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Showing posts with label exceptionalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exceptionalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
The Obama love for America clearly defined
Can You Feel the Love for America from the art studios of A.F. (Tony) Branco and featured at Comically Incorrect.com
Check out some of the websites listed below that publish the A.F. (Tony) Branco Political Cartoon features.
Become a Truth Serum Partner Now
Check out some of the websites listed below that publish the A.F. (Tony) Branco Political Cartoon features.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
America's Education Battlefield
America's Education Battlefield from the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy
The 2010 introduction of Common Core, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in math and English language arts, has turned schools in one state after another into battlefields as its complexity and other factors led to protests against it.
Even so, by mid-2014, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that very nearly half of those asked about it hadn’t even heard of it. A number of states, such as Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have withdrawn from it.
Schools today are often under fire for one reason or another. Ever since the 1960s when teachers unions began to secure more and more control, formerly the responsibility of individual and state school boards, Americans have been engaged in efforts to improve the elementary and secondary education systems.
Many have elected to home school their children. Others have pushed for school choice to permit their children to attend a school that was clearly doing a better job than the one to which their children were assigned.
As youngsters settle into their classes, there are a number of trends worth noting.
Perhaps one of the most interesting trends is the expansion of online classes into K-12. As Ashley Bateman noted in a recent issue of School Reform News, “In 2013 ten million students of all ages participated in more than 1,200 massive, open, online courses offered by more than 200 universities.”
Of value to self-motivated students in particular, online classes are sure to find a larger audience of students who have grown up in the virtual world of game playing.
Another trend was noted by Marcy C. Tillotson, an education reporter for Watchdog.org. It is the increasing demand for more and more data about each student who worry that things done at a very young age like a schoolyard fight or emotional problems will follow them into college when they have long outgrown the problems or behaviors of childhood.
Parents want to know what data is being collected and who has access to it. As often as not, they cannot find out.
Increasingly, school choice, a parent’s right to enroll their child in a selected public school, a private or a parochial choice, has become an issue that makes it into state legislature’s where some support and some forbid it. In Louisiana and Texas, for example, school choice programs and scholarship credits have gained support as a political issue.
In Florida, the teachers union has initiated a lawsuit “to eliminate school choice for many low-income students and effectively kill a program to help students with autism and other special needs.” In North Carolina, its Supreme Court rendered a decision that permits more than 2,000 low-income parents to send their children to schools of their choice.
Attention to the quality of teachers, as opposed to letting tenure keep poorly performing ones in the classroom, is a growing trend. Last year in California, a first of its kind teacher quality lawsuit was decided in favor of the education reforms that brought it, striking down tenure and a similar lawsuit has been announced for New York.
As Ms. Tillitson reported, “Vergara v. California struck down state laws that required teacher layoffs based solely on seniority with no regard to teacher effectiveness, gave teachers permanent status after two years on the job, and made it difficult for school administrators to dismiss ineffective teachers.” As this trend expands to other states, a major complaint regarding poor performance will be addressed.
At the heart of the issue of teacher quality are the programs that prepare them to teach. As Ms. Tillotson noted, “A week after a California judge ruled on a case involving teacher tenure, dismissals and layoffs, the National Council for Teacher Quality released its annual report on another fundamental problem, the poor quality of teacher preparation programs.
The report found that, as a whole, the programs need improvement. “Only a quarter of the programs expect aspiring teachers to be in the top half of their college’s academic pool. On a 125-point scale, the NCTQ ranked most programs as earning fewer than 50 points.
Increasingly, the quality and content of various educational programs are being questioned and challenged. One example is the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History Framework (APUSH) and the questions about who wrote the curriculum that is taught to 500,000 students in more than 8,000 high schools every year.
When Larry Krieger, a retired College Board-praised teacher and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow at The American Principles Project asked the College Board who was the author or authors of the program, all they got as a reference to a web page listing 19 college professors and teachers who served on two College Board committees but where not listed as authors, but as “Acknowledgements.”
Kreiger and Robbins call the history program “biased, poorly written, and ineptly organized”; one that “has raised alarms from state and national leaders.” We keep hearing about the importance of “transparency” but apparently the College Board does not think it applies to them.
