I don’t know how this will finally play out but there is a case before the Supreme Court right now, actually it may be two cases, asking for an answer to the question, “Is the use of race to determine admittance to a public grade school (K-12) constitutional?” It looks like there is a very good chance that the answer will be a divisive “no”. Divisive in the sense that it seems that Justice Kennedy may be the one casting the deciding opinion.

I have mixed feelings on this as I do many things but I have to agree that, under the circumstances being considered, using race as a deciding factor is not constitutional. Government can’t use things like race, sex or religion as a determining factor in assigning a public benefit. I can understand the desire for school systems to do this and I can even agree that it is probably good for society but it just doesn’t appear to be constitutional to me.

Public schools can’t discriminate based on things outside of the control of the individual. There is this little thing called the 14th amendment that prevents that. Everyone is guaranteed  equal protection under the law. Public schools can only discriminate on the basis of merit. That means grades or abilities.

What makes this difficult on public schools is that the constitution does not prevent individuals from discriminating based on anything when choosing where to live. This means that if people prefer living around people of similar cultural or racial backgrounds they have every right to do so. A lot of schools are under the gun to promote cultural and racial diversity. When the ideal model is neighborhood schools the fact that people tend to live in neighborhoods of people just like themselves then methods for creating this cultural and racial diversity becomes very difficult, if not impossible, while also keeping the model of neighborhood schools.

There was a time when schools were segregated even when the neighborhood those schools served were not. This practice is what led to the current predicament schools have found themselves in. While it seems fair to use race as a way to reverse the problem that segregated schools caused its really a different problem now. It isn’t the schools that are discriminating, its the individuals. So the solution rests with addressing the individuals, not the schools.

I’ve been plenty anti-European when it comes to people talking about the way things are done in Europe. It isn’t so much that I’m down on the Europeans, I’m just tired of hearing about a lot of the social policies they enact over there as being the best thing since sliced bread when I don’t see that to be the case. John Stossel brings up some points about education in Europe that I agree with, though. The do seem to be doing things better over there than over here.

The difference is that public schools actually have to compete with private schools for education dollars. Competition makes for better, cheaper products and education is no exception. Competition also creates niche markets that public education just doesn’t cater to in this country.

I think it’s the lack of those niche markets in eduction that is killing us. Public education is geared to educate kids from the 30^th percentile to the 70^th percentile. The 20 percent on the top and the 20 percent on the bottom do not get addressed by the public educators in America. Sure, the give lip service to having gifted and special education classes but these classes are not available in most schools and when they are available are not necessarily what they are advertised to be.

It is my contention that if educators are made to compete you will have schools available — in your area — that will properly educate your child regardless of your child’s needs. How do you get that competition? You use vouchers.

I know there is a group of people out there that claim that with all that money being given back to the parents to make the decision about where there child will attend school then it will drain money from the public school systems leaving the poor with a worse education system than they do now. Well, the poor will have the same dollar amount of vouchers that the rich kids have. There will be private schools opening up to take that money. Public schools can retain the money by offering a quality education program.

If any school does not offer as good of an education program as you can get elsewhere the school will close due to lack of funding. Isn’t that the way it should be?

I’ll be anxious to see John Stossells show this Friday night.

I get tired of all the taunting after a while. You know, all the news reports telling us how much American kids suck at geography. Well, it isn’t just American kids. Japanese kids suck at the subject also.

It wasn’t only small countries that didn’t register, however.

Takizawa said that some students couldn’t find the United States and located it in China, Brazil or the central African state of Congo.

Now my wife can’t find things on the map but both of my kids have been playing with maps and globes since they were babies and are pretty dog-gone good at locating states, countries and continents on a map. They both have fairly high aptitudes in math and science too but neither one could be called good students.

In a comment to the original post Dan points us to the Steven’s Creek Parents website. Yeah, there really is more to the story.

Rubber bands have been banned from Young Middle Magnet School of Mathematics, Science & Technology in Tampa, Florida. It seems some kids have been hurt by the projectiles kids with rubber bands naturally set loose. I can commiserate the problems the school must be facing what with lawsuits over the slightest of injuries and all but isn’t this going a little too far?

I guess what is most troubling to me about this is that when I was in school I used rubber bands to construct all sorts of neat things and not all of them were weapons. By banning rubber bands the school has taken away a simple construction material that can inspire all sorts of creativity other than launching a paperwad toward another student. Shouldn’t schools be promoting and directing this sort of creativity?

I’m not going to jump on to this the way I do a lot of the “zero tolerance” news that I comment on here but if you ask me this school is making a mistake in the way they are handling their problem.

I’m hoping that one of my Bay Area friends can shed some light on the Cupertino school banning the Declaration of Independence. There has to be more to this than is being reported.