|
Shades of George Wallace.
What exactly are they defending? A horrible school system where 50% of the kids drop out, and 70% of the remainder graduate. About 4 out of 5 perform below the state average. Truancy is rampant and behavior is out of control. That includes the teachers, who've broken almost every law and rule imaginable. Oh, don't worry…their union protects them. Impossible to fire, bad teachers are shuffled from school to school in the affectionately dubbed "dance of the lemons".
But unions are not entirely to blame. The entire American education structure is controlled by dedicated, professional liberals. Today's schools have become leftist experimentation factories, blatant indoctrination machines that barely educate at any level. How bad? Half of all college freshman need remedial English or math. This bovine education bureaucracy crested the grand pinnacle of critical mass in 1995, boasting more administrators than teachers. A majority of America's teachers cynically send their kids to private school. Meanwhile, Democrats perpetually scream for more money.
But slimmed down private schools have a long history of successfully educating the same poor urban kids with larger class size and less money, using novel concepts notably absent in public schools: efficiency, wisdom, and discipline. Blind to this evidence, Modesire warned privatization "would lead to profit-making on the backs of our 210,000, mostly black students." Of course, conservatives know private profit is far cheaper than government waste, and usually far more effective.
There are plenty of reasons to leave Philadelphia. Dirty streets. Drugs. Crime. Waste. Potholes. Bureaucracy. Corruption. Incompetence. All for the privilege of America's highest wage tax (about 5%) and the highest real estate transfer tax. That comes in handy when people leave, which happens 10,000 times every year. The number one reason they leave? Schools. Black and white, rich and poor, conservative and liberal. The first question every client asks their new suburban real estate agent is "How are the schools?" It's so bad, Housing and Urban Development literally outlawed agents from answering. But people aren't fooled. And they vote with their feet. Almost any city dweller who can flee has gone.
Except New York. You remember…the city that was mired in liberal hell until Rudy Giuliani took over, cleaned the streets, crushed the Mafia, straightened out City Hall and won America's heart. You can razz New Yorkers about a lot of things, but they ain't stupid. For the third straight election, that Democrat stronghold voted for a Republican mayor.
Street is no dope. He won a tight election himself. He sees the writing on the wall. His party ruined Philadelphia in every measurable way, surviving in typical Democrat fashion: lying, cheating and race-baiting. If Edison's program works, poor urban black voters might just figure out the sham Democrats pulled for 50 years. Street has two choices: admit failure or keep the bad schools bad, and blame everyone else. Otherwise, the fate of the Philly Democrats will resemble New York.
Nobody knows that more than Mayor Street. By almost any objective standard, the last 20 years proved liberalism failed. Nowhere is that failure greater than inner city education, where liberals had total control and failed thoroughly, entirely and completely. But liberals suck their power from failure, cannibalizing constituents and blaming everyone except their own foolish policies.
Philly Democrats are in serious self-preservation mode, willing to pay anything to keep power. That price has always been paid in the misery of their constituents. Better to keep 'em dumb, dependent and registered Democrats. After all, who needs Democrats if success is abounding? For pure survival, Street must viciously and ruthlessly bar the door of education to Philadelphia's children. George Wallace would be proud, except he converted in shame before he died. It's too bad Mayor John Street has chosen to preserve his political power by sacrificing Philadelphia's children upon the altar of his failed liberal ideology.
This essay by Tom Adkins was published by permission. Mr. Adkins is the Executive Publisher of the Common Conservative.
|
