Cheers and Boos: Timer Edition

All the cheers and boos I can put into 40 minutes of writing:

• Cheers to Senator Joyce Broadsword (R-2) for introducing a bill to double the sentence for felony injury to a child. We need to take crimes against children more seriously.
• Boos to Rep. Carlos Bilbao (R-11) for introducing a bill to make grafiti a felony. Let me be clear. Grafiti is  bad. There was some in the park across the street from our church and its an eye sore to the community. That said, do we have space for felons? Do we really want to make some 19-year old a Felon for grafiti? This is not an issue for the legislature.
• Cheers to the Idaho Meth project which has actually done a good job changing Idahoans minds about meth through education.
• Boos to the Idaho Education Bureaucracy: Two Idaho businessmen testified that our Idaho schools are failing to prepare kids for the jobs of tomorrow. Of course, an argument could be made that the public schools shouldn’t turn out corporate chocolate soldiers. But what do schools turn out consistently? Do they turn out great artists or people who are knowledgable in the great cultural works of the country? Do they turn out people who know history? Do they turn out great artists? Great scientists?  

 Yes, you’ll find some of that number among the graduates of public schools, but these are   exceptions rather than the rules of public education. And the Teacher’s Union knows it. When unions argue against merit pay, they argue that it’s not fair to teachers because whether they get good students or bad is all luck of the draw, and a teacher could be saddled with parents who don’t care or are abusive, or kids in difficult situations. If teachers have so little control over what happens to student performance, it suggests our education system doesn’t work.

What’s required is a fundamental re-examination of how we educate. People act like publicly funded schools that keep kids in class 180 days a year for six hours a day is the ONLY way to do education, and promoting alternatives to public education undermines this wonderful system. Yet this system is less than two centuries old, and in America, it is failing to achieve worldclass results.

I support education, kids aren’t getting it, and they won’t continue to do it as long as we continue to act to please the teacher’s union.