties cereal? Do you have the right to steal money from your neighbor to pay for ANYTHING your child needs? If you have some moral sense and answered no, then you also don’t have the right to steal from your neighbor for your child’s education either, no matter how much you love your child, because it’s wrong to steal, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

Yet a public “we” school system requires that “we” all steal from each other to pay for our children’s education, courtesy of compulsory school taxes. But what about single people, married couples with no children, parents with children in private schools, homeschooling parents, and older-retired people with no children in school? All these people, your neighbors, have no need for public schools because they have no school-age children in public schools. Why do your neighbors with no school-age children have to pay school taxes so that your children go to public school?  What if they passed a law saying you have to pay taxes for public golf courses, yet you hate golf and would never set foot on a golf course?

Public schools need compulsory taxes to stay alive. These taxes let some parents with school-age children steal money from their neighbors who might not have school-age children. The “we” of the public-school system therefore requires massive collective looting on a grand scale, turning us into a nation of education thieves.

So how do we end this moral nightmare that creates congenitally incompetent government (public) schools? Put an end to the “we.” Get government out of the education business. Turn education over to parents and the life-giving fresh breath of a fiercely competitive free-market education system, where each parent has complete control ONLY over their own child’s education. Then this free-market of education will sharply raise the quality of our children’s education, and sharply lower the cost of this education for average parents. The best of both education worlds without having to pay a single dollar in school taxes. Wouldn’t that be great?

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A few rare inner-city public schools manage to give their students a better-than-normal education. These schools prove that poverty can’t be used as an excuse for bad education. Samuel Casey Carter, researcher and Bradley Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, investigated twenty-one of these schools where low-income children received a better education than kids in other public schools:

“Under principal Irwin Kurz, the 6th grade at P.S. 161 in Brooklyn, New York, has the second highest reading scores in all of New York State.”

KIPP Academy in Houston, Texas, under Michael Feinberg, is 95 percent low-income and 90 percent Hispanic. Within one year, students who enter the middle school with passage rates of 35B50 percent on the state assessment test are passing by more than 90 percent in both math and reading.

Seventy-eight percent of the students in Bennett-Kew Elementary in Inglewood, California, are low-income. For 20 years, Nancy Ichinaga’s school has been one of the highest performers in all of Los Angeles County.²⁰

Carter found that these principals succeeded where most other public-school principals failed because they followed seven important rules in running their schools:

1) Effective principals are free to decide how to spend their money, whom to hire, and what to teach; 2) Effective principals use measurable goals to establish a culture of achievement; 3) Master teachers bring out the best in a faculty; 4) Rigorous and regular testing leads to continuous student achievement; 5) Discipline is anchored in achievement; 6) Effective principals work actively with parents to make the home a center of learning; 7) Effective principals require hard work. ²¹

Many charter and private schools use these same educational rules, which is why low-income minority kids succeed in these schools. In contrast, millions of low-income children fail in public schools because the schools don’t apply these rules.

One more example will suffice to show that poverty is no excuse for most public schools’ dismal performance. Harvard University did a two-year study of tuition-scholarship programs for minority children in New York, the District of Columbia, and Dayton, Ohio. Students were picked by lottery to receive the tuition scholarships. Minority students who transferred to a private school from a public school soon did better in their studies.

Critics of previous tuition-scholarship studies where public-school students did better in a private school had claimed that students’ performance could have improved because of other factors, such as motivation or family background. But in the Harvard study, children were randomly assigned by lottery to private or public schools. As a result, neither poverty nor parents’ motivation explained the difference in achievement.

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As I will explain below, the claim that all children have a right to an education actually hurts the children it was intended to help. We must therefore ask a seemingly shocking question—do all children have a right to an education? If they do, public-school apologists are correct in assuming that we need government to guarantee that right so no child gets left behind. The very definition of the word “right” means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not. For example, if we claimed that everyone has a right to a car, that would mean if someone couldn’t afford a car, government would give that person the money to buy it (the payment might be called a car voucher).

Similarly, if we say that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their parent’s ability to pay tuition, then only government can guarantee this alleged right. Government has to guarantee this right because no private, for-profit school will admit a student if the parents don’t pay tuition (unless the student gets a scholarship). If a private school doesn’t get paid for its services, it soon goes out of business.

Local or state governments can guarantee this alleged right in two basic ways. They can own and operate all the public schools and force all children to attend these schools, or they can give subsidies (vouchers) to parents to pay for tuition in the private school of their choice. Since most school authorities strongly oppose vouchers, that means they support only a government-controlled system of compulsory public schools and school taxes to guarantee children this alleged right to an education.

But government produces nothing by itself. Government gets its money by taxing us. To guarantee this alleged right to a product or service, government tax collectors must therefore take money from one person to give it to another. They must take from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. So, in effect, a person who demands food, housing, or medical care as an alleged right, is really demanding that government tax agents steal money from his neighbor to give him an unearned benefit he didn’t work for.

Education, like housing or medical care, does not grow free in nature. Just as someone must pay doctors, nurses, and hospitals for all the services they provide, someone must also pay for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, janitorial services, and school upkeep. Other than air, nothing that we need is free.

As indicated earlier, the average public school now gets almost $7,500 a year per student, paid from taxes. To guarantee education as a right, local, state, and federal governments must tax all Americans to pay for public schools. All of us are taxed, whether or not we have school-age children or think these schools are worth paying for. So when some parents claim that their children have a right to an education, they are really demanding that their local or state government steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children’s education.

Here’s an analogy that might help clarify this issue. Imagine that your unemployed neighbor comes to you and asks you to lend him money to pay for his children’s education. You reply that, though you sympathize with his problem, your answer is no. He responds by saying that he is poor, points out that you have a big house and a job, and insists that his children have a “right” to an education. You say, “Sorry, my answer is still no because I need my money for my own children’s education.” Suppose that your neighbor then gets real mad, pulls out a gun, puts it to your head, and says, “I asked you nicely. I told you my children need an education. You  have a job, and I’m unemployed, so you have a moral duty to give me your money.” Then he clicks back the hammer on the gun.

