Back in 2007, the Heritage Foundation published a report on the cost of No Child Left Behind. Here is a synopsis of their findings:

In October of 2006 the Office of Management and Budget reported that No Child Left Behind increased state and local governments' annual paperwork burden by 6,680,334 hours, at an estimated cost of $141 million dollars. For some reason Washington didn’t seem upset about that.

A number of states have published reports estimating the cost of complying with No Child Left Behind. For example, the state of Connecticut found that the state government would spend more than $17 million in 2007 to comply with NCLB. Virginia estimated that state implementation costs totaled approximately 20 million per year. If we exclude those states with the courage to tell Washington to keep their money, the average cost per state of $15 million per year comes out to a whopping $675 million. So why was the report from OMB a miniscule $141 million? Was it because someone gave Bush Jr. the calculator? Or is the answer something far more Machiavellian? 

You’re right, it is.

In the summer of 2007 I attended a legislative conference in Philadelphia attended b y hundreds of state representatives from across the US. One of the speakers was President Bush. His speech contained mostly fluff, but buried within the rhetoric was an absolute conviction that NCLB was going to continue to be forced upon the unwilling states, regardless of the cost. Unfortunately it seems Obama agrees with that sentiment.

No Child Left Behind has created a culture of insipidness within our public school system. This culture stems from the school boards and filters on down through the administration. Even though the majority of teachers hate the program, they are forced to either go along or lose their job.

School Administrators only look at the dollars. I know, I’ve spoken with those in my state. Many claim that they do care what happens to the children, but when push comes to shove every decision comes out with dollar signs on it. I have yet to read about a single superintendent or principle willingly sacrificing a portion of their paycheck to improve the quality of education in their school. To be fair, most of them are not given a choice. They too are trapped within a system that has been carefully crafted by the left for the past sixty-plus years. Why else would programs that have proven themselves every time they’ve been used be scrapped in favor of what essentially boils down to babysitting?

Washington claims that every child not only deserves to go on to higher education, but that they all have a burning desire to do so. Yes, I’m sure if you ask the average 4^th grader what they want to be when they grow up the vast majority are going to list a profession that requires an advanced degree. Fireman, cowboy, soldier or movie star won’t even be in the mix. The real truth, backed by NEA’s own statistics, is that less than a third of high school graduates will apply and be accepted to a four-year college. Of those accepted, less than a third will finish that education, even if given an extra year. So, based on numbers they themselves are aware of, why is the federal bureaucracy so dead set on promoting a program that fails miserably? And why do they continuously buck against a program that excels every time it is tried? I’m talking about vocational education. Yes, I mean shop classes.

The cost of implementing NCLB has all but eliminated vocational education. In the Clark County School District, one of the largest in the US, you can still find classrooms fully equipped to teach auto shop, wood shop and home economics in the districts middle schools. Not one of them is being used for that purpose. Some are not even being used as classrooms, even though the schools are overcrowded. In many of the high schools, vocational education has been cut back drastically because of budget concerns. It seems the district, just like Washington, won’t pay attention to its own data.

Not too far from my home stands one of the first Career and Technical Academies in the nation. It used to be called VoTech High School. Now its called SECTA. Even with the name change, SECTA remains one of the highest performing schools in the nation with an average 98% functional graduation rate. The naysayers on the school board claim the numbers are because the school gets to pick and choose its pupils. But in reality it is because the staff and administration at that school work together as a team to make sure the education is made relevant to the students. They learn the core subjects such as science, english, history and math as they apply to a profession, not just boring, overworked theory. There is a young man who attended VoTech with an emphasis on plumbing. In middle school his teachers labeled him as unable to grasp concepts beyond addition and subtraction. After high school he went into the navy as a plumbers mate. When he revisited his alma mater he explained what he was doing in the navy to his old teachers using advanced calculus to illustrate concepts. Not bad for a labeled failure.

