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The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School
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Leroy N. Soetoro
Jan 11, 2012, 1:14:01 AM1/11/12
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576557610352019804.
html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
In case you needed further proof of the American education system's
failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest
crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge
that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in
jail this year.
An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her
father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school
outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars
charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony
counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her
ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.
Ms. Williams-Bolar caught a break last month when Ohio Gov. John Kasich
granted her clemency, reducing her charges to misdemeanors from felonies.
His decision allows her to pursue her teacher's license, and it may
provide hope to parents beyond the Buckeye State. In the last year,
parents in Connecticut, Kentucky and Missouri have all been arrested�ｿｽand
await sentencing�ｿｽfor enrolling their children in better public schools
outside of their districts.
These arrests represent two major forms of exasperation. First is that of
parents whose children are zoned into failing public schools�ｿｽthey can't
afford private schooling, they can't access school vouchers, and they
haven't won or haven't even been able to enter a lottery for a better
charter school. Then there's the exasperation of school officials finding
it more and more difficult to deal with these boundary-hopping parents.
From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special
investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine
their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public
schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all
boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull
up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their
gates.
Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which
provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic
equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from
their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's
rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting
out-of-district students.
Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned
parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their
children.
In August, an internal PowerPoint presentation from the American
Federation of Teachers surfaced online. The document described how the AFT
undermined minority parent groups' efforts in Connecticut to pass the
"parent trigger" legislation that offers parents real governing authority
to transform failing schools. A key to the AFT's success in killing the
effort, said the document, was keeping parent groups from "the table." AFT
President Randi Weingarten quickly distanced her organization from the
document, but it was small consolation to the parents once again left in
the cold.
Kevin Chavous, the board chairman for both the Black Alliance for
Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform, senses that these
recent events herald a new age for fed-up parents. Like Martin Luther King
Jr. before them, they understand "the fierce urgency of now" involving
their children's education. Hence some parents' decisions to break the
law�ｿｽor practice civil disobedience.
This life-changing decision is portrayed in Betty Smith's 1943 novel, "A
Tree Grows In Brooklyn," also adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.
In the novel, Francie Nolan is the bright young daughter of Irish
immigrants living in Brooklyn's Williamsburg immigrant ghetto in the early
20th century. An avid reader, Francie is crushed when she attends her
local public school and discovers that opportunity is nonexistent for
girls of her ilk.
So Francie and her father Johnny claim the address of a house next to a
good public school. Francie enrolls at the school and her life is
transformed. A teacher nurtures her love for writing, and she goes on to
thrive at the school. Francie eventually becomes an accomplished writer
who tells the story of her transformation through education.
The defining difference between the two schools, writes the novel's
narrator, is parents: At the good school, "The parents were too American,
too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept
injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the
immigrants and the second-generation Americans."
Were Francie around today, she'd be sad but not surprised to see how
little things have changed. Students are still poisoned by low
expectations, their parents are still getting bulldozed. But Francie
wouldn't yield to despair. She would remind this new generation of
courageous parents of the Tree of Heaven, from which her story gets its
title�ｿｽ"the one tree in Francie's yard that was neither a pine nor a
hemlock. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and
it was the only tree that grew out of cement." The tree, the narrator
adds, "liked poor people."
The defenders of the status quo in our nation's public schools could learn
a lot from that tree.
--
Obama's black racist USAG appointee.
Eric Holder, racist black United States Attorney General drops voter
intimidation charges against the Black Panthers, "You are about to be
ruled by the black man, cracker!"
Eric Holder, prejudiced black United States Attorney General settles the
hate crime debate, "Whites Not Protected by Hate Crime Laws."
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to
former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New
York's million dollar tax evasion.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder, committed treason by knowingly and
deliberately arming enemies of the United States of America through
Operation Fast and Furious. Complicit in the murder of Federal employees
during the execution of their duties.
--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---
html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
In case you needed further proof of the American education system's
failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest
crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge
that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in
jail this year.
An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her
father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school
outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars
charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony
counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her
ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.
Ms. Williams-Bolar caught a break last month when Ohio Gov. John Kasich
granted her clemency, reducing her charges to misdemeanors from felonies.
His decision allows her to pursue her teacher's license, and it may
provide hope to parents beyond the Buckeye State. In the last year,
parents in Connecticut, Kentucky and Missouri have all been arrested�ｿｽand
await sentencing�ｿｽfor enrolling their children in better public schools
outside of their districts.
