Our schools are crucial to our future.
Busing: No more. This does nothing except drag down the quality of good schools by shipping in bad kids, while torturing and dragging down good kids by forcing them into sub-standard schools. You get the school closest to where you live. Period. If you don’t like that, move. People expect their children to be sent to good schools. That’s why they pay extra to get into neighborhoods near good school systems. Ship my kid to a below average school? No way buddy.
Tenure: What’s more important: one loser’s job, or the education of hundreds of students? Only one right answer here. Teachers will have annual performance reviews like everyone else. No more free ride. Principals and administrators will be reviewed as well.
College: Businesses want more college grads. Businesses can pay for them. I will make college affordable for everyone. Especially Med School. Excluding Law School. Don’t need more lawyers!
There is a lot of whining about programs for disadvantaged and underachieving kids. That’s all well and nice. No disagreement from me. But where are the programs for advantaged and bright kids? We lose more brainpower in the public school system than you would ever believe. I myself am a casualty. School was the most incredibly boring crap I had ever known. Things might have turned out differently if I was able to stay in the Advanced Placement classes, but my High School didn’t have any.
Schools: What’s wrong with the school system is the parents. 25% of Americans are functionally illiterate. That means they can’t even fill out a job application. 25%. That’s just wrong. 33% of Washington DC residents are functionally illiterate. Our nation’s capital can’t read or write! There are a couple things I can do here. Namely, holding parents responsible for the performance of their children. School is not just free daycare. If your child is failing then we will drag your lazy ass into class to sit with them. Parents will be taught how to help their children succeed. Special classes for parents of underachieving children. We will have career counseling, family counseling, child counseling, everything we can do to help the parents help their children. I would like to leave most of this process as guidelines, so as to leave room for special situations. I really do not like firm dictated processes. Not everyone fits into the same mold. And there’s no need to panic or get upset now, because the mere fact that you’re reading this implies that you’ll be completely unaffected. Except, of course, that the school your kid goes to will begin to thrive as a learning center. Like it should be.
With the above in place, I will then hold administrators responsible for the performance of their districts.
Children’s shows must stop teaching Spanish. This is not helping our illiteracy rate. When all our job applications and forms and documents are in English, we cannot be teaching Spanish! We are all Americans and must be able to communicate clearly with each other.
Our common language is English.
Richard H. Clark
Independent Presidential Candidate
www.MiddleClass2008.com
