When blacks are unwilling to care for their own the situation of staying in the poor education trap is more difficult to correct for several obvious reasons.
a) How do you help those who do not want to or know how to help themselves
and
b) It is more difficult for those trapped in the same situation to help others in the same situation.
It is not generally a racial thing, it is more a societal problem. Get government out of education, close the Department of Education , rebuild and toughen the curriculum, let teachers teach rather than become babysitters and bureaucratic administrators for D.C paper pushers. Allow competition to enter the education arena so parents can choose schools they want their kids to attend.
This is what The Savannah Classical Academy was all about until some stupid rules pertaining to passing a state test intruded into and subsumed real education.
Cream not only rises to the top, it becomes more visible and often gets proselytized. Luring the best from black educational institutions is an understandable reality.
Why we continue to fund black state educational institutions is a mystery. Will Mexicans demand they are entitled to their own state universities and so it goes? (See 1 below.)
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Soros, persona non gratis in Austria. (See 2 below.)
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Netanyahu, world should listen when Israel and Arabs agree on Iran. (See 3 below.)
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Mass media bias continues as the Brazille partial book release was ignored. Can you imagine they would have done so had it been a revelation about the RNC?
Then we have the mouth foaming focus on Papadopolis's guilty plea and Manafort and his partner's pre Trump activities that had little to do with The Democrat's fitful pursuit of the alleged Russian Collusion. While all this continues nothing is reported about the Clinton uranium connection among other nefarious involvements.
Finally we have the episode with Trump's condolence conversation which was blown out of the water by a ding bat Congressional Representative who wanted to make headlines and show off her new hat.
Meanwhile, I have no doubt anything and everything the Trumps do, while on their Asian trip, will be picked apart if it is out of the ordinary based on mass media's finicky and biased standards.
RAP stars have gone disgustingly wild with despicable videos but the anti-Trump crowd are not critical. They also say nothing about the Virginia attack ads on Gillespie who might just win and which would send more shock waves through Democrat ranks.
Every time my Liberal friends attack Trump, I ask them to defend the various Brazille, Trump Dossier matters and they either deflect or go silent.
Our local paper has been sold to some other group which I suspect will force the editorial page to go further left from having been center right so that should prove interesting to watch this metamorphosis occur.
Other than that and the continued progress on the part of Iran, resistance by Democrats of everything Trump proposes and.or does life remains abnormally normal.
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Dick
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1)
Why Black Colleges Need Charter Schools
Only 35% of students earn bachelor’s degrees in six years. Why? Because traditional public schools failed to prepare them.
By Allysia Finley
Charter schools are the “polite cousins of segregation,” in the words of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Last year the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called for a moratorium on charters. Film festivals are screening “Backpack Full of Cash,” a pro-union documentary narrated by Matt Damon that portrays charters as separate and unequal institutions.
Pushing back against these invidious attacks is the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an organization that represents 47 historically black schools. “We cannot afford this kind of issue-myopia in our society,” the fund’s president, Johnny Taylor, wrote in a syndicated op-ed this fall. “If the NAACP continues to reject the educational opportunities school choice provides them, they risk becoming irrelevant—or worse—an enemy of the very people they claim to fight for.”
Mr. Taylor will step down next month after a seven-year tenure during which he has relentlessly promoted charters as a lifeline for black students and a pipeline for historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. On the heels of the fund’s 30th-anniversary gala last week, Mr. Taylor sat down in a Washington hotel to chat about the challenges HBCUs face and why he thinks parental choice—he doesn’t like the term “school choice”—is a solution.
First on the syllabus is a short history of HBCUs, which were established during the Jim Crow era to educate blacks who were then barred from many colleges and universities.
ILLUSTRATION: ZINA SAUNDERS
The Higher Education Act of 1965 authorized federal aid to HBCUs, a program known as Title III. But as states reduced their support two decades later, tuition at public HBCUs was rising. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund was formed in 1987 to provide scholarships to students attending public HBCUs. (Its counterpart for private HBCUs is the United Negro College Fund, established in 1944.)
