Principle Over Party

Does the Illinois Lottery pay for education? That is the question the Daily Herald answered a few days ago. [Emphasis Mine]

First, an answer. Yes, millions of dollars from losing Illinois Lottery tickets go to fund public education.

————————–

The lottery began in 1974, but the money wasn’t specifically earmarked for education until 1985. That year, a new law required all lottery profits go to the state’s schools fund, which helps finance kindergarten through high school public education.

————————–

There was no requirement the lottery money be on top of what was already there. So, as lottery money comes in, it frees up other state tax money to spend elsewhere. How much education gets in the end is up to the annual political whims of state lawmakers and the governor.

————————–

“Thus, while the lottery is a significant source of revenue, it has never been – nor will be – the primary source of school funding,” reads a line on one pamphlet explaining where lottery money goes.

So the lottery funding education is a myth and will remain so. This leaves the bulk of school funding on the backs of homeowners through property taxes. As much as everyone likes to claim property taxes are local control, it is really just a state sanctioned tax to give the appearance of local control.

It’s time to fund the child and quit funding the bureaucracies in the public government schools

This report is from the Schott Foundation for Public Education and reported in EdWeek. [Emphasis mine]

Since 2004, the foundation has tracked the school performance of African-American boys. This year’s report, released last month in Chicago at the annual UNITY convention of minority journalists, shows that 53 percent of black males did not receive diplomas with their cohort during the 2005-06 school year.

“Unfortunately, it’s pretty much the same thing,” said Michael Holzman, a research consultant for the foundation and the author of the report.

Mr. Holzman said that schools enrolling large numbers of black male students are not as good as schools with a larger population of white students: The teachers are not as experienced and effective, the schools lack resources, and the curriculum is not as challenging. Non-black students enrolled at such schools, he said, also did not graduate at the same rate as their counterparts in schools that had fewer black students.

What about Chicago?

Chicago, which has the nation’s second-highest enrollment of black males, had a graduation rate of 37 percent for African-American boys, compared with 62 percent for white males, the Schott report found. In addition, the report found, the school systems in New York City, Detroit, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., also did not graduate the majority of black boys.

The report says there is a “leadership deficit” and I have to agree, but not in the way they claim. The leadership deficit I see is African American leaders like Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rev. Meeks, the NAACP and others who blindly support a public government school system that is setup to keep African American children uneducated and thus unable to compete without governmental support. How they justify this blind support is beyond me. The only possible reasons I see are that it is all about the money they receive by staying in leadership roles and with a dumbed down population, they won’t be able to think for themselves and will continue to support these failed leaders and their policies of apartheid.

This apartheid system will not change until we start funding the child instead of funding a self-serving bloated bureaucracy that cares more about its own extravagent pensions, salaries and benefits instead of the needs of actually educating the children of this country.

Everyone wanting to follow the #dontgo movement, head over to dontgolist.com and signup for their email list.

This is a funny and very apropos explanation of how much time Congress takes off and is not working.

Follow the #dontgo Movement and tell your friends. You can also sign the petition Calling Congress Back to Work as well.

The Wall Street Journal had an Editorial about the homeschool ruling in California. I had previously written about this here and here. Below are a couple of excerpts [Emphasis mine]:

In the annals of judicial imperialism, we have arrived at a strange new chapter. A California court ruled this month that parents cannot “home school” their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching. Parents “do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.
—————————————–
That so many families turn to home schooling is a market solution to a market failure — namely the dismal performance of the local education monopoly. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the majority of states have low to moderate levels of regulation for home schools, an environment that has allowed the option to flourish, especially in the South and Western U.S. Between 1999 and 2003, the rate of home-schooling increased by 29%.
—————————————–
If John McCain wants an issue to endear him to cultural conservatives, this would be it. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rarely stray from the preferences of the teachers unions, but we’d like to know whether they really favor the certification of parents who dare to believe they know best how to teach their children.

This is the whole crux of the home school debate, are parents qualified to educate their own children or should parents be certified by the State? The answer should be NO to anyone who loves freedom. If you are hesitating to answer No, think for a minute what that means. You are saying the the government has the right to tell you how to raise your child. What’s next, parental discipline certification? parental birth certification? The unintended consequences of this step into parental rights will very likely lead to the complete take over of child rearing authority by the government.

As the quote reminds us, be careful who you choose to elect as our next President. We must elect the candidate who believes in the freedom of the individual instead of the power of the State. It would nice to have each of the candidates weigh in on this question with a straightforward Yes or No answer as to whether they support certifying parents or not.