Using some more NEA stats; one of the most successful groups in college is that made up of mature returning students. Believe it or not, that group makes up a good percentage of teachers, especially those in the Career and Technical Academies. So why the push of NCLB?

Many of my fellow conservatives don’t like my derision of G.W. Bush. Too bad. Bush was a lousy President who did everything he could to destroy our country’s sovereignty. Consider the attempt to remove the border between the US and Mexico, the attempt to sell sovereign base authority to a terrorist nation, and the support of an educational bureaucracy that no one likes outside of the feds? There is more than enough evidence that NCLB is yet another avenue the left is using to reduce the strength of the United States as a country. If they can get us to graduate more illiterates than not, the socialist revolution will succeed without a shot being fired. So what can we do?

One plan would be to allow states to opt out of the NCLB program. These states would be able to work out an alternate agreement with the federal government. Under this agreement, the states’ representatives would have broader authority to consolidate existing federal programs with state programs to work out their education funding. Of course, this assumes the states CAN work out school funding. That’s another column.

Another plan is to use what has already been proven to work, vocational education. Make the core classes relevant to the students. Allow them to use both their minds and their hands. Bring back real detention. Don’t allow those students who want to disrupt the classroom to do so. Put them somewhere away from the other students where they only get the three R’s, no sports, no recess, until they prove they are able to rejoin civilized society. Get rid of the diversity nonsense and teach real citizenship. Allow teachers to teach what they know. Don’t force them to pull double duty as secretaries for the administration. The average teacher day, believe it or not is about 10-12 hours, not 6. And there is no such thing as a 3-month vacation. Just because there are no bottoms in the classroom chairs doesn’t mean the job stops. It takes a minimum of 2 ½ months to set up lesson plans for the next year.

Of course, pulling off such a plan would also require dumping NCLB. How about that?

The U.S. House passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, H.R. 1, on Wednesday. The vote was 244 to 188, with several Democrat members joining the GOP rebellion.

Most of the money would come through the government's two largest grant programs, Title I (for educating low-income children) and IDEA (aid for the learning disabled). The 2009 allocation also contains a large dose of money for building schools and fixing old ones. What the bill does not contain is any money for teachers, and there is a nasty little loophole that allows Washington to withhold the funds at a whim.

That loophole is a matching funds provision. States, such as Nevada, that are trying to solve their budget problems without real reform will be forced to come up with funding that matches what Washington is preparing to give. If they don’t, those monies are withheld. Governor Jim Gibbons’ budget, one that he put together without consulting a single affected entity, bases the majority of its core budget solution on reducing the state’s obligation to education by over 50%. This move is typical of the personalities that have taken over the power structure within the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan would never have condoned such a “solution”.

Today’s Republican Party, at least in my state of Nevada, has allowed itself to be co-opted by radical elements that claim to speak for all conservatives but don’t even belong to the party and by office holders who have gladly sold their ethics and honor for the promise of campaign funds. What is the saddest point of all is that the voters don’t seem to care about this. They consistently vote for whoever sends out the largest volume of ad material; especially if those ads promise the voter something for nothing. In the end all they get for that vote is nothing.

Where education is concerned, Nevada’s conservative pundits seem to have a huge blind spot. They write on a regular basis about failing to learn the lessons of history where tax policy is concerned, but at the same time they fail to see what we have done to our schools.

Few people remember now, but there was a time when the American Education System was the envy of the world. Back then teachers were allowed to teach without also having to be a secretary for the administration. They were allowed to exact real discipline without the threat of a lawsuit being held over their heads. Textbooks were thick and held real knowledge, undiluted by politically correct censorship.

Teachers’ wages were low, but so were the administrations’, so they all shared the same boat and they worked together to put out the best product they could, a student prepared to enter the working world.

Those who attack our public schools in the media offer little in the way of solutions, but this is typical of the type. For them, reaction is all they have, but like Governor Gibbons, they refuse to even discuss the issue with those they perceive as the enemy. So what do we do?