Obviously your neighbor has no right to put a gun to your head and steal your money because his children need an education. Nor does he, or any number of your neighbors, have the right to rob you by getting government to be their enforcer — by pressuring local governments to take your money through school taxes. Any school system that uses compulsory taxes is a system based on the notion that theft is moral if it’s for a good cause. No goal, not even educating children, justifies legalized theft.

It is only natural that all parents want the best education for their children, but do good intentions justify stealing from your neighbor? A mugger on the street who puts a knife to your throat and demands your money also has good intentions — he wants to make his life better with your money. One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except if you need tuition money to educate your child.” Since no one has a right to steal from his neighbor, no one, including children, has a “right” to an education.

Some might argue that I may be correct on this issue when it comes to adults, but surely we can’t punish innocent children for their parent’s failures? Just because parents are poor or unemployed, why should innocent children suffer and be denied an education? The answer to that question is one that many people find hard to accept, yet it is true — there are no guarantees in life, not for adults or for children. Good intentions to alleviate a problem do not justify hurting other people by stealing from them. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Moreover, if we agree that children have a right to an education because their parents are poor, then shouldn’t they also have a right to food, a bicycle, a nice house in the suburbs, and designer clothes? If poor kids (and all children) have an alleged right to an education, don’t they also have an alleged right to everything else that other kids have whose parents are well-off?  Why not then say that anyone, poor, middle-class, or rich who has less money than his neighbor, has the “right” to steal from his neighbor? Where do we stop if some people can legally steal from others because they claim their kids need this or that?

The answer is, we don’t stop, and we haven’t stopped. That is why our country has turned into a welfare state that is drowning in debt. When I use the word “welfare,” I don’t mean only for the poor. Rich, poor, and middle-class alike in America now claim the right to everything from corporate tax breaks and subsidies, to price supports for farmers, to Medicare, to rent subsidies for unwed mothers. When we let government steal money from taxpayers to give unearned benefits or subsidies to special-interest groups, we open up a Pandora’s box. We become a nation of thieves stealing from each other. Is this what we want America to become?

It is true that a free market does not and can not guarantee that all children have enough to eat or live in a comfortable house. Likewise, a free-market education system in which all parents have to pay for their children’s education obviously can’t guarantee a quality education for every child.

However, government-controlled public schools also can’t guarantee that every child gets a quality education. These failed schools can barely teach our children to read. Also, neither system can make guarantees because there are no guarantees in life, and because each child’s abilities, personality, and family background are so different that such guarantees are impossible. The real question, then, is not which system is perfect, but which system is more likely to give the vast majority of children a quality education that most parents could afford?

We have seen how public schools fail and betray millions of children, year after year. The only “right” most public schools give to school children is the right to suffer through a mind-numbing, third-rate education for twelve years.

In contrast, the free-market, while not perfect, gives us all the wondrous goods and services we buy every day, such as cars, fresh food, computers, refrigerators, and televisions. The superbly efficient and competitive free market gives us all these marvelous products at prices that most people can afford. Even the poorest American families today have a car, refrigerator, and sometimes two televisions in their homes. If we want to discover which system would give the vast majority of children a quality education at reasonable prices, I think we have the answer — the free market, hands down.

We therefore don’t need a failed public-school system to enforce an alleged right to an education, when there is no such right in the first place. Each parent should be responsible for paying for their own children’s education, just as they pay for their children’s food or clothing.

Finally, public-school apologists use this alleged right to an education to justify keeping our public schools alive, in spite of these schools’ never-ending failure. Many public-school apologists who claim that children have a right to an education do so out of good intentions. They want to give all children a chance to get a decent education. But, once again, good intentions mean worse than nothing if they lead to evil consequences. This alleged right to an education is one of the major excuses used to prop up our public-school system, a system that, as we’ve seen, has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to millions of children.

Low-income  families today can buy quality, low-cost food in a competitive, free-market food industry full of grocery stores and supermarkets. In the same way, once compulsory public schools are out of the way, most children would be able to get a quality, low-cost education in a competitive free-market education system

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find valuable and informative

* www.hslda.com — Home School Legal Defense Association — this great organization protects the interests of homeschooling parents

* www.edweek.org -– EdWeek.org — website keeps you up to date on education news related to public-school alternatives, school choice, charter schools, and much more.

* www.math-and-reading-help-for-kids.org — Math and Reading Help For Kids  — good resource for teaching your children math and reading skills.

* http://www.nais.org —National Association of Independent Schools — great resource for finding a quality private school for your children

* http://www.homeschool.com —  Homeschool.com — Everything you want to know about homeschooling — resources, curriculumm, parent networking, homeschooling tips, and much more.

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Here are some education-resource websites that I hope you find valuable and informative

www.hslda.com  — Home School Legal Defense Association — This great organization represents the interests of homeschooling parents

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In our daily lives, most of us believe we are free Americans. The average person can still go about his business, travel where he wants to go, and freely choose his goals, friends, and career. We still have freedom of speech, the press, trial by jury, and many other liberties our Founding Fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights and Constitution. We are still freer than any other people on Earth.

Yet, consider the following:

We may still have fundamental freedoms of speech and the press, but America is in a transition from liberty to despotism, a halfway house on the road to tyranny. We already have economic tyranny in America. If you add up all the taxes you pay, including income taxes, Social Security, sales, real estate, gasoline, telephone, and dozens of other hidden taxes, government loots over forty percent of your hard-earned income in taxes.

Yet, only a hundred years ago, the average worker paid no more than five percent of his income in taxes. In 1901, there was no income tax, Social Security tax, or most of the other taxes you pay today. In the Middle Ages, medieval rulers took about 20 percent of their serfs’ produce. Our government now taxes us worse than serfs. If government claims the right to forty percent of your income, it claims the right to forty percent of your labor, and forty percent of your life. In effect, the people we “elect” have put us on a chain gang until May 10th of every year, working for the bureaucrats.

Most parents may not see it this way, but local governments, in effect, kidnap your children through public-school compulsory-attendance laws. They force you to send your children to government (public) schools that waste twelve years of your children’s lives and turn them into illiterates. They then tax you to support these so-called “schools.”

