NEA and school improvement

If there's one thing I think is worth spending our money on it's our children's education. We should be giving incentives to teachers to keep them in the poorer neighborhoods, making Pre-K available to all children and giving GOOD teachers the good salary they deserve. Sadly, all the Republicans talk about is cutting funding, busting unions and handing out vouchers so the wealthy can make sure their children attend the fancy private schools while the poor and lower-middle class kids are stuck in the inferior public schools, which of course will get worse if the funds are cut and what is left is diverted for vouchers. Liberals are all the time being accused of wanting to hold people back and keep them down, but that's exactly what the right wants to do when it comes to educating our kids. Keep the poor kids, some minorities, some not, in the bad schools so they never get the education they need to better themselves. Annie

Ditto Jayperiod. The Dems need beneficiaries, Unarmed illiterates who think that their Am Idol vote is more important than their vote for President. It doesn't take a lot of money to teach a kid to read. TheRe IS NO ExcUsE for anyone in America to be illiterate. Yet we spend more money per student than any other country on the planet and we have close to the highest illiteracy rate. Who elected the NEA? All they do is ask for more money and prevent good teachers from doing what they are hired to do. No matter what the problem, the solution is always more money. Yet our best and brightest are other countries average. More money needs to go to actual education rather than executive salaries and political donations. Education should be strictly local. Something I have noticed is that Democrats seem to think that Education, Police and Firefighters are the most important priority, but whenever someone brings up a tax cut these are the first to get cut.?!?!?

Senator Obama is himself living proof that minorities have ample opportunity for higher education. That he has the audacity to complain of lack of opportunity for minorities should be occaision for any audience to laugh in his face.

Government can never fix education with dollars. Most private schools operate on fewer dollars per student than government schools, yet they produce far greater results. Public schools are set up to fail, in that they don't encourage teachers to be creative or for schools to excel. The NEA discourages teacher creativity, as well. If we could get rid of the NEA and DOE, give parents more control over their children's education, and challenge teachers to be creative, we could see real progress. But with Democrats in charge, that will never happen. Democrats benefit when society depends on them and a well educated society will never depend on government.

I oppose both the NEA and the Department Of Education. The DOE is a blatant misuse of taxpayer money, and it is unconstitutional as well. The Federal government has no business in Education, the social and political ramifications are endless. Education should be handled locally, with the State government being the final word. The NEA has no business even existing. It's sole purpose ids for the benefit of educators and how much money they can bilk out of taxpayers. They have no interest in the children or of the quality of education, their only interest is teachers salaries and compensation packages that can be negotiated/demanded with no responsibility or oversight on teacher qualifications. The NEA is a major supporter of the Democrats, as is every other major union in the country... that is because the democrats and the unions share the same socialist agenda. The liberals are the reason that education is substandard across the board and for all races. Our education system has bee going downhill for many years, and I think it is deliberate. The people responsible are the very people who are condemning it... which would be the liberals.

When one looks at the history of the NEA, you will find that for the past several decades they have slowly been eroding our education system across the board "starting" with pockets of lower income communities and minorities. They have now incorporated a "new" curriculum mandated by the federal government for ALL students going to public schools receiving federal funding. We have gone from being a country that ranked #1 in high school and college education (20 years ago) to now rank 18 out of 24 industrial nations. This new curriculum was approved during Bush Sr's presidency. There is more money being spent per student (no matter what the school system - about $11,000) than in any time in history, yet year after year scholastic testing shows a complete failure of students now to even have basic math or reading skills. This is NOT a liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican issue, but an educational crisis promoted by the NEA backed by the federal government. One might want to read "The Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Iserbyt or watch the video "Who Controls the Children" by Peg Luksik or read the article "American Education Fails Because it Isn't Education" by Tom DeWeese at American Policy Center.Org.