Today's Newark Star-Ledger has an article about three Camden moms who are seeking better educational opportunities for their sons. They are asking Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf to declare the Camden city schools unconstitutional due to poor performance. The article states that they, "demanded that their children, and any of the system’s 15,000 students, be allowed to transfer to better schools".
Article VIII, Section IV, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution states: "The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all of the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years." This, prior to 1947, was Article IV, Section VIII, Paragraph 6.
That amendment dates back to 1875! It has also been used by liberals in their quest to throw more and more money at failing urban schools.
More money is clearly not the answer.
Four years ago we wrote that once, "Camden was a bustling center of commerce and prosperity. Industry was booming, the
city's inhabitants lived in solid, safe neighborhoods with leafy parks. Its
mayors were not serially perp-walked from office. Indeed, someone may once have
asked, where in New Jersey are Democrats doing a better job governing than
Republicans are doing in Camden and Camden County? It is also notable that
during its Democratic era, Camden has declined into a teeming slum, a place to
escape from. Not only white flight, black flight too. And three out of the six
most recent mayors were convicted of corruption."
Unfortunately, while Camden's middle class was able to escape to more sedate places like Cherry Hill, Voorhees and Pennsauken, those with less means were trapped in a dangerous failed municipality. Corruption in City Hall led to dangerous streets and dysfunctional schools.
The answer for New Jersey's urban schools is not to dump more money into the vortex of failing districts operated by the city's Democrat Party machine, it is to allow parents, at least those who care, to send their kids to schools where they will actually get an education.
2 comments:
«School choice» is a right wing smokescreen for racism. Far from the panacaea for urban America's ills, it is yet another attempt to racially segregate our schools. White children will be removed from schools where the student body does not «look like them». This will leave us with white only schools and black only schools, like in the 1950s.
Thus will Brown v. Board of Education be stealthily overturned by the right.
After all these years the big liberal professor has returned! Living in his ivory tower behind the ivy-covered walls of academia as he does, the professor is totally out of touch with reality.
The fact is, we already have a de facto segregation in many schools. It's there now, regardless of whether Brown is overturned, stealthily or otherwise. School choice enjoys wide support among minorities not for the sake of "diversity", but because parents want their kids to get an education. Period.
And the fact is that these failing urban schools are run by the professor's beloved progressives who care nothing that they are turning out yet another generation of underperforming kids. SHAME!!!
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