“War on Drugs” government SWAT teams can break down your door in the middle of the night without a warrant, based on the drug tip of a malicious, anonymous informant, then threaten you in your own living room. Drug laws dictate what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. These laws tell us we do not have the right to smoke marijuana, even if we have cancer and the marijuana alleviates the nausea from chemotherapy drugs.

Government tells us we cannot commit suicide if we have terminal cancer with excruciating pain, nor can a doctor assist us to commit suicide. By these laws, government tells us it now owns our bodies. These laws deny our right of free choice for important personal decisions in our lives.

Try building a new home for yourself, and you will run into a hornet’s nest of building department inspectors, zoning commissions, environment impact statements, and local agencies who will tie you up in knots. Try starting a small business and you will need government licenses and approvals. Local, State and Federal tax authorities, like vultures, will then devour your profits with their ever-increasing taxes.

Taxes loot your hard-earned money to pay for dozens of “entitlement programs” such as Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, welfare programs, health care for illegal immigrants, and now a “welfare” program for the entire population of Iraq called the Iraq war. Your voluntary consent is not required for these programs. Government forces you to pay for them.

Federal, State, and local police agencies use asset-forfeiture laws to steal the cars, homes, businesses, and bank accounts of innocent people under the pretext of a War on Drugs. Victims of drug raids then have to prove their innocence and sue the agency to get their property back. Asset-forfeiture laws have turned too many local police departments into agencies for legalized looting.

Anti-gun politicians make thousands of gun laws that restrict a woman’s right to protect herself from a rapist, a homeowner’s right to protect himself from a robber in the middle of the night, or American citizens’ right to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms is under massive assault. It may be only a matter of time until we lose this right altogether.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations can control who an employer hires, fires, or promotes, how much he has to pay his employees (minimum wage), and what their “conditions of employment” must be. This same agency can sue an employer into bankruptcy for “discrimination” or other “infractions” of its regulations.

Because of the recent Supreme Court “Kelo” decision, your property rights have become null and void. Now any developer who wants to put up a new shopping center can get your local government to condemn your home, and your neighbors’ homes, through their power of “eminent domain.” Local government bureaucrats can now demolish your home, not for public use like a highway, but to let a private developer profit from your land and pay more taxes.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can stop a home builder from building homes, a farmer from farming his land, a rancher from grazing his cattle, an oil company from drilling for desperately needed oil, or a logging company from cutting down trees to give us lumber for new homes. EPA regulations sharply jack up the price of oil and destroy property rights in America for a great and noble cause — to protect “endangered” species like the Alabama mud rat, mosquito-infested swamps called “wetlands,” and “delicate” frozen Arctic wastelands that look like the surface of the moon.

The Food and Drug Administration forces drug companies to spend over $500 million and seven years to get approval for a new drug. It puts pharmaceutical companies through a regulatory torture chamber that strangles the development of thousands of new, life-saving drugs. It has made SWAT-team raids on vitamin stores to “protect” us from Vitamin C and other dangers.

Federal agents can persecute a religious sect they don’t like, as the Feds did in Waco, Texas. They persecuted these people partly because the sect owned allegedly “illegal” firearms, firearms the 2nd Amendment says they had the right to own. After slaughtering innocent women and children in a ball of fire, none of the Federal agents were ever prosecuted or sent to prison for their actions.

Finally, in response to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Federal government passed an “anti-terror” bill that created secret military tribunals. These tribunals will be like medieval star-chambers, where defendants’ legal rights will be ripped to pieces, and trial by jury will be denied.

These tribunals have set a terrible precedent. It is only a matter of time before government prosecutors expand the vague definition of “terrorism” to an ever-widening list of “crimes” that can be used against American citizens. Government judges and prosecutors will then be able to try and convict Americans without the “messy” need for juries, proof, evidence, or the presumption of innocence.

Does all this sound like “the land of the free?” Government in America is a growing tyranny. It is a government that would shock our Founding Fathers, a government they would consider a greater tyranny than the British monarchy they fought a revolutionary war against. Worse, whatever freedoms we have left are being taken from us at an ever-accelerating rate.

If you, my reader, do not see this, it is not your fault. Your liberty has been taken from you gradually, one new tax and regulation at a time. You have become accustomed to the taxes and regulations. You think they are “normal” and therefore nothing to complain about. You mistakenly believe that because you elect your representatives, and because they enact laws based on majority rule, that their laws, taxes, and regulations are moral and legitimate. It is like your wife or husband not noticing you have gained thirty pounds over the past five years because they see you every day, and the weight gain was gradual.

So it is with gradual tyranny. But if Americans living 150 years ago suddenly came back to life today, they would be shocked, for they would see the stark difference in their freedom.

President Obama continues to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to protect the “freedom” of the Iraqi people. Well, how about first giving Americans back the freedom that is their birthright, the constitutional freedoms our Founding Fathers fought and died for?

Still think you’re living in the land of the free?

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“Mayor, we’ve got a big problem on our hands,” said Police Chief Bud Anderson to Mike Branden, mayor of Palm City, Florida, a small city of 200,000 old-fashioned Americans, sitting in the middle of the Florida panhandle. It was a beautiful spring day in April.

Bud Anderson was a handsome man, in his thirties, dark brown hair, blue eyes, a wide, easy mouth. He wore a light-blue short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Mayor Mike Branden, also dressed casually, was in his forties, tall, and well-built. He used to be an orange-grower, his family going back generations in Palm City. He had a weather-beaten face, strong mouth, and calloused hands the size of mitts. He had just been elected mayor in November and won the election on his promise to clean up crime in the city.

Over the last five years, the city had become a little Silicon Valley, with computer companies moving in by the droves because there were no corporate taxes in Florida or in Palm City. The city was prospering, and the newly-rich computer millionaires and their employees with stock options were all building big, fancy houses by the river. The money and big houses had attracted the thieves. The city crime rate had been exploding, especially home burglaries and rapes. All the women in the city were scared and up in arms over the crime spree, and wanted something done. Mayor Branden promised to do something about it.

“Bud, tell me what you think the problem is,” Mike Branden said. “Tell me what you think we can do.”

“Well, Mike,” Bud Anderson said, “I think the thieves and rapists have it too easy. They’re smart. They case the mark’s house carefully before they break in. They only break in when they know the wife is home alone. But that’s not the real problem, Mike.”