Lately HBCUs have been struggling with enrollment and recruitment because they no longer have a “captive market,” as Mr. Taylor says. Over the past 40 years, the higher-education landscape has significantly changed as more schools have sought to diversify their student bodies. In 1977, 35% of black college graduates received bachelor’s degrees from HBCUs. By 2015 that had declined to 14%.
“Sometimes you have to be careful what you pray for,” Mr. Taylor says. “You wanted diversity, and guess what happened? You got diversity. We have two schools in Missouri, Harris-Stowe State University and Lincoln University of Missouri. Well, while people are screaming bloody murder for the University of Missouri to be more diverse, guess where it’s going to get its students? It’s cannibalizing our campuses.” Here in the nation’s capital, he adds, “Georgetown is going to Howard to pick off their best students.”
Thus HBCUs tend to educate predominantly low-income populations, while well-to-do and better-educated black students attend more-prestigious schools. That makes it harder for HBCUs to raise money for scholarships and campus improvements. Mr. Taylor says he donates to his alma mater, Florida’s University of Miami, which is not an HBCU: “All of my money goes to Miami. I have no reason to give it to Howard. I didn’t go to Howard.”
A related challenge is low retention. Just 35% of HBCU students graduate in six years, compared with about 60% for all colleges. At seven HBCUs, less than 20% of black students earn a bachelor’s degree in six years.
The root problem, Mr. Taylor explains, is that traditional public schools are failing to prepare students. In “economically fragile” communities, many low-income students graduate from high school without basic literacy, and those admitted to HBCUs often need remedial classes. That presents HBCUs with a dual challenge. “When you show up to my college, I’m in trouble and you’re in trouble,” Mr. Taylor says. “I can’t get you through, and the feds are holding me accountable for graduation rates. And you’re frustrated because you feel like you were shafted for 12 years by the secondary-school system—and you were.”
Charter schools, he says, can do better, which would help HBCUs succeed in turn. Many charter networks, such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (often called KIPP), have placed a special emphasis on ensuring that their students finish college. Overall, only 9% of students from low-income families earn college degrees within six years; the rate for many major charter networks is three to five times as high.
The dapper and upbeat Mr. Taylor attributes his personal success to having attended a magnet public school—a charter prototype—in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “I can tell you now where everyone else in my neighborhood ended up and where I ended up, because I was bused out of my neighborhood,” he says. “My mother wanted me to get a better shot than my public school and my neighborhood.”
Thus Mr. Taylor takes the opposition to such opportunities personally: “The notion that someone sitting at the NAACP’s headquarters in Baltimore could take that choice away from my mother is unacceptable.”
He adds that “I don’t suggest that charters or vouchers or any of the other options are the panacea.” But he insists that if “you know that the traditional public school system is failing your children, to say, ‘I’m not going to do anything but pour more money into something I know is not working,’ should be criminal. And I know that’s a strong word—but it should be criminal because you are stealing children’s lives.”
Several HBCUs have set up charters of their own, which serve as prep schools. “Howard University has a charter school, and the idea is to expose students to Howard University much earlier in their educational life cycle,” Mr. Taylor says. “Nine or 10 of our schools actually operate charters. You have K-12 kids walking onto a college campus every day. So they can envision college as a real option.”
But Americans still need convincing. A poll earlier this year by Education Next showed that public support for charters had dropped over the preceding 12 months, to 39% from 51%. Mr. Taylor attributes the decline in part to the deceptive claim by teachers unions that charter schools are private. They aren’t: Charters are public schools free from union control and under independent management.
