I agree. Democrats believe the economy is driven by government spending. It is not. It is driven by consumer spending. The smaller the size of government, the more resources (personnel and money) can be put into the private sector. The more people who are employed in the private sector adding to the GNP (goods and services) the fewer are employed by government which adds nothing to the GNP.

I agree. I became nervous during the debate the other night every time Obama and/or Clinton mentioned "5 million new jobs" to be created, and things such as that.

I also am a tad nervous about what income constitutes "rich" in the eyes of Clinton and/or Obama. I'm nervous that my husband and I would be considered rich and taxed more than we already are.

well you can give me some of your income and that would about even it out lol just kidding.

I worry about the samething with my wife and I.

Do you have more of an idea of what they consider "wealthy"? I'm guessing (and I'm just throwing this out) that it's around $100k a year? They also use $50k a year a lot in their speeches, which if true, is a ridiculous #.

when they say 50k a year, they are talking about votes who make over 50k and are educated as a catergory of a voting bloc.
They consider wealthy if you make more than 98k a year.

I don't like cutting education funds either, although I try to avoid absolutes. But despite what the unions and educators say, money is not always the problem or the solution. The problem is that most school systems in this country consitute a union-dominated monopoly with no competition. Parents are forced to send their kids to those schools within their local community. Either that or send them to private schools or home teach them.

One of the problems is that the money is attached to the school rather than to the student. If parents received vouchers they could send their kids to a school of their choice. That would put the public schools into competition with other school systems and they would be forced to reform their methods.

But the teachers unions will fight that tooth and nail. They represent what is in the best interest of the teachers rather than what is in the best interest of the students. They have consistenly fought every effort to reform the school system including efforts to get rid of incompetent teachers. In NYC because of the teachers contract it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher. One teacher sent a sexual e-mail to a 16 year old student, but because of the convoluted, drawn-out process it took them six years to fire the guy. Until then he could not teach, but they still had to pay him. NYC has what it calls a Rubber Room. It is a room where teacher who are not allowed to teach stay until they are fired or returned to the class room. They sit in that room and watch TV, read newspapers, magazines, etc. In the meantime they still get paid. It costs NYC $20 million a year to pay teachers who are not allowed to teach. NYC teachers work 6 hours and 40 minutes a day. Nor can NYC reward excellenbce. The teachers contract forbids it. Under the contract there is no way they can distinguish between teachers. They got a new contract that gives them a 15% pay hike for which they now work 6 hours and 50 minutes a day.

To hear the teachers and unions, it is all about money. They tell us that all they need is more money and everything will be fine. But money is not the solution. We spend about $10,000 on each child in the United States. In the last 30 years we have doubled the amount we spend on students after inflation is taken into account. Yet graduation rates and achievement rates have remained flat.

In Kansas City a judge ordered the city to spend more on education, and it did. $2 billion. It built state-of-the-art facilities. What was the result? Things got worse. By 2000 Kansas City schools failed to meet any state standards and lost their accreditation.

Part of the problem is that the money is not going to the students. In Orange County, CA the students are taught in portable rooms, while a $35 million administration building was constructed for the staff.

Charter schools offer promise. In Washington DC the students in charter schools consistently do much better than the kids in public school even though they come from the same socio-economic backgrounds. The teachers in the charter schools are better because they are held accountable. The best ones are paid more and those who don't do the job are let go. The charter schools are so popular that Washington DC has had to use a lottery to decide who gets in. If vouchers were used parents would have more freedom to decide what school their kids attended, and such things as lotteries would not be needed. In Europe vouchers are commonplace. Belgium is a good example.

European kids consistently do better at international tests than American students. One test was given to students in Belgium and New Jersey which has one of the better school systems in the country. The Belgium students scored an average of 76% while the NJ students scored an average of 47%. Even poorer countries such as Poland and South Korea do better than American students.

In many American classrooms, discipline does not exist. Teachers have been given little authority to remedy the situation. In addition, many school focus their resources on "gifted" students than those students who are at risk.

The purpose of all this is to stress the point that while money can be helpful, it is not the cure-all of our educational problems. A great deal can be done by simply reforming the educational system. We need to promote the voucher system and charter schools. Promote competition by giving the parents more of a choice about where their kids can go to school.

I gotta say this, I am and do vote Republican, but this thing was just "boneheaded". lets remember though, lot of Dems voted for this too.

Thats is true, I didnt vote for it and alot of Democrats did vote for it. It will lower my property tax though.

Do you have any links I can check to read more about the DC charter schools and the NYC bad teacher/good pay deal? If the NYC thing is true, I need to move to NY, be a bad teacher, and get paid for reading all day.

I bolded several portions of your response. For the first one, if we had vouchers, and parents chose high-performing schools over low-performing ones, how long would it take before the high-performing schools filled up? In Texas, students have been able to leave a school in a low-performing district and transfer to a high-performing one--but there has to be availability.

For the second bolded portion: In America, we educate every child, with a commitment to do so through 12th grade. Some European, and especially Asian, countries do not do that. Therefore, their high school populations will, in a large sample, do better than American populations, in a large sample. It's the difference between looking at a group of college-bound high schoolers vs. those who have no desire to go to college.

On the discipline issue, I will wholeheartedly agree. Thank lawyers and lawmakers and Dr. Spock for the discipline breakdowns. As for gifted education, please...gifted children are often the most overlooked population of all in schools. I'm a strong advocate of gifted children because I love to teach them--and believe me, they do NOT get even a tiny share of the resources available (federally, statewide, or locally) that "at-risk" kids get.

If you have venom that you would like to direct at education, point it in the direction of lawmakers. They are making teaching a very undesirable job to have. And I don't belong to any teachers' unions; I never have, but many of your points are negative towards people who, truly, want to educate children, and as a teacher, I found much of it offensive.

Sorry you found it offensive, but I stand by what I said. For the most part, my words were not directed at teachers, but at teacher unions and the educational system. My "venom" was not directed at education, but on an educational system that promotes mediocrity over excellence by a refusal to look of options other than the status quo and by a failure to think beyond the box.