“The real problem is that the women are defenseless. You may not know this, being so new as Mayor, but about five years ago the previous Mayor passed gun laws that made it illegal to have a gun in the house, and illegal to use one against a burglar. He also made it illegal for anyone to carry a concealed gun outside the house. That’s when our troubles started, Mayor.”

Mike Branden grew up with guns ever since he was a boy. He belonged to the National Rifle Association. He loved skeet shooting, and bought his kids their first rifles when they were eight years old. He taught them how to shoot straight and how to use a gun safely. His wife also owned a rifle and handgun, shared his love for skeet shooting, and was a crack shot. Mayor Mike Branden was not a college graduate, but he had guts, common sense, and imagination. He immediately saw the problem, and the solution.

“Well, I think we’ll change those gun laws, Bud. Thieves and rapists have it too easy around here. They know they can rob houses and rape women with no risk.

Let’s put the risk back. Let’s see what happens when they get shot if they break into a house or bother one of our women. I’m sick to death of all the gun laws in this country, so let’s try a little experiment. I’ll convince the City Council to revoke our gun-control laws. Next, I’ll convince them to pass a new law requiring every man and woman in Palm City to own a handgun or shotgun, and know how to use them safely. I want a pistol and shotgun in every home. I want every woman walking around town with a concealed gun in her purse or under her dress. Let’s see what happens when we change the laws. Let’s see what happens when we give the victims a way to defend themselves.

I also want you to put a series of ads in the Palm City Gazette and Daily Press that announces the new laws, so everyone knows that every Palm City resident will soon be armed. I want you to set up gun safety and training courses on the local firing ranges, so we know that every woman in this town will be dead shot.”

Bud Anderson’s eyes lit up with admiration for his new Mayor. He had been wanting to revoke those gun laws for the last five years, but never dreamed of the daring plan the new Mayor now wanted to put into action.

“That’s a damned fantastic idea, Mike. You’re going to make a hell of a Mayor. I think the citizens in this town are going to love you. They’re going to have a great time learning how to use a gun again, especially the women. I know the women will form gun clubs. They’ll probably want to buy designer guns with pretty colors. Hell, I might even buy a pearl-handled 45 myself.”

Mike Branden laughed out loud at his Police Chief’s boyish enthusiasm. He said, “I think the new laws should be in place in about a month, Bud. Let’s meet again in about three months and you can tell me whether we’ve had any success with the plan.” Bud Anderson gave a mock salute to his Mayor, said “yes, sir,” and walked out the door into the Spring sunshine.

THREE MONTHS LATER:

It’s a hot July day in the Mayor’s office, and Police Chief Anderson and Mike Branden are having an enthusiastic conversation.

“Mike, mother-of-god did your plan work! The crime rate has dropped like a rock in Palm City. Burglaries are down 80 percent. Rapes are down 90 percent. I’ve never seen anything like it. It all started about two months ago, Mike. There was a burglary gang that had been hitting most of the houses. Well, about ten of them have been shot, three killed in the last two months. As soon as the burglar alarm goes off, the women took their guns from their purses and started shooting. I’ve interrogated some of the thieves we caught. They’re pretty stupid and don’t read much, so they weren’t aware of the new gun laws. They thought we were still operating under the old laws. You should have seen the shock on their faces. They were mad as hell. They never expected pretty young housewives to be spraying them with semi-automatic fire. They were mad as hell at you.”

“Then there were the rapists who didn’t know about the new gun laws either, the ones who prayed on women at night in the shopping-mall parking lots. Did they get the shock of their lives! About twenty of them have been shot already, five killed. They just came up to the women, brazen like, thinking they could get away with anything like they used to. Then the girls suddenly pulled out their pretty pistols and started firing away. You should hear how the women laughed with glee and pride when they told me their stories. They told me how thankful they were to have their guns. I think all the women in this town love you now, Mike. It’s a good thing you’re already married.”

“I think the bad guys are getting the picture, Mike. Burglars and rapists are getting scarce in Palm City. Matter of fact, I just got a call from Ben Radley, Police Chief at Hampton Bay. They still have the same idiotic gun-control laws we had here. Seems they’ve been getting a sharp rise in house burglaries and rapes there. Looks like our bad guys are moving on to easier ground in Hampton Bay. I sure feel sorry for the people in that town right now. Ben Radley wants to talk to you real bad. He wants to know how you got crime down so fast in Palm City. Who knows, Mike, maybe what you did here will spread all over the country. I hope so.”

“One other thing, Mike. Every teacher and principal in every public school in this town now carries a concealed gun. Every one of the kids know this, and they now feel real safe in the schools. They’re not worrying anymore about one of their deranged teen-age friends suddenly going on a shooting spree, like what happened at Columbine High School. If anything happens, they know they don’t have to wait an hour for the cops to show up. They know the teachers and principal can protect them. Did you know math and reading scores are going up at the schools, too? It’s the damndest thing.”

“Mike, I think you’re going to be Mayor in this town for as long as you like. I hope you stay on forever, because Palm City folks are really grateful to you. At first they were a little skeptical about your plans. But now, after they’ve seen the results, you couldn’t get them to give up their guns anymore. We’re even getting calls from newspapers, magazines, and TV stations all over the country. CNN wants to interview you, did you know that? They called me this morning. You’re becoming a celebrity, by god!”

Mike Branden laughed out loud. “Me, an orange grower, a celebrity? Forget the interviews Bud. How about we go fishing this afternoon after work? It’s getting kind of quiet around here, just the way I like it.”

Bud Anderson, grinning, stuck out his hand to shake Mike’s big, calloused hand, for he now counted Mike Branden as a good friend. That afternoon, they caught a dozen trout at Briar Creek lake. It was a fine afternoon.

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Here are some typical policies the Obama/Democrat/Liberal-looters now suggest to “solve” America’s problems:

“We” need to give health care to all people with a “non-profit” socialized-medicine system (the same system that wrecked medical care in England and Canada?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need to give all kids tuition money for a college education (a socialist, anti-American-values education presided over by Marxist professors?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need pre-school for all children from age two years old, especially minority kids (with or without the consent of parents?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need “parent education” programs to teach parents how to raise their kids (the parent-police in Hillary Clinton’s “village” that “raises” children).