Private schools and vouchers are no solution. All those do is exempt the pundits and their supporters from the same burden of citizenship everyone else shares in. If we are to keep our country sovereign, we have to have a citizenry capable of meeting the challenges of this world head on, and they cannot do that if they cannot read, write, or think. In order to succeed in this work we will have to upset and offend a significant portion of our population.

Groups that focus on a narrow band of human sexuality, either to the right of the left, will have to be told that their opinion does not matter where education is concerned. Groups who feel that the US Government is fascist or worse will have to be told much the same. Groups who feel that the color of a persons’ skin is paramount will have to be removed from the discussion. Most especially we will have to prevent the legal community from having anything to do with education. The only part any group should have in education is what they have left for the historical record. Policy, procedure and regulation that deal with any form of political correctness should be stringently outlawed, complete with penalties for any person or entity attempting to reestablish what has proven to be disastrous.

Uniforms, similar to those used by airline stewards and stewardesses, consisting of slacks, business casual shirt and sensible shoes need to replace the costumes typical to today. This would remove the focus in the students’ minds on how they look to what they are doing. Vocabulary should be stringently regulated, even outside of the classroom. I pods, cell phones, and other electronic distractions should be forbidden to be on campus. Those students who simply cannot abide the fact that others in the class may be learning something, will be corralled together with the rest of the Sweathogs and only allowed to learn the core subjects; reading, writing and arithmetic. Outside of the Sweathogs’ den, every school, from middle school on up, will have to teach education tracks relevant to a variety of careers with hands-on labs similar to the shop classes of days gone by.

If we can do this, we will again be the envy of the world. That may up set some, but honestly, would anybody care about that?

Yesterday hundreds of teachers in Nevada were told that their jobs were gone. Not because they were incompetent or violating any one of school regulations. They were fired because the State of Nevada considered politics more important than education.

Nevada’s Governor, Jim Gibbons, an ex-fighter pilot and by training a geologist, made a campaign promise back in 2006 when he ran for that seat. He promised that he would not raise a single tax. Of course when he made that promise the economy was accelerating skyward and houses that originally sold fore $140,000 were being appraised at twice that amount. Just prior to his run, the state has issued a tax refund to nearly every citizen because of a massive surplus. And then the bubble burst.

As an Assemblyman, I saw the public face the legislature shows when they are on stage and I saw the other one they reveal only behind the scenes. Very few, Democrats or Republican, actually care whether or not the succeeding generations can read or write. What they care about is whether or not their next campaign is funded, and right after that, whether or not they can takes the reins of power by attaining a majority. Education? It’s not even in the top ten. To make matters worse, some on the GOP side actually consider public school to be dangerous for children. Not because of the prospect of drive-by shootings, gang violence or school bullies, but because of what they think may be taught. To them, every public school teacher is a flaming liberal and actively pushes the communist agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth, but these people live with the persona of the J. Edgar Hoover fifties imbedded within their persona. To them the Berlin Wall never fell and the Red Menace is running rampant through the halls of academia. I know dozens of teachers who supported Ron Paul and one of them is an official in the teachers’ union.

If that attitude weren’t so tragically cataclysmic, it would be laughable. The education glass in Nevada isn’t half empty or half full; it has fallen to the ground and shattered. The Governor is quite satisfied to allow million-dollar gifts to private citizens, to allow the Senate Majority Leader to violate the state constitution, ethics regulations and Senate Rules in order to grant waivers to campaign donors, and to claim a 300 million dollar rainy day fund does not exist, but he won’t spend a penny to save a teacher’s job. The mining industry pays only a half percent a year in taxes. Gaming, the other financial giant in this state pays less than 7 percent. The average worker and homeowner pays more than twice that, and many of them are teachers. What is wrong with this picture?