In a wonderful twist of irony, the ACLU is suing Florida School Districts over their abysmal education outcomes and graduation rates. They are in fact using the same phrase from the teachers contracts that the teacher unions used to get the voucher system thrown out. (Hat tip: Liberty Is For Me) The phrase is

uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality education

Here are a few quotes from the Palm Beach Post [Emphasis mine]:

Low graduation rates in Palm Beach County show the school district has failed its students, especially minority children, by not providing a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality education,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
—————————-snip————————–
The suit alleges that the district is violating students’ rights to a high-quality education as outlined in the state constitution.
—————————-snip————————–
Hansen said the organization intentionally left out specific remedies to allow school district officials to do what they think is best to improve achievement.

So, we have students rights being violated and the same school district that is violating this rights will be left to come up with their own solution to fix the problem. Sorry, but if they could have fixed the problem it would have been done already. The school officials will just go to the teachers unions and the teachers unions answer will be give us more money. Thus never solving the problem but making education even more expensive and you’ll get an even more entrenched bureaucracy.

The teachers union doesn’t want change, they want protection. This is why they fought the voucher system. They don’t want competition that would force them to improve educational outcomes. They want status quo and more money.

I bet the right lawyer could take this same clause and use it toward the goal of funding all children equally. The argument is simple. The education bureaucracy has failed our children. They allow unequal funding based on residence. To end this the State provides money equally to each school age child. This money can then be used at any accredited school of the parents choosing. The parents are then in charge of the money and competition will abound.

I have written about this very topic many times before. Here are just a few of the links to those stories:

• Equal Access To a Good Education
• Land of the Free or Land of Local Fiefs
• School Funding and the Courts
• Anti-Catholic Bigotry and How It Affects Public Education
• School Choice Saves Money
• Lesson from New Zealand

There were 2 additional stories on the attempt to ban robo calls. The first is a follow up in the Daily Herald. The second is in the Beacon News in a story about the press conference, an editorial, and on their blog. It is absolutely amazing to me that so many commenter’s would freely give up their freedoms because they get a few annoying phone calls.

Bruno Behrend of Extreme Wisdom has also picked the story on his blog. He opens with this line:

The Daily Herald covered Tom Cross’s brilliant plan to keep all of you dumb and stupid. Being dumb and stupid, most people seem to support plans to make them even more so.

House Republican Majority Leader Tom Cross is introducing legislation that will limit the free speech here in Illinois. He wants to ban robo calls.

At a news conference scheduled for today in Geneva, House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego, state Rep. Tim Schmitz, a Batavia Republican and state Rep. Ruth Munson, an Elgin Republican, are expected to call for new restrictions on the use of such calls.

I understand why politicians, especially the corrupt ones we have in Illinois want to limit free speech, but why do so many citizens want to give up one more freedom? I am including a few of the citizen comments:

I agree that these calls must be stopped. I pay for home telephone service so that I can call other people, and so that I can invite other people to call me.

I do NOT pay for home telephone service just to make it easier, cheaper and more convenient for some politician to feed me their propaganda.

The notion that my phone is just another campaigning tool is an outrage and if it takes legislation to stop the practice, so be it.

posted by RegularGuy

THANK YOU! I hated these bombarding phone calls as much as the twice-a-day mailings. It was ridiculous!
posted by Me2

Bruno sums it up best in his sarcastic response to these commenters:

“Take my freedom, I’m not using it.” Yecch!

At the rate we’re going in Illinois, there will soon be no need to even vote. Those of you who still care about free speech need to speak up before all your freedoms are gradually taken or given away by politicians and people who don’t want to be bothered with actually knowing the facts.

I have personally used robo calls in my school district. Because of their use, my group was able to get about $7,000,000 abated back to the taxpayers. Without robo calls supplementing the neighborhood walks, the effort would have failed. We didn’t have the money to advertise on the radio or the paper. We only had a website, letters to the editors, robo calls and our feet. This is a free speech issue and not just about calls somebody thinks are annoying.

In a quick update to my post about California Courts ruling that parents don’t have a right to homeschool, there is now a petition to sign if you support homeschooling and want to see this ruling overturned at the HSLDA website. The HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) has a resource page here.

Please consider looking at ParentalRights.org and decide if you want a Constitutional Amendment to protect the rights of parents.

Today the CA Court of Appeals said (Hat tip: Liberty Is For Me)

The Courts are once again ruling against the rights of the individual and forcing the will of the State onto its residents. This is Judicial tyranny and it has to be stopped. Each day, we as citizens are losing our rights to an out of control judiciary. The courts have eroded our personal property rights with the Kelo decision. They have been gradually eroding our rights as parents to raise our children in the manner that we think is best. Now they take that one step further and say the State has the final say in how we educate our children.

More information can be found at the following:

• PDF of Ruling
• LA Times Coverage
• Citizen Link
• LA court says: Homeschoolers need to attend government schools