“We” need more federal programs to cure AIDS, for AIDS education, and to pay for drug addicts’ needles (why should we pay for other people’s drug habits and unprotected sex that cause most of the AIDS?).

“We” have to raise taxes on the “rich” to pay for all these multi-billion dollar programs (which kills the goose that lays the golden egg—it’s the productive “rich” who create the jobs the poor depend on).

“We” need to spend more billions of dollars on government (public) schools (that’s like throwing money down a toilet).

“We” need to spend billions of dollars to solve global warming (human-caused global warming is a deliberate hoax designed to destroy our liberty and free economy).

“We” have to take money from the oil companies to fund alternative energy programs (yes, “take” is what Hillary Clinton said in a previous speech. “Take,” as in “loot”).

“We” have to end the imbecile Iraq war that is bankrupting us. But, God forbid, we will NOT give the billions of dollars we spend on the war back to you, the taxpayers. We’ll keep your money and give it away to every petty looter and special-interest group who’ll vote us into office.

“We” have to stop companies from moving overseas and not paying heavy corporate taxes (companies want to run from strangling US taxes and regulations — why shouldn’t they?).

“We” have to tax the rich (who earned their money) to pay for welfare, farm subsidies, employment programs for minorities, and dozens of other giveaway programs (why should these people get unearned handouts they didn’t work for?).

“We” have to make sure the “rich” pay their “fair share” of taxes (“fair share” means to loot money from brilliant, productive businessmen who earn more than others with their superior ambition and hard work, and give this stolen loot to less productive people who do not produce jobs for others).

And on and on it goes. “We” have to help this group. “We” have to help that group. “We” have to raise taxes or take money from the “rich” to pay for all this looting.

“We” is the Democrats’ and liberals’ killer word. They mean that “we” are our brothers’ keeper, whether we like it or not. “We” must sacrifice our lives, our work, our hard-earned money to pay for any looters who want to take our money, courtesy of government-elected thieves.

“We” is an attempt to make you forget the word “I,” as in “I” earned my money and “you” don’t have a right to take it from me.

The Democrat-looter Presidential candidates all claimed the right to tax us to death to pay for uninsured people’s health care (including Mexican illegal aliens), unemployed peoples’ training, tenured-teachers unearned pay raises, congenitally-incompetent public schools’ unending failure, government workers who get rich on these programs, and every other whining special-interest group who demands government hand-outs at your expense.

Let’s be clear on one thing. You are NOT your brother’s keeper, and no government you elect has the right to force you to be. “Compassion” enforced at the end of a government gun (taxes) is naked compulsion. Every program that looting liberals promote with their “we” forces you to be your brother’s keeper, whether you like it or not. In effect, Democrats tell you, “your money or your life.”

There is only one way to fight the Democrats’ vicious moral notion that “we” are our brother’s keeper. Like a prayer, keep repeating the words that you have the God-given right to keep every cent you earn. Your property is not someone else’s “resource” to spend as they please. Liberal looters who spout their “we” think your hard-earned money is theirs for the taking. They think of you as an expendable sacrificial animal. They think that your duty is to work for the money, but they have the right to spend it.

To fight the liberal looters, keep repeating like a prayer, “My money and property are mine—I earned it. No politician I elect has the right to steal my money to give away to others.” It’s as simple as that.

If you accept the Democrats’ deadly “we,” you fall into their trap. You accept the vicious socialist and fascist moral notion that you are your brother’s keeper. You accept the notion that the people you elect to office have the right to loot your hard-earned money to enforce that notion. You accept the fact that those you elect to office have the right to make you into a slave—to work your whole life for the benefit of others.

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It may seem obvious to many people why literacy is so important in our technologically advanced society. However, many parents may not fully realize the emotional pain and life-long damage illiteracy can cause their children. Literacy, the ability to read well, is the foundation of children’s education. If children can’t read well, every subject they try to learn will frustrate them. If they can’t read math, history, or science textbooks, if they stumble over the words, they will soon give up reading out of frustration. Asking children who are poor readers to study these subjects is like asking them to climb a rope with one arm.

Kids learn to read in their most formative years, which is why reading can profoundly affect their self-esteem. When children learn to read, they also start learning how to think abstractly, because words convey ideas and relationships between ideas. How well they read therefore affects children’s feelings about their ability to learn. This in turn affects how kids feel about themselves generally whether a child thinks he or she is stupid or bright. Children who struggle with reading often blame themselves and feel ashamed of themselves.

As Donald L. Nathanson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College noted: First reading itself, and then the whole education process, becomes so imbued with, stuffed with, amplified, magnified by shame that children can develop an aversion to everything that is education.

Often, poor readers will struggle just to graduate from high school. They can lose general confidence in themselves, and therefore the confidence to try for college or pursue a career. Their job opportunities can dry up. Their poor reading skills and low self-confidence can strangle their ability to earn money. They can struggle financially their whole lives. If they marry and have children, they can struggle even more.

Life for illiterate adults can easily degenerate into misery, poverty, failure, and hopelessness. According to a 1992 study by the National Institute for Literacy, “43 % of Americans with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty and 70 % have no job or a part-time job. Only 5% of Americans with strong literacy skills live in poverty.” As Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said, “Reading is absolutely fundamental. It’s almost trite to say that. But in our society, the inability to be fluent consigns children to failure in school and consigns adults to the lowest strata of job and life opportunities.”

By the 1850s, before we had compulsory, government-controlled public schools, child and adult literacy rates averaged over 90 percent, making illiteracy rates less than 10 percent. By 1850, literacy rates in Massachusetts and other New England States, for both men and women, was close to 97 percent. This was before Massachusetts created the first compulsory public-school system in America in 1852. What is literacy like in our public schools today?

In 1995, a student teacher for a fifth-grade class in Minneapolis wrote the following letter to the local newspaper: . . . I was told [that] children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, if, in, is, it, have, he, home, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?

In 2002, the New York State Education Department’s annual report on the latest reading and math scores for public school students found:

· 90 percent of middle schools failed to meet New York State minimum standards for math and English exam scores.

· 65 percent of elementary schools flunked the minimum standards.

