Arguing With Success

The WSJ weighs in on the latest evidence of charter school superiority to the public school alternative in New York:

Today's report has good news: Results released yesterday of test scores in the New York State Assessment Program showed that the most relentlessly attacked charter schools—Eva Moskowitz's Harlem Success academies—have outperformed their public-school peers, often by a wide margin.

Naturally, this displeases the educational establishment, which works hand-in-glove with the  Democratic party.  What would public money be without left-wingers to appropriate it for enlightened purposes?

Unfortunately for students throughout the country, those purposes don't include educating them in the three remaining "r's"--reading, riting and rithmatic--the fourth "r," religion, having been banished from public schools in the 1960's as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.  One has to marvel at the reasoning, and outcome, of the Supreme Court's dictat.

Secular humanist jurisprudence notwithstanding, US children do surpass the rest of the world's in the possession of self esteem and knowledge of how to put on a condom.

Meanwhile, the battle to stop the movement continues. Ms. Moskowitz's effort to open another school on Manhattan's Upper West Side has met massive resistance. Actor Matt Damon is now throwing his celebrity against charters. Their students, meanwhile, continue upward.

Ah, yes.  What would public discourse be without Hollywood celebrities to educate us in the ways of superior wisdom and compassion?

If you'd like to know how parents of children trapped in public schools around the nation feel about this particular battle, Noman encourages you to see "Waiting for Superman."  Produced by a well-intentioned lefty--Davis Guggenheim of "An Inconvenient Truth"--it unwittingly stumbles onto the cause of America's educational malaise: teachers unions.

It will break your heart and cause you to scratch your head wondering why "We, the people" grant the perpetrators of this travesty a near monopoly on public funding for education.

For a contrary view, Noman points you to a criticism of the movie, which, incidentally, declines to defend the system that the movie depicts.  Having read that "An Inconvenient Truth" was unburdened by a single truthful fact, Noman would have his doubts if the NEA (National Educational Association) didn't provide a quarter of the delegates to the Democratic party's national convention and lavishly fund the campaigns of the party's whackier candidates.

Noman would like to think that "educators" like Randi Weingarten (depicted below) weren't as bad as the movie depicts them to be.  He just suspects that they are given developments in public education over the years.  

When confronted with Matt Damon's front-man performance on behalf of the educational establishment, he'll remember the system and personalities it harbors, protects and foists on America's children.