It has long been known that U.S. schools tend to perform more poorly than those in other nations. Joy Pullman, a research fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News reported that “According to two recently released studies, the schools middle-income families send their kids to are not as good as parents think.”
“A national study,” wrote Ms. Pullman, “found U.S. students whose parents have college degrees perform worse than peers from comparable families in other countries. In the United States, 43 percent of such children tested ‘proficient’ in math on an international test, compared to 71 percent of comparable students from Poland, 68 percent in Japan, and 64 percent in Germany.” Overall, U.S. students performed better than those in only six countries.
Not surprisingly, Ms. Bateman has reported that “Accepting federal mandates in exchange for funding is the crux of the problem” of ever-growing educational bureaucracies at the state level. “States report that 40 percent of the paperwork burden they deal with is to comply with federal regulations,” said Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation.
When one considers how much in tax revenue is collected for the purpose of educating our youth, one would hope for better results, but fortunately there are many individuals, parents, and organizations seeking to improve the quality of education and our schools are going to remain battlefields for many years to come.
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| Know Caruba's Warning Signs |
Even so, by mid-2014, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that very nearly half of those asked about it hadn’t even heard of it. A number of states, such as Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have withdrawn from it.
Schools today are often under fire for one reason or another. Ever since the 1960s when teachers unions began to secure more and more control, formerly the responsibility of individual and state school boards, Americans have been engaged in efforts to improve the elementary and secondary education systems.
Many have elected to home school their children. Others have pushed for school choice to permit their children to attend a school that was clearly doing a better job than the one to which their children were assigned.
As youngsters settle into their classes, there are a number of trends worth noting.
Perhaps one of the most interesting trends is the expansion of online classes into K-12. As Ashley Bateman noted in a recent issue of School Reform News, “In 2013 ten million students of all ages participated in more than 1,200 massive, open, online courses offered by more than 200 universities.”
Of value to self-motivated students in particular, online classes are sure to find a larger audience of students who have grown up in the virtual world of game playing.
Another trend was noted by Marcy C. Tillotson, an education reporter for Watchdog.org. It is the increasing demand for more and more data about each student who worry that things done at a very young age like a schoolyard fight or emotional problems will follow them into college when they have long outgrown the problems or behaviors of childhood.
Parents want to know what data is being collected and who has access to it. As often as not, they cannot find out.
Increasingly, school choice, a parent’s right to enroll their child in a selected public school, a private or a parochial choice, has become an issue that makes it into state legislature’s where some support and some forbid it. In Louisiana and Texas, for example, school choice programs and scholarship credits have gained support as a political issue.
In Florida, the teachers union has initiated a lawsuit “to eliminate school choice for many low-income students and effectively kill a program to help students with autism and other special needs.” In North Carolina, its Supreme Court rendered a decision that permits more than 2,000 low-income parents to send their children to schools of their choice.
Attention to the quality of teachers, as opposed to letting tenure keep poorly performing ones in the classroom, is a growing trend. Last year in California, a first of its kind teacher quality lawsuit was decided in favor of the education reforms that brought it, striking down tenure and a similar lawsuit has been announced for New York.
As Ms. Tillitson reported, “Vergara v. California struck down state laws that required teacher layoffs based solely on seniority with no regard to teacher effectiveness, gave teachers permanent status after two years on the job, and made it difficult for school administrators to dismiss ineffective teachers.” As this trend expands to other states, a major complaint regarding poor performance will be addressed.
At the heart of the issue of teacher quality are the programs that prepare them to teach. As Ms. Tillotson noted, “A week after a California judge ruled on a case involving teacher tenure, dismissals and layoffs, the National Council for Teacher Quality released its annual report on another fundamental problem, the poor quality of teacher preparation programs.
The report found that, as a whole, the programs need improvement. “Only a quarter of the programs expect aspiring teachers to be in the top half of their college’s academic pool. On a 125-point scale, the NCTQ ranked most programs as earning fewer than 50 points.
Increasingly, the quality and content of various educational programs are being questioned and challenged. One example is the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History Framework (APUSH) and the questions about who wrote the curriculum that is taught to 500,000 students in more than 8,000 high schools every year.
When Larry Krieger, a retired College Board-praised teacher and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow at The American Principles Project asked the College Board who was the author or authors of the program, all they got as a reference to a web page listing 19 college professors and teachers who served on two College Board committees but where not listed as authors, but as “Acknowledgements.”