· 84 percent of high schools failed to meet the minimum state standards.

· More than half of New York City’s black and hispanic elementary school students failed the state’s English and math exams. About 30 percent of white and asian-american students failed to achieve the minimum English test scores.

· The results for eighth grade students were even worse. Here, 75 percent of black and hispanic students flunked both the English and the math tests. About 50 percent of white and Asian-American eighth graders failed the tests. These illiteracy rates are now common in public schools across America, not just in New York City.

In short,as shown by the New York State Education Department’s annual report and other studies, student illiteracy rates in many public schools range from 30 to 75 percent. This is an education horror story.

That is what illiteracy can mean, what it does mean for millions of public-school children who can barely read. Does any parent want this kind of future for his or her children? I argue in Public Schools, Public Menace that our public school system is the primary cause of this tragic illiteracy, and one reason why these schools are a menace to our children.

A great movie to see that shows the tragic consequences of illiteracy is “Stanley and Iris” with Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda. After you see this movie, you might think twice about keeping your children in public school. There are wonderful, new, low-cost private schools that are alternatives to public school, that parents can take advantage of right now.

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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To most of us, driving a car seems effortlessness. Our eyes, hands, and feet work together seamlessly, automatically, without conscious thought. But we first had to learn the basics of driving when we were young. Remember back to your father’s driving lessons? He taught you how to turn the steering wheel, where the gas and brake pedal was, how to stay in your lane, turn signals and stop signs, use of mirrors, keeping to speed limits, looking ahead. All these basics took time and practice to learn. Now, those of us who have been driving for many years, take these basics for granted. We drive “automatically” and with skill.

The same process applies to another skill—reading. Read a book or a newspaper and it seems effortless. Yet such skill comes from constant use, from constant practice of basic skills learned at an early age.

What are these skills? To read, you have to recognize words on a printed page, yet there are millions of them. Enter the wonder of the alphabet and phonics. It is by recognizing letters and their sounds that a child puts letter-sounds together to form words. Since all words are built from only twenty-six letters, the huge task becomes greatly simplified. The child need not memorize the word, only sound it out, read it, and find its meaning in a dictionary.

As in driving a car, reading is difficult at first. But, once learned, the skill becomes automatic, unconscious, effortless, and we read quickly without sounding-out every letter of every word. In the end, with practice, we read effortlessly, and all the knowledge of the world is open to us. Without learning the basic skills, however, reading is not possible.

Enter educrat “experts” who think otherwise. “Don’t adults read without sounding out every letter of every word,” they ask ? “So why teach children phonics? Why put children through the boredom, drudgery, and hard work of phonics and spelling drills? How can reading be “joyful” if literature becomes drills?,” they say. “Why wound children’s self-esteem and self-expression with tests and standards and high expectations?”

“If we have children memorize whole words instead of drilling on the alphabet and letter sounds, all this pain is gone,” they chime. “Do not teach them to sound out M-O-T-H-E-R. Have them memorize what the whole word looks like—teach them word-pictures, teach them hieroglyphics, so they “recognize” the word in a book. Have the child read “Dick and Jane” learning books that repeat each word a hundred times, so the child comes to “recognize” it. Do this for each word.”

“If the child can’t grasp a new word because he cannot sound it out, teach him “pre-reading” strategies,” they expound. “These “strategies” will help him “guess” what the word is. Have him look at the title of the story. Have the child look at pictures, look for “clues,” look for “patterns” in the story that make sense. Or skip the word and come back to it. Or ask a friend who also cannot read it. Or finally, when all else fails, ask the teacher. Anything,” say the learned educrats, “except actually sounding out and reading the word.”

This, the educrats say, is the “centered,” “self-esteem-enhancing” way to teach reading. Meaning and context—not basics. Group discussions—not letters, sounds, drills, and independence.

This is your whole-language method (now called “balanced literacy” or some other deceptive name). This is the hieroglyphics of Egypt transported to your children’s classroom. This is our educrats’ pet “reading” theory, foisted on 45 million public-school children-victims across the country.

The results were inevitable—half the nation’s high-school grads cannot read a bus schedule. Businesses lose $40 billion a year for remedial reading classes for new employees fresh from high school. Thirty percent of Americans functionally illiterate. The child who is taught phonics is able to read thousands of words in a few semesters. The “whole-word” child-victim is able to “recognize” only a few hundred words. Thus we have the crash in reading skills, the dumbing-down of our kids, the millions of frustrated teens who drop out of school, turn to crime, and end up in prison because they can’t get a decent job.

Yet, in the face of such failure, such disaster for our children, the educrats turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. In the face of reality — massive denial and rationalization.

Buy why? What do they gain? There is always a reason for irrational behavior, and the educrats have many.

Educrats think phonics believers are extremist Christian Rightists or educational simpletons unable to understand the “complexity” of the educrats’ so-called learning theories. Yet, let reality be the judge. The children who learn phonics read far quicker and better than the “whole-word” readers. And the “complexity” educrats proclaim is a self-serving fantasy of their making, designed to ward off competition. Educrats think they are gurus with special skills no parent can possess. Rather, they are education buffoons who don’t know how to teach phonics to your kids any longer, or don’t want to bother.

Educrats claim that phonics and rules will turn kids off to the joy of reading. Just the opposite is true — when a “whole-language” victim-child tries to read the many words he was not taught to “recognize,” he will give up in frustration. His frustration will end his reading and his ‘joy” in reading. The phonics-trained child can read any word and any book, and the joy of reading follows from his skills

This learning of basic skills need not be a struggle. What turns kids off? The insufferable boredom, the mediocrity of the educrats’ teaching methods, unchanged for 50 years.

Children learn the alphabet and letter sounds with delight at home. Sesame Street, “Hooked on Phonics,” the Internet, learning channels on cable TV, creative reading books especially made for kids by learning entrepreneurs can make learning letters and sounds a delight.

Phonics and drills are a drudge in government schools because educrats don’t have the time, skill, desire, or imagination to make them otherwise. Rather than blame themselves or their government-run system for failure, they blame everyone else. They now claim it is the child’s fault (he has attention-deficit disorder!), the parents’ fault (they don’t get “involved!”), or “society’s” fault (racism or “not enough money for the schools!”).

