Government-Run School Fraud in Camden, NJ

New Jersey government-run schools spend an average of $18,045 a student in K-12 education.  For that amount of money, a student should receive a very high quality education.  Generally, they do not get that high quality education.  In Camden, NJ the school district of 13,700 students spends even more per student, namely $24,709.  For such a princely sum, a student should get the equivalent of a very good private school education.  But in Camden one gets a 49.3% graduation rate in 2011-2012, down from a 56.9% graduation rate in 2010-2011.  There is a consolation.  Trenton, NJ has an even lower graduation rate, though that may only be because Trenton has a higher expectation of graduates.

Camden has the 3 worst schools in the entire state.  90% of its schools are among the worst 5% of all schools in the state.  Only 28% of 11th graders are proficient in math.  Fewer than 20% of 4th graders are literate in the language arts.  Governor Chris Christie has announced that the state of New Jersey is taking over the control of the extremely dysfunctional government-run Camden School District.

There is no lack of examples to illustrate the fact that the problem with the American government-run education system is not one to be solved by spending more money on it.  Many dysfunctional government-run school districts are spending $24,000 per student.  The problem is the purpose and the value choices of these government-run school systems, not their finances.

These problems are generally going to  be solved by setting up a free market of school choices in the education marketplace.  Voucher programs are essential in the transformation to a privately run education system in which competition and innovation in education will come to be more rewarded than thorough paperwork and a rigid, slow-minded bureaucracy with the interests of its union blue collar workers taking precedence over the education of students.  Almost every government-run school district would actually save money over time simply by issuing vouchers for an amount somewhat less than they spend per student.  Private schools will quickly spring up to provide a better education for that smaller cost per student.

Obama: Students Required to Serve

Since my earlier post just before polls opened on election day on Obama and his plans for numerous governmental service agencies and goals for students to perform community service, his website as President-Elect put out a call for service which changed the wording for student service from "set a goal" to "require." Apparently, enough people got hot over that that the "require" was quickly changed back to "set a goal."

Unfortunately, the goals of the highly socialist education profession and the teacher's unions are such that HIS setting goals for involuntary servitude will be enough that many more public school systems will add a requirement for community service for graduation.

I live in Maryland, The Free State. This is a joke left over from long ago when Maryland was notable for a higher degree of religious freedom than was found in most colonies and then in the states soon after our independence. Now, it is one of the more tyrannical states of the union. Maryland already requires students to perform community service as a requirement for high school graduation and proudly proclaims itself the first state to have such a requirement. I believe that the requirement is 50 hours, but none of the state or county school board websites I have visited spell out what the requirement is. They spell out the subject requirements clearly, but then they usually have the statement that attendance and service-learning requirements must also be met. Yes, slavery is called service-learning.

I can only imagine the hue and cry if the history books were to describe the slavery of African-Americans before the Civil War as a service-learning requirement.

The highest education official in the state of Maryland has just called for making the high school graduation requirement in the state 100 hours of community service. It appears he is already responding to Obama's call for setting a higher service goal.

Our American tradition has always limited government's role to some subset of human interactions and relationships and to a portion of our community affairs. We did not conflate government with society, but instead had the concept that society was much broader in scope than government. The socialists seek to eradicate this idea and seek to subsume all the relationships and interactions of a society into a broadly expanded government role with government regulation, control, and direction for all human activities. The "service-learning" high school graduation requirement has several purposes:

• To force students to obey government not only in school, but also in required activities outside school.
• To accustom students to conflate government with society.
• To make them believe the dogma that charity must be provided by government or its mandatory requirements and that it cannot depend upon voluntary acts of charity by benevolent people.
• To reduce the budget costs of some government services by bringing in free student labor.
• To complement the socialist teaching of history which emphasizes the malevolent and uncharitable aspects of human nature and overemphasizes the number of people who do not fare well under a Capitalist system.

Thanks again to Robert Bidinotto for making me aware of the change Obama made from "setting a goal" to "require" in one of his 7 November 2008 posts.