Kreiger and Robbins call the history program “biased, poorly written, and ineptly organized”; one that “has raised alarms from state and national leaders.” We keep hearing about the importance of “transparency” but apparently the College Board does not think it applies to them.
It has long been known that U.S. schools tend to perform more poorly than those in other nations. Joy Pullman, a research fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News reported that “According to two recently released studies, the schools middle-income families send their kids to are not as good as parents think.”
“A national study,” wrote Ms. Pullman, “found U.S. students whose parents have college degrees perform worse than peers from comparable families in other countries. In the United States, 43 percent of such children tested ‘proficient’ in math on an international test, compared to 71 percent of comparable students from Poland, 68 percent in Japan, and 64 percent in Germany.” Overall, U.S. students performed better than those in only six countries.
Not surprisingly, Ms. Bateman has reported that “Accepting federal mandates in exchange for funding is the crux of the problem” of ever-growing educational bureaucracies at the state level. “States report that 40 percent of the paperwork burden they deal with is to comply with federal regulations,” said Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation.
When one considers how much in tax revenue is collected for the purpose of educating our youth, one would hope for better results, but fortunately there are many individuals, parents, and organizations seeking to improve the quality of education and our schools are going to remain battlefields for many years to come.
_____________________________________________________________
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Saturday, September 13, 2014
Equality of opportunity not outcome
My commitment to equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes from the files of Colonel Allen. B. West
Sunday morning I awoke in Greenwich, Connecticut to a beautiful sunrise. I went for a nice run through Brice Park enjoying the woods and pondering what it must have been like living here during the Revolutionary War.
After my run, I enjoyed breakfast sitting next to a magnificent yacht docked in the harbor. I was invited to Greenwich to present the SPC Gordon Raymond James “Pay it Forward” Award to some very good friends, who have been stalwart in their support to our veterans: Leora and Steve Levy at the Greenwich Polo Club.
In a short 53 years, life has taken me from very humble beginnings, born and raised in an inner city neighborhood in Atlanta, to having breakfast at the Greenwich Harbor. That ladies and gentlemen is the essence of American exceptionalism — which we must fight to ensure remains part of our DNA, the American genetic code for future generations.
And how does this happen? It happens because in this great Constitutional Republic we believe — at least some of us believe — in an equality of opportunity that promotes our ability to succeed regardless of our beginnings.
However, there are those who do not share that same belief, because their concept is rooted in an equality of outcomes whereby government and manipulative progressive socialists determine how far you can go — what you can achieve.
Countless Americans will come to believe — and it becomes a generational phenomenon — that government will give to them, as they feel entitled, therefore stymieing their own personal ambition, will, desire, and determination to one day sit and have breakfast at Greenwich Harbor.
Today, I am in Long Island to support a fellow veteran and congressional candidate, New York State Senator and U.S. Army Reserve Major Lee Zeldin. And as usual, the progressive socialist Left is attacking Lee for having me come and support him.
Why? Why would these leftists have an issue with a 53-year-old retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives with two masters degrees married for 25 years to a successful financial broker who has an MBA — from Long Island University — and a PhD? Oh yeah, I’m black and my wife Angela is a naturalized American citizen of Jamaican heritage whose father is a retired Army Master Sergeant, and we have two daughters — seniors in college and high school.
Why is that so very threatening to the progressive socialist Left? Because my wife and I represent equality of opportunity — and not servitude and surrender to the liberal progressive welfare nanny-state. Furthermore, we are vocal as black conservatives – and that scares the hell out of those who seek economic enslavement of minorities, not economic empowerment.
They embrace the pimps of poverty who will continue to degrade the American dream for more Angelas and Allens. And that is why the vile vicious attacks ensue as I prepare to join Lee Zeldin, Larry Kaifesh, Dan Bongino, Mia Love, Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton and others in helping them to further the American dream, American exceptionalism. The belief in the equality of opportunity.
Consider this Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) who attacked a veteran like Lee Zeldin with an ad putting Lee’s face on the cowardly lion character of the Wizard of Oz. And his attacks on me — a fellow veteran and paratrooper seeking to assist and support another.
