California’s public education hierarchy has engaged in what can only be described as a massive disinformation campaign about the extent to which high school students vanish without graduating.
For years, the state Department of Education has claimed that 87 percent of high school students get diplomas, even when outside analysts repeatedly demonstrated that the official numbers just didn’t add up.
[…]
The Harvard project’s data and its methodology almost perfectly mirror what a conservative, pro-voucher group called California Parents for Educational Choice has contended for years. CPEC also believes that when junior high school dropouts are factored into the equation, the true graduation rate may be closer to 60 percent.
There’s no conspiracy, it’s simply in the local best interests of every school to underreport drop outs. It’s no different than production quotes in a Communist system, where everyone generates glowing reports without regard to the facts on the ground. Quite the uncanny resemblance, eh?
Speaking at a breakfast meeting sponsored by Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality (ANGLE), [DNC Chairman Howard] Dean said while the need for “message discipline” was keeping Democrats focused on its opposition to the Bush administration’s proposal to reform Social Security by allowing private investment accounts, “we’re going to use Terri Schiavo later on.”
“This is going to be an issue in 2006, and it’s going to be an issue in 2008,” Dean told the 200 attendees, “because we’re going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, ‘Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not? Or is that going to be up to your loved ones?’”
It’s been a few days and I’m still waiting for the outrage over using this women’s death for political purposes. Isn’t that terribly wrong, especially when endorsed by a political party’s leader?
Opening a new front in the growing rebellion against President Bush’s signature education law, the nation’s largest teachers’ union and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont sued the Department of Education yesterday, accusing it of violating a passage in the law that says states cannot be forced to spend their own money to meet federal requirements.
The Administration should join the suit and get the Court to rule that no Federal regulations need be followed by the states unless accompanied by sufficient federal funding to do so. That would truly end the era of big government
That would be so sweet…
During a state visit to China, French Premier Raffarin threw support behind a law allowing China to attack Taiwan and continued to push for a lift of the EU arms embargo.
At the outset of a three-day visit to China, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he supported Beijing’s “anti-secession” law on Taiwan, and vowed to keep pushing for an end to an EU arms embargo that could open the door for Paris to sell weapons to the Asian giant.
One is only left wondering whether this is about getting bribed by China or yet another effort to damage the USA and its allies at any cost.