The Local Birdcage Liner

Flipping through the Sunday edition of the local paper, I came across this little op-ed. Now, this doesn't make me scream or froth at the mouth, but it's just another indication of how people in this area have lost the ability to connect the dots.

Heads you graduate. Tails you don't.
Unfortunately, those are the alarming odds for the nation's African-American, Native-American and Hispanic students, according to a new study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and several other organizations.

The findings mirror those of other national studies done in recent years. This state is no exception. A 2001 study by the Manhattan Institute found 53 percent of Washington's African-American students graduate while just 47 percent of Native-Americans andLatinos do.

We've all heard the statistics, the "Oh gosh, minorities aren't graduating, what will we do" being shrieked from the mountain tops. What gets to me is this single fact. For the past thirty years the typical liberal response has been to throw money at the problem. We're spending more on education today than we ever have in this country. And yet students keep failing. We spend more per student than we ever have, and yet the public education system is horribly flawed and failing.

Now, when I was a young child, and I kept smashing my head into a particular problem and couldn't seem to solve it, my dad would pull me aside and say "David, how long have you been trying to do it this way?"

I would look at him and say "I dunno. An hour." (It might have only been 30 minutes, but hey, I was five!)

His response... "Don't you think you should try something different by now? Find a different solution? Because you don't seem to be doing much this way."

Me, in my sullen five year old response: "Uh huh."

My point? We've been playing the liberal's game for decades now. And what we have achieved is nothing less than a massive failure and systematic letdown of the kids in this country. The Democrats had their way. THEY HAVE FAILED! It is now time to try something else rather than just throw money at the problem. If two decades of throwing money at public education hasn't solved it, then throwing more money at the problem won't do a damn thing except make some worthless NEA honcho rich.

Just my two cents.