Educrats also say that drills and basics, tests and standards, are “unfair” to kids, cause them stress, and threaten their self-esteem. Just the opposite is true—real self-esteem comes from achievement, not from a teacher’s hot-air, feel-good compliments. Achievement needs tasks, content, ever-increasing complex skills children learn with guided effort. Joy, not stress, is the result of achievement. And what is more important than for children to learn that rewards come from effort and perseverence? Educrats hate phonics and true reading skills because their teacher colleges don’t train them in the phonics method. Teachers who are not taught the phonics method will naturally feel inadequate to teach phonics to children. It is not the teachers’ fault. Rather, the fault lies with educrats, teacher colleges, and educational theorists who have contempt for phonics.

Phonics and drills requires a “teacher-centered” approach in the classroom. This approach requires greater effort and responsibility on teachers and schools to create lesson plans that show real progress in reading skills. The teacher-centered approach requires teachers and educrats to constantly test and evaluate both students and themselves.

The “whole-language” reading method, in contrast, is allegedly “student-centered,” meaning that kids get to sit around in circles and talk about their feelings rather than learn to actually read. With “whole-language” reading, educrats can claim there are no standards, no way to test reading skills and achievement. There are few rigorous tests, low standards, and no failing grades.

“Whole-language” reading therefore achieves the educrats’ ultimate goal — if there are no standards or objectivity, no one can blame them, no one can question them, no one can hold them accountable for their failure to teach our children to read. The educrats don’t want to grade their students’ performance because it allegedly hurts the kids “self-esteem.” I believe this attitude is merely a projection of the educrat’s primal fears—they do not want parents judging their performance and holding them accountable for teaching their kids to read. The educrats don’t want their fragile self-esteem threatened by angry parents who expect public schools to do one simple thing—teach their kids to read.

Government schools are designed to assuage the educrats’ terror at being judged by parents, and being forced to compete in a free-market education system. Government (public) schools’ ultimate purpose is to be a full-employment program for educrats—to give them guaranteed jobs without accountability to parents. It is to placate these fearful educrats that our government schools dumb-down our children and turn them into illiterates with bleak futures.

So what can you, as a concerned parent, do to protect your child? As long as public schools are run by government and their educrats, they will never change. In my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” I tell parents about wonderful new education alternatives to public schools, such as accredited, low-cost internet private schools. Parents, I urge you to look into these alternatives, before your children are irreparably harmed by public-school whole-language, anti-phonics, “reading” instruction.

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The fact is, if you don’t like the drugs, violence, anti-Christian values, and overall poor quality of education available in most public schools, you can now afford private schooling. The rise in popularity and viability of internet private schools means that a private school can cost a small fraction of what you think. If you’re assuming that private school tuition is in the neighborhood of $4,000 annually for a Catholic school–or $8,000 and upward for a private boarding school–you’ll be delighted by the information you’ll find in Public Schools, Public Menace.

A New Perspective on Private School Cost

A good internet private school can cost less than $950 per year. Break that down monthly and then weekly. It’s $85 per month for the ten months of the school year, or $25 per week. A small adjustment in your grocery bill or eating out budget, and your children can get a top quality education.

In Public Schools, Public Menace you’ll find out more about the best internet private schools in the world. You’ll have the option to be involved in every aspect of your child’s education, which means that your child will have every advantage. If you have the information you need, the cost of private schooling will never again keep your child from having the education he needs and deserves.

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In January, 2003, a group of parents sued a Sacramento Unified School District because certain teachers at their local elementary school were aggressively, and secretly, teaching anthroposophy, a religion that combines traditional Western religion with astrology and New Age religion. Pacific Justice Institute lawyers representing the parents indicated that many other public schools in California are now adding New Age and Eastern religions, including Islam, to their curricula.

Below is only a small sample of the flood of “spiritual” sessions taking place in classrooms throughout the country (examples are from Berit Kjos’s book, Brave New Schools):

Altered states of consciousness: Teaching students to alter their consciousness through centering exercises, guided imagery, and visualizations has become standard practice in self-esteem, multicultural, and arts programs. They often encourage contact with spirit guides.

Dreams and visions: After studying a pagan myth, students are often asked to imagine or visualize a dream or vision, then describe it in a journal or lesson assignment.

Astrology: Countless teachers across the country require students to document their daily horoscopes. Others help students discover their powers and personalities through Aztec calendars and Chinese.

Other forms of divination: Through palmistry, I Ching, tarot cards and horoscopes, students learn to experience other cultures and tap into secret sources of wisdom. Students in Texas were told to create a vision in their minds and “describe in your best soothsayer tones the details of your vision.”

Spiritism: While pagan myths and crafts show students how to contact ancestral, nature, and other spirits, classroom rituals actually invoke their presence. California third-graders had to alter their consciousness through guided imagery, invoke or “see” their personal animal spirits, write about their experience . . . and create their own magical medicine shields to represent their spirit helper.

Magic, spells, and sorcery: Many parents consider magic and spell-casting too bizarre and alien to pose a threat, yet gullible students from coast to coast are learning the ancient formulas and occult techniques.

Parents, is this what you want your children taught in public schools, the same public schools that are now forbidden from teaching kids the Ten Commandments?

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However, many studies show that smaller class size does not guarantee that children get a better education. The pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to about 17 to 1 by the early 1990s, which means the average class size fell by 28 percent. Yet, during the same time period, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores fell from 954 to 896, a decline of 58 points or 6 percent. In other words, student academic achievement (as measured by SAT scores) dropped at the same time that class sizes got smaller.

Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist, examined 277 published studies on the effects of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement. He found that only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in achievement with smaller class size, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on achievement.

It seems to go against common sense that student academic achievement could drop with smaller class sizes. One reason this happens in public schools is that when class sizes drop, schools have to create more classes to cover all the students in the school. Schools then have to hire more teachers for the increased number of classes. However, public schools across the country are already having trouble finding qualified teachers to fill their classrooms. As a result, when reduced class sizes increase the need for more teachers, schools then often have to hire less-qualified teachers.