It’s all because of a fear of men and women who have made an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. It’s not good for business for progressive socialist politicians whose relationships and closeness to teachers unions and charlatans such as Al Sharpton outweigh a commitment to serve the American people — their constituents.
This is why I am undeterred in my quest to restore this Republic and ensure for future generations their dreams and hopes are secured — the dream of policies promoting growth, opportunity, and promise.
Simply put, I am committed to an endeavor, an effort to secure our nation from its enemies — foreign and domestic — that would keep more young minorities from ever being able to awake and see a sunrise over Greenwich Harbor.
I am dedicated to American exceptionalism — the firm belief in equality of opportunity for Americans, not the subservience of equality of outcomes.
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| Read Ahead About the Pimps of Poverty |
After my run, I enjoyed breakfast sitting next to a magnificent yacht docked in the harbor. I was invited to Greenwich to present the SPC Gordon Raymond James “Pay it Forward” Award to some very good friends, who have been stalwart in their support to our veterans: Leora and Steve Levy at the Greenwich Polo Club.
In a short 53 years, life has taken me from very humble beginnings, born and raised in an inner city neighborhood in Atlanta, to having breakfast at the Greenwich Harbor. That ladies and gentlemen is the essence of American exceptionalism — which we must fight to ensure remains part of our DNA, the American genetic code for future generations.
And how does this happen? It happens because in this great Constitutional Republic we believe — at least some of us believe — in an equality of opportunity that promotes our ability to succeed regardless of our beginnings.
However, there are those who do not share that same belief, because their concept is rooted in an equality of outcomes whereby government and manipulative progressive socialists determine how far you can go — what you can achieve.
They believe they are the selectors of the winners and losers. It is that belief — equality of outcomes — that falsely motivates people to believe that all they can achieve in America is a minimum wage job, and that it is a career pursuit.Therefore, in the appalling goal to limit and constrain the outcomes, these people, under the guise of misconceived benevolence, advocate for higher minimum wages — $15 to $22 an hour – in effect, relegating an entire demographic into continued poverty — not greater opportunity.
Countless Americans will come to believe — and it becomes a generational phenomenon — that government will give to them, as they feel entitled, therefore stymieing their own personal ambition, will, desire, and determination to one day sit and have breakfast at Greenwich Harbor.
Today, I am in Long Island to support a fellow veteran and congressional candidate, New York State Senator and U.S. Army Reserve Major Lee Zeldin. And as usual, the progressive socialist Left is attacking Lee for having me come and support him.
Why? Why would these leftists have an issue with a 53-year-old retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives with two masters degrees married for 25 years to a successful financial broker who has an MBA — from Long Island University — and a PhD? Oh yeah, I’m black and my wife Angela is a naturalized American citizen of Jamaican heritage whose father is a retired Army Master Sergeant, and we have two daughters — seniors in college and high school.
Why is that so very threatening to the progressive socialist Left? Because my wife and I represent equality of opportunity — and not servitude and surrender to the liberal progressive welfare nanny-state. Furthermore, we are vocal as black conservatives – and that scares the hell out of those who seek economic enslavement of minorities, not economic empowerment.
They embrace the pimps of poverty who will continue to degrade the American dream for more Angelas and Allens. And that is why the vile vicious attacks ensue as I prepare to join Lee Zeldin, Larry Kaifesh, Dan Bongino, Mia Love, Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton and others in helping them to further the American dream, American exceptionalism. The belief in the equality of opportunity.
Consider this Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) who attacked a veteran like Lee Zeldin with an ad putting Lee’s face on the cowardly lion character of the Wizard of Oz. And his attacks on me — a fellow veteran and paratrooper seeking to assist and support another.
It’s all because of a fear of men and women who have made an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. It’s not good for business for progressive socialist politicians whose relationships and closeness to teachers unions and charlatans such as Al Sharpton outweigh a commitment to serve the American people — their constituents.
This is why I am undeterred in my quest to restore this Republic and ensure for future generations their dreams and hopes are secured — the dream of policies promoting growth, opportunity, and promise.
Simply put, I am committed to an endeavor, an effort to secure our nation from its enemies — foreign and domestic — that would keep more young minorities from ever being able to awake and see a sunrise over Greenwich Harbor.
I am dedicated to American exceptionalism — the firm belief in equality of opportunity for Americans, not the subservience of equality of outcomes.