But poor communication by education reformers hasn’t helped. “I don’t like the term ‘school choice,’ ” Mr. Taylor says, “because schools don’t choose children. I believe in ‘parental choice.’ That is a far better phrase. Schools don’t choose children, because if that’s the case, then it buys into this notion that, ‘Well, the kids that I don’t want, I’m not going to accept into my school. I’ll leave them at the public school.’ ”
In the District of Columbia, Mr. Taylor has witnessed firsthand how charter competition impels improvements at traditional public schools. Similarly, he hopes increased competition for black college students will make “the entire HBCU sector step up and respond.”
As an example of that competition he points to Georgia State University, which takes “Pell Grant-eligible kids and graduates them at double the rate of everyone else. The kids are coming out of school faster and with significantly less debt . . . and they have good jobs—relevant jobs to industry.” He believes HBCUs like Clark Atlanta University will have to improve to prevent the likes of Georgia State from poaching recruits. North Carolina A&T State University, an HBCU, has boosted its STEM curriculum to compete with nearby Duke and the University of North Carolina.
One impediment to progress, not unique to HBCUs, has been institutional inertia, Mr. Taylor says. Many colleges and faculty have resisted tailoring their curricula to the workforce needs of businesses. So even though companies aggressively recruit minorities, candidates graduate ill-equipped for jobs.
“Just because you finished a master’s degree,” Mr. Taylor says, “if what you learned in your curriculum was not rigorous or relevant, then Silicon Valley looks at you and says, ‘Well, that’s interesting that you have a degree, but it doesn’t work for us. You’re not prepared to do anything.’ ” Faculty at HBCUs need to understand, he adds, that “your syllabus is not totally yours; it has to be a partnership between industry and you the professor.”
The conversation turns to what the Trump administration can do to help HBCUs. Mr. Taylor’s priority is infrastructure: “I’m not necessarily talking bricks and mortar. The most important investment in HBCUs has to be technology—wiring these campuses and positioning them to compete in the 21st century. I don’t need a larger Office of Civil Rights.”
His other request is simple: “Talk with us, learn our community.” Mr. Taylor says “I can’t help myself” from pointing out that the Obama administration “made too many decisions for HBCUs without talking to HBCUs.” He cites the decision in 2012 to reduce eligibility for Pell Grants to 12 semesters from 18. “People say that ‘anybody should finish in six years.’ Yes, if that ‘anybody’ had 12 years of solid K-12 education.”
He says the early signs from the Trump administration are promising. While Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in February clumsily referred to HBCUs as “pioneers” in school choice, she quickly clarified her remarks and has since made numerous overtures. She gave a May commencement address at Florida’s Bethune-Cookman University and in August met privately in the Sunshine State with several HBCU leaders.
Last month, Mr. Taylor says, he got wind that the Education Department was preparing changes to Title III’s funding formulas that could cost HBCUs $100 million. “To their credit,” he recalls, “we sent a letter to Secretary DeVos on a Wednesday. Friday she convened a meeting of all of the heads of the HBCU advocacy organizations and announced she was going to grandfather all of the HBCUs in.”
He acknowledges that “I don’t think that we’re going to get some huge appropriation of cash, because it’s a conservative movement.” Still, “I’m optimistic about HBCU issues.”
How does he respond to staff and students who object to engagement with the GOP and the Trump White House? “More than half of our HBCUs sit in Republican congressional districts,” he says. A large majority are in states with GOP legislatures, governors or both. In other words, Republicans hold the purse strings. “If your budget comes from the federal government and the state government, not talking to them is a bad idea,” Mr. Taylor says.
“We are nonpartisan,” he emphasizes before rushing off to give a keynote speech on criminal justice at the Charles Koch Institute’s Advancing Justice annual summit. “I hope we all start thinking: What’s in the best interest of the kid? If we let that be sort of our compass, our guiding light, then you don’t care what the union wants. You don’t care about what the NAACP wants.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++2) Youngest World Leader Bans George Soros’s Foundations From Austria
The world’s youngest leader, newly-elected Sebastian Kurz, has informed George Soros that his Open Society Foundation has 28 days to cease and desist operations in Austria or face legal action for “attempting to undermine the democracy of the nation.”
