Sunday, July 16, 2006

Who's Afraid Of School Choice?

Public school officials like those at the National Education Association (NEA) go crazy when parents start talking about helping poor students escape failing public schools. What's funny is they get even crazier when they are called on the carpet for their misuse of taxpayer funds to promote left-wing causes.

Just a week ago, the NEA held their national convention. The American Family Association learned of proposed resolutions by the teachers union in support of gay marriage.

Setting aside that particular issue for a minute, why is a teacher group discussing things like this when they are supposed to be working for students? These are the people who don't want you asking questions about spending your tax dollars more efficiently in the education of your children.

The fact is the NEA has gotten so comfortable and intellectually lazy they even bragged on their website about passing resolutions to "address diversity, discrimination and civil unions." And NEA President Reg Weaver complained about an attack on "marriage rights."

In the same breath, he accused the AFA liars of making the whole thing up.

You don't have to be a "religious conservative" to see the duplicity in this.

Your tax dollars support the NEA in this. And even if you agree with them on their political agenda, can you admit that spending time and money debating resolutions on diversity and civil unions does nothing to improve public education?

The folks at the NEA also spend an inordinate amount of time scaring people about how horrible it would be if we stopped supporting them in the pursuit of their political agenda. If we did that, we might take a look at how to improve the management of our monopoly government schools.

It might help if you read a little article from the Kentucky Alliance For School Choice.

What the thieves at the NEA don't want you to know is that school choice is proven to make public schools better, not destroy them. The only losers under school choice are the education bureaucrats who like to sit around at summer conferences promoting agenda items totally unrelated to the education of our children.

The KASC has a petition to help focus legislators on improving our public schools, not just the social lives of our education officials. Please sign it.