In Southern Nevada we pay the Superintendent of Schools over ten times what a beginning teacher is paid and he does less than half the work. The School District administration offices are a literal marble-lined palace while some schools have sections that have been listed as unsafe for occupation. The media is no help. One story on our local TV news stated that the average teacher in Nevada makes $52,000 a year. They got that figure by taking beginning teacher pay and adding it to what a PhD with 30 years of seniority would make and dividing by 2. What the report said was a lie. Most teachers make under 40 thousand a year and many are on food stamps while their principals are dining on fillet. Most teachers work over 60 hours a week while their principals may sometimes get up to 40. The 3 month vacation is another lie. The students get that. Teachers still have to work on preparing for the next school year, or did you think those lesson plans appeared by magic?

The system is broken. The position of teacher should be one of the most coveted jobs available. They should be teaching in palaces, not broken down portables. They should be making 6 figures a year, not the administration, and we should consider education to be as important to this country as National Defense. Because, if we don’t, we can kiss this nation good bye.

Last night Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada issued his State of the State address. Because Governor Gibbons made a promise of not raising any taxes at all, Nevada’s economic woes grew right along with its population while revenues went down. Governor Gibbon’s solution to this pressing need for more money? Fire teachers.

Before I go into just how imbecilic his suggestion is, let’s explore the region of common sense. Nevada is a unique state. It is the only one where gaming is allowed state wide. New Jersey has Atlantic City and a few others have Indian Casinos, but they are not Nevada. To build a casino anywhere else other than Nevada, a gaming company has to convince that state that allowing them in is a good thing, translate that as “profitable”. The gaming taxes for the successful bidder can be as high as a full third of the gross profits. In Nevada the gaming tax is less than ten percent and it is not calculated on the gross, but the net. For some of the companies this winds up as less than one percent a year. It is no wonder that a good portion of the gaming CEOs in Nevada own their own jets and commute from their Oceanside estates in Southern California.

Mining is the other primary business in Nevada. More gold comes out of Nevada’s ground than any other state in the union. The mining industry pays an effective .5% a year in taxes while the sale price of gold continues to skyrocket. Barbara K. Cegvaske, the State Senator for District 8 in Nevada told a group of teachers being threatened with the loss of their careers that if the state raised taxes on mining to save the teachers’ jobs, mining would leave the state. I’ve had the misfortune to speak with Senator Cegvaske. You would not be blinded by her intellect. It is very likely she actually believes what she says. More’s the pity. Gold is found deep within the ground. If mining left the state, where will the mineral they seek be? Mining technology has improved since the gold rush, but I doubt it has climbed to the level where they could take the mountains with them when they go.

Governor Gibbons has a problem he did not mention in his address; he has no veto power. The last election eliminated the Republican leadership in the State Senate and gave the Democrat Speaker in the State Assembly a veto-proof majority. The power shift in the Assembly can be placed onto the shoulders of one man, George Harris, publisher of a poorly written rag called Liberty Watch. Harris never forgave me for defeating his anointed candidate, Kris Munn for the District 21 Assembly seat. That made me the 15^th vote in the Assembly on the Republican side. Because of that position, I was able to block a couple of measures that would have severely impacted small business’s ability to survive in Nevada. Harris spent a fortune attacking me in the last primary. Because of that and a record low Republican turn out at the polls, Harris’ puppet got into the general. I was quite happy to help the Democrat Candidate Ellen Spiegel win the seat. Because of Harris, the Governor has no power over legislation at all. The question is whether or not the legislature has the wisdom to do what is right.

Most legislators have more than one face, the one they show in public and the one they wear in private. While in the legislature, I learned what most Republican legislators think of public education. They consider teachers in public schools the enemy. A few of them actually think teachers are a danger to their children. They make the error of confusing the teachers union and its political agenda with teachers. It is impossible to convince them otherwise. I’ve tried.

