The Fourth Option (A Centrist Perspective) Blog

It always seems like the Tea Party-Republicans are banking on our inability to pay attention and our ability to forget. Less than a year ago we had a mid-term election         inwhich they promised to bring changes to local, state and federal government. They         promised to cut government spending, reduce the size of government, lower taxes, create   jobs, and make government more responsible and accountable to the American people.        They told us that keeping the Bush tax cuts in place, reducing the size of entitlements,      and implementing lucrative tax breaks for corporations would reduce unemployment and put the United States on the path to economic recovery. And we allowed them to put these policies into law (in large measure because 90 percent of us were coerced, confused, or both.) As a matter of fact, we allowed them to ...

          The war of innovations among countries has begun. The weapons of choice are technological products that are more durable, more efficient/productive, more in demand, more user-friendly, and less expensive. Their aimed at the world consumers’ want, needs and financial means. Countries, like Sweden and China, which anticipated and prepared for this conflict, are poised to do well. Others, including The United States, were so busy helping their richest citizens become richer that they are finding themselves unprepared for this scuffle.       Those of us who teach and study science and technology and their impact on global economies knew that this day would come. We wrote and spoke about it, for we saw the handwriting on the wall: We saw the United States abandoning its self-commitment to equal opportunities for all its citizens, destroying its safety nets for its most vulnerable citizens, and neglecting the educations o...

            Political leaders will tell you that their goal in reforming public education is to make teachers and school more accountable. According to them, our country is falling behind countries like China, Japan, Sweden, Canada . . . because public school are failing to educate our children. Teachers’ unions, they suggest, are the main cause of the problem, because teachers’ unions protects bad teachers, impedes necessary classroom and school reform, saddle teachers with the burden of teaching to outdated standards ―which do not provide our children with the skills necessary for the 21 st century workplaces. Moreover, they argue, the current public school system is discouraging the best and the brightest young teachers and failing to reward its truly outstanding teachers. They reform measures that they are putting in place, they continue, will create the necessary changes that are needed in public schools.      The b...

       There is a point concerning education reform that I will take every opportunity to reinforce. That point is this: T he causes for students failing in our public schools are more related to socio-economic conditions in the homes and communities of these children than they are to the quality of instructions the children are receiving in schools . Vibrant communities with vibrant households always have vibrant schools that produce students with high achievement. Don’t take my word for it. Just visit the communities of the best schools in your state and you will immediately observe excellent quality of lives that is evident in the well maintained homes, businesses, parks, recreational areas, and streets; and most prominent in the efficient government services, and impressive modern renovated schools. In these communities pride between the public schools and the citizens is a two-way street: The traffic of affection flows both ways. The schools love their cit...

You probably noticed by now that there is an underlying theme throughout most of my articles on education and education reform. It is the African saying, “ It takes a village to raise a child.” I am striving desperately in these articles to illustrate the point that the effectiveness of educating a child in the classroom depends on many ingredients, including the life styles of their parents before conception; the quality of life and the emphasis on early literacy in the home in the child’s pre-first-grade years; parental involvement in their learning during pre-K through 12 and beyond; and the moral, social, and emotional support and guidance given to the child before, during and after school.   None of these ingredients , however, can be separated from the larger additives like food, shelter, clothing, safety, and the overall health and welfare of the household and community in which the child resides. Everyone involved in the decision-making process ― especially law makers, wh...

It’s frustrating and down-right annoying to listen to political experts talk about improving schools: As soon as they begin expressing their ideas, it becomes clear that they don’t get it! They do not understand that a student’s achievement is always the result of a number of variables. It is the sum total of a number of positive factors adding-up to produce a desired outcome. The quality of classroom instructions, which political experts consider to be the only thing standing between a student’s success and failure, is simply one of several important factors that determine a student acquisition of knowledge and skills. Classroom attendance, readiness to learn, classroom disciplinary problems, parental support and involvement, and school funding are some of the other factors that are equally important in determining a student’s outcome. Each is so significantly unique in its contribution to the whole that it is best to discuss them separately. Classroom attendance is perhaps the be...

School began two weeks ago, on September 1, 2011, and it will end nine months from now, around end of May and the beginning of June. This means my fellow teachers and I must plan approximately 36 weeks of classroom instructions that effectively raise the achievement level of every student in our classrooms. Before I became a public school teacher, I thought this was going to be an easy job to accomplish. After all, raising students’ achievements to high standards of excellence was a task I performed successfully in the army for more than twenty years. Granted, in the military my students were adult men and women, as opposed to the boys and girls I now teach, however, I thought the basic strategy for success would be the same. Boy! I was wrong! I discovered, instead, that political incompetence has mangled public school curriculum and assessments to the point that makes all the data results for state testing meaningless. Perhaps, if I quickly tell you how student achievement is approach...

Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), in his education policy entitled Education for the 21 st Century High Standards and Accountability, wrote the following: Today, 33% of Wisconsin fourth graders cannot read at even a basic level ― proof that Wisconsin’s education system is failing our children. To turn things around, we have to put an end to social promotion for students who cannot read at the end of third grade. In fourth grade, reading becomes the primary tool for gaining knowledge in every other subject. To borrow a phrase used by others, fourth graders are no longer “learning to read,” they are “reading to learn.” I selected this particular section of Governor Walker’s policy because it represents the prevalent political belief by democrats and republicans, concerning students’ reading achievement: Most political leaders in both parties believe students are failing to read because our public schools are doing a poor job of educating them. This belief suggests the incorrect no...

Well, I heard the news yesterday about the unemployment picture. I suppose you heard the news also. The employment outlook is bad: Companies are laying-off workers, the high percentage of unemployed workers includes people who have been out of work for a very long time, and some economists fear these are signaling the start of another recession. The news didn’t surprise me, or angered me. I resigned myself, a long time ago, to the idea that we have become a nation that is committed to operating on a “ repeating-pattern ” of economic insanity. First, we begin the pattern by telling the American people we need to lower taxes in order to create jobs. Second, we lower taxes. Third, no new jobs are created; instead, companies rehire laid-off workers to perform their previous jobs for wages that are one-half of their previous salaries, and do not include previous benefits. Fourth, workers who are till earning decent wages with decent benefits are laid-off , and this brings us back to the fi...

On the Path of Enlightment in the company of all things I feel their thoughts and smell their ideas on the tips of their tasteful concepts. Oh my! For my stroll on this path is an ongoing discourse, where all things in the universe contemplate in each other’s mind of seasonal cycles, intimately chatting in Spiritual-Honesty’s language of " presence ." Oh my! Glorious are these experiences: in the emphatic essence of all things from whose spiritual substance sweetness comes to our thoughts of feelings and our feelings of thoughts from whose tantalizing taste touchs our soul's tongues thoroughly transcending and transforming all our senses through tranquality warm waves of thoughtfulness. urging us forward down the Path of Enlightment on our journey to "The Land of Awe!" by James A. Porter