Civil Rights Travesty

Bad stats on math and science again for the U.S. CNN:

In math, U.S. high schoolers were in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, trailing countries including Finland, China and Estonia.

According to the report, the U.S. math scores were not measurably different in 2006 from the previous scores in 2003. But while other countries have improved, the United States has remained stagnant.

In science, the United States falls behind countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.

Merit pay works, with an impact even on AP kids. Boston Globe:

TEACHERS UNIONS see red on the subject of merit pay. But the results released yesterday on a bold education experiment suggest that paying teachers for performance helps in preparing students for college-level work.

Teachers union "leadership" is so mean-spirited and mediocre they don't even care about rewarding excellence among their own members--why would they care about encouraging it in your kids and mine?

Are you listening all you Dems who claim to care about kids? What will it take to break the NEA stranglehold on our schools? Leadership. Are you listening Barack Obama?

How about starting with D.C. school choice? Yeah, right:

As children in D.C. head back to school this week, the Obama administration’s decision to phase-out the very-successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is going to start having an impact on affected students. The bottom line is that 216 children have been denied the chance to go to a school of their parents’ choice. Many of these kids will have no choice but to attend low-performing and, tragically, often dangerous schools. Secretary Duncan and the Obama administration should continue to be reminded of this mistake and pushed to fix it.

If you want a lasting legacy, Mr. President, this is it. For good or for ill--if you don't fix this you will go down in history as a civil rights travesty.