If the Nevada Legislature does the right thing and raises revenue properly, we have a hope of becoming a better state. If they act as they have in the past and continue to kowtow to the spoiled industries of gaming and mining, we run the risk of becoming incapable of educating even a tiny percentage of our children. Vouchers will not solve the problem because they still involve state monies and private schools have the option of refusing any child that may present a problem.

Right now more than half of the students leaving high school cannot read or write at a functional level. Business, small and large continues to complain about the quality of applicants, especially in the technical trades. I wonder what they will be saying when they cannot find applicants even capable of writing their own name?

As a member of the Nevada Legislature, I was placed onto three legislative committees; Government Affairs, Health and Human Services and Education. Of the three, Education was my favorite. Government Affairs primarily existed to massage the egos of the various municipalities around the state and Health and Human Services was run by a chairwoman so corrupt she makes Ted Stevens look like a Boy Scout.
 
One of the things a member of the Education Committee gets to do is see how a state administrates its schools from behind the curtain. Here in Nevada, we had and continue to have a real problem in both the lack of evenhandedness of administration and the perception of what the job of a teacher entails.
 
Top administrators in Nevada’s schools can earn upwards of $300,000 or more. A classroom teacher begins at about $30,000 and has to apply for food stamps just to eat. A top Administrator works an average of 45 hours per week, shifting most of the actual hands-on duties to their staff. A teacher will put in over 60 hours with no staff help at all. Administration can retire with nearly no loss in the shift from salary to pension, including all the additional benefits. Most teachers wind up having to take on a part time job after retirement to make ends meet. Teachers are not allowed to keep their Social Security. No, I’m not kidding. That is what happens and it is a matter of law.
 
Well, you say, teachers only work 9 months out of the year, don’t they? No, that is a media and talk show host lie. Today there are nearly as many 12-month schools as there are 9-month schools, and even if a teacher is contracted to work at a standard 9-month school, it is only the classrooms that shut down in summer. For the teacher, the job continues. There is summer school, lesson planning, meetings, continuing education to keep up with all the changes that happen if every discipline, and so on. Those who say that teachers have it easy and are overpaid for what they do, know nothing. In every single case these commentators are parroting a lie in the hopes that if they repeat it often enough the people will believe it. Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened. To the vast majority of Americans, teaching is viewed as an easy high-paying job.
 
So, can Johnny read? As far as the American public is concerned, who cares? It is obvious to anyone willing to look that most parents don’t care. Politicians seem only to be concerned about their own campaign and Swiss bank accounts. On the Republican side of the aisle, they don’t want to expend any resources to support the teacher, unless it is for the staff in an exclusive private school their spoiled children are attending. On the Democrat side of the aisle, they are more than willing to raise taxes for schools, but they will only allow the money to go into the hands of the Administration who then let only a tiny fraction of what they have acquired trickle down into the hands of the teacher.

Nevada has pundits on both side of the aisle. It is interesting to note that those of a libertarian bent who continuously denigrate public education, have never had a child in school. The liberals are the same. These fountains of endless wisdom either home school or send their kids to an exclusive private facility. So when you read their rants, read them with the understanding that they are making everything up and have no experiential knowledge whatsoever.
 
You may scoff at this, but there are far more conservative teachers in the classroom than not. Most of the liberal elitism comes from the School Board, school administration, and union leadership. Many of these teachers have corresponded with me about what they face on a daily basis, and in spite of vast inequalities, these men and women continue to do a job far beyond the pay they receive. Many will purchase school supplies that they give to children in their classroom. I have seen teachers buying cases of paper because their school will not supply it, while at the same time demanding that the paperwork be done. Numerous teachers have detailed additional paperwork being handed down from the administration, paperwork that rightfully should be handled by the office and has nothing whatsoever to do with teaching.
 
So, it comes down to this question: what would you do to improve education? Should teachers be paid a wage that matches what they do? Should administrators take a cut to help? What about making parents responsible for their kids? The comment box is open.