Teacher Quality and Teaching Methods Are Far More Important

As we might expect, teacher quality is far more important than class size in determining how children do in school. William Sanders at the University of Tennessee studied this issue. He found that teacher quality is almost twenty times more important than class size in determining students’ academic achievement in class. As a result, reducing class sizes can lead to the contrary effect of hurting students’ education, rather than helping.

Similarly, a study on class size by policy analyst Jennifer Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes do better academically or that teachers spend significantly more time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20 percent class-size reduction cost the Australian government an extra $1,150 per student, yet added only an additional two minutes of instruction per day for each child.

Reducing class sizes can’t solve the underlying problems with public schools. No matter how small classes become, nothing will help if the teachers are ill-trained or their teaching methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers use whole-language or balanced reading instruction, they can cripple students’ ability to read no matter how small the classes are. Even if classrooms had one teacher for every student, that child’s ability to read could still be crippled if the teacher used these reading-instruction methods. In fact, smaller class sizes could give the teacher more time to hurt (not intentionally) each student’s reading ability.

Here’s an analogy on this issue of class size vs. teaching methods: Suppose a horseback-riding instructor was teaching one little girl to ride. This instructor’s teaching method was to tell the bewildered girl to sit backwards on the horse, facing the horse’s rump, and control the horse by holding its tail. Does it matter that the student-teacher ratio in this horseback-riding class is one-to-one if the instructor is an idiot or uses bad teaching methods?

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Public-school true believers often fall into this category – for over a hundred years, education “experts” have been tormenting our children with public schools, allegedly for the children’s benefit. Like all true believers, these people believe that they know what is best for our children and society, and seek to enforce their beliefs on parents.

From the 1850s to the 1920s, public-school activists such as Horace Mann and John Dewey worked to create a public-school system like the one they admired in Prussia (Germany). Mann and Dewey considered public education a religion, with a holy mission to mold children and society. Simply teaching children to read, write, and do math was too commonplace a goal for them. Mann and Dewey wanted the schools to have total control over children’s lives. This meant removing parents’ influence over their children. Mann put it this way: “We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.”

Dewey also had a utopian vision for America and he wanted the common schools to achieve his vision. To create a socialist America, public schools had to mold generations of children into the habit of obedience. In his Pedagogic Creed of 1897, Dewey wrote, “Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. . .”

Public Schools Expand Their Control Over Our Children

By the early twentieth century, public schools had expanded their functions into areas undreamed of in the 1850s. Schools took on the role of social agencies, with nurses, social centers, playgrounds, school showers, kindergartens, and “Americanization” programs for immigrants. Public schools became a major agency for social control.

Unfortunately, today’s public schools are fulfilling Mann’s and Dewey’s socialist vision with a vengeance. There is hardly any area of children’s lives that school authorities don’t push to control or manipulate. Politicians and public-school apologists in many states are now pushing programs that would make kindergarten compulsory. Public schools also now spend billions of dollars for psychological counseling, school-lunch programs, parent welfare-outreach programs, special-education classes, bilingual classes, early-childhood programs, drug and sex education classes, as well as programs for millions of “at-risk” or “special-needs” children.

This government-knows-best philosophy is the deepest reason why public schools get away with educational murder and can never be fixed. Many public-school apologists believe that your children’s education must be dictated by local governments and school authorities. By implication, they believe that parents are an annoyance at best, and at worst a danger to their children’s proper education. That is why public-school true believers will never voluntarily give up control over our children. They see themselves as noble idealists who know what is best for our children. That is why these “idealists” have contempt for parent’s rights.

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Myron Lieberman, former high-school teacher, listed some of the ways teachers can “cheat” in his book “Public Education: an Autopsy“:

1 –Poor students were excluded or discouraged from taking the tests

2 – Teachers assigned tests as homework or taught test items in class

3 – Test security was minimal or even nonexistent

5 – Unrealistic, highly improbable improvements from test to test were not audited or investigated

6 – Teachers and administrators were not punished for flagrant violations of test procedures

7 – Test results were reported in ways that exaggerated achievement levels (1)

In December 1999, a special investigation of New York City schools revealed that two principals and dozens of teachers and assistant teachers were helping students cheat on standardized math and reading tests.

Andrew J. Coulson, in his brilliant book, “Market Education: The Unknown History,” sites an example of how public schools deliberately lie to parents about their children’s academic abilities:

“Consistently greeted by A’s and B’s on their children’s report cards, the parents of Zavala Elementary School had been lulled into complacency, believing that both the school and its students were performing well. In fact, Zavala was one of the worst schools in the district, and its students ranked near the bottom on statewide standardized tests. When a new principal took over the helm and requested that the statewide scores be read out at a PTA meeting, parents were dismayed by their children’s abysmal showing, and furious with teachers and school officials for misleading them with inflated grades.” (2)

In 1990, three academics, Harold Stevenson, Chuansheng Chen, and David Uttal did a study of the attitudes and academic achievement of black, white, and hispanic children in Chicago. They found a disturbing gap between what parents thought their children were learning and the children’s actual performance. Teachers in high-poverty schools had given A’s to students for work that would have earned them C’s or D’s in affluent suburban schools. In the study, black mothers of Chicago elementary school students rated their child’s skills and abilities quite high and thought their kids were doing well in reading and math. The children thought the same thing.

Unfortunately, the researchers found that the parents’ and children’s self-evaluations of their math and reading skills were way above their actual achievement levels. There was a big gap between their optimistic self-evaluations and their dismal academic performance on independent tests. Public schools were giving these children a false idea of their academic skill levels. In other words, these children were heading towards failure and no one bothered to tell them.

Parents, it would not be wise to trust any claims by teachers or school authorities about your children’s alleged academic abilities, even in so-called “good” schools in suburban neighborhoods. To find out how your child is really doing, have an outside independent company test your child’s reading and math skills. If you find that your child’s academic skills are far below what your local public-school led you to believe, you might want to take your child out of public school and look for better education alternatives. There is a complete Resource section in “Public Schools, Public Menace” that explores many of these quality, low-cost education alternatives.

by Joel Turtel

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

(1) Myron Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 8283.

(2) Andrew J. Coulson, , Market Education: The Unknown History, (New Brunswick, (USA): Transaction Publishers), 1999, p. 22.

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