31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s youngest ever leader, has told colleagues that action must be taken immediately, after news broke that George Soros has donated $18 billion of his $24 billion dollar fortune to his Open Society Foundation.
“The situation has become critical,” Kurz said “Soros is throwing everything he has behind his push for global control. Misinformation and media manipulation has already increased exponentially overnight. We have no room for complacency.“
Kurz, a self-described truther who says he was “red pilled” by the 9/11 film Loose Change, claims that he understands the Soros agenda, and “there is no way in hell this country will be his fifth victim.”
It is understood the Austrian chancellor is referring to the number of national economies Soros has crashed in order to gain enormous personal profit and political influence.
Asked why he was banning George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Kurz said, “Because it’s 2017.“
The news that Soros has released 75% of his vast fortune to push his political and social agenda has caused shockwaves around the world, with many democratically elected leaders expressing fear that the sheer weight of his billions, used to buy politicians and journalists, will be difficult to fight against.
Kurz agrees. This is why he has taken fast action.
“The specter of Soros is the greatest challenge humanity is facing in the world in 2017. He is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming his blood funnel into anything that smells like money, using this money to corrupt politicians, journalists and the public sector, and attempting to create the world in his image.
“The people of Austria have rejected the New World Order, and it is my duty and my privilege to uphold their will.”
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3 )
NETANYAHU: WHEN ISRAELIS AND ARABS AGREE ON IRAN, THE WORLD SHOULD LISTEN
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made use of his visit to Britain to persuade the British government to take steps to halt Iranian aggression.
Iran has taken over Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday morning, issuing a warning about Tehran’s growing regional dominance before ending a five-day trip to London.
Netanyahu was in Britain to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, but made use of the trip to persuade the British government to take steps to halt Iranian aggression
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's Saturday resignation — during which he said he fears an assassination attempt — and his warning about Iran’s inference in his country appeared to underscore the message Netanyahu delivered in meetings he held with British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
“You just heard the resigning prime minister of Lebanon, Hariri, say Hezbollah took over, which means that Iran took over,” Netanyahu said in an interview with the BBC Sunday morning.
“This is a wake up call for everyone. It says what the Middle East is really experiencing, it is experiencing the attempt of Iran to conquer the Middle East, to dominate and subjugate it,” Netanyahu said.
“This is a wake up call for everyone. It says what the Middle East is really experiencing, it is experiencing the attempt of Iran to conquer the Middle East, to dominate and subjugate it,” Netanyahu said.
“When Israelis and the Arabs, all the Arabs and the Israelis, agree on one thing, people should pay attention. We should stop this Iranian take over,” Netanyahu said.
Iran is also operating in Syria and wants to colonize it, Netanyahu said, vowing that Israel would not let this happen.
“They want to bring their airfare there. They want to bring Shi'ite and Iranian forces next to Israel, we will not let that happen. We will resist it,” he said.
Netanyahu, however, sidestepped the BBC question of whether Israel was prepared to go to war over this issue.
Iran is also operating in Syria and wants to colonize it, Netanyahu said, vowing that Israel would not let this happen.
“They want to bring their airfare there. They want to bring Shi'ite and Iranian forces next to Israel, we will not let that happen. We will resist it,” he said.
Netanyahu, however, sidestepped the BBC question of whether Israel was prepared to go to war over this issue.
In the same interview, he explained, the best way to move forward in the peace process is for the Palestinians to have a demilitarized state.
“They should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the power to threaten us,” Netanyahu said.
“If it's not demilitarized then it becomes a platform to continue the war against the one Jewish state,” he said.
He continued to vow that he would not uproot West Bank settlements stating: “the idea that Jews cannot live in Judea is crazy.”
The settlements, Netanyahu said, are a side issue. The real issue is the Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish right to a homeland.
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