These arrests represent two major forms of exasperation. First is that of
parents whose children are zoned into failing public schools�ｿｽthey can't
afford private schooling, they can't access school vouchers, and they
haven't won or haven't even been able to enter a lottery for a better
charter school. Then there's the exasperation of school officials finding
it more and more difficult to deal with these boundary-hopping parents.
From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special
investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine
their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public
schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all
boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull
up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their
gates.
Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which
provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic
equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from
their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's
rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting
out-of-district students.
Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned
parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their
children.
In August, an internal PowerPoint presentation from the American
Federation of Teachers surfaced online. The document described how the AFT
undermined minority parent groups' efforts in Connecticut to pass the
"parent trigger" legislation that offers parents real governing authority
to transform failing schools. A key to the AFT's success in killing the
effort, said the document, was keeping parent groups from "the table." AFT
President Randi Weingarten quickly distanced her organization from the
document, but it was small consolation to the parents once again left in
the cold.
Kevin Chavous, the board chairman for both the Black Alliance for
Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform, senses that these
recent events herald a new age for fed-up parents. Like Martin Luther King
Jr. before them, they understand "the fierce urgency of now" involving
their children's education. Hence some parents' decisions to break the
law�ｿｽor practice civil disobedience.
This life-changing decision is portrayed in Betty Smith's 1943 novel, "A
Tree Grows In Brooklyn," also adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.
In the novel, Francie Nolan is the bright young daughter of Irish
immigrants living in Brooklyn's Williamsburg immigrant ghetto in the early
20th century. An avid reader, Francie is crushed when she attends her
local public school and discovers that opportunity is nonexistent for
girls of her ilk.
So Francie and her father Johnny claim the address of a house next to a
good public school. Francie enrolls at the school and her life is
transformed. A teacher nurtures her love for writing, and she goes on to
thrive at the school. Francie eventually becomes an accomplished writer
who tells the story of her transformation through education.
The defining difference between the two schools, writes the novel's
narrator, is parents: At the good school, "The parents were too American,
too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept
injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the
immigrants and the second-generation Americans."
Were Francie around today, she'd be sad but not surprised to see how
little things have changed. Students are still poisoned by low
expectations, their parents are still getting bulldozed. But Francie
wouldn't yield to despair. She would remind this new generation of
courageous parents of the Tree of Heaven, from which her story gets its
title�ｿｽ"the one tree in Francie's yard that was neither a pine nor a
hemlock. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and
it was the only tree that grew out of cement." The tree, the narrator
adds, "liked poor people."
The defenders of the status quo in our nation's public schools could learn
a lot from that tree.
--
Obama's black racist USAG appointee.
Eric Holder, racist black United States Attorney General drops voter
intimidation charges against the Black Panthers, "You are about to be
ruled by the black man, cracker!"
Eric Holder, prejudiced black United States Attorney General settles the
hate crime debate, "Whites Not Protected by Hate Crime Laws."
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to
former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New
York's million dollar tax evasion.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder, committed treason by knowingly and
deliberately arming enemies of the United States of America through
Operation Fast and Furious. Complicit in the murder of Federal employees
during the execution of their duties.
--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---
DCI
Jan 11, 2012, 9:30:27 PM1/11/12
to
On Jan 10, 10:14 pm, "Leroy N. Soetoro" <leroysoet...@usurper.org>
wrote:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190328570457655761035201....
Ms.Williams-Bolar and listen carefully to what she is saying:
Education has become and activity that takes up a few hours a day out
of the lives of children. Nothing more is expected, planned or adhered
if there is a tinge of truth in the minds of educators, the ones who
are trying to save their asses from discovery, that of total
incompetence The current education model has nothing to do with
learning
DCI
wrote:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190328570457655761035201....
> html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
>
> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's
> failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest
> crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge
> that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in
> jail this year.
>
> An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her
> father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school
> outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars
> charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony
> counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her
> ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.
Someone with smarts, know-how and ability should sit down with
>
> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's
> failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest
> crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge
> that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in
> jail this year.
>
> An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her
> father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school
> outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars
> charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony
> counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her
> ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.
Ms.Williams-Bolar and listen carefully to what she is saying:
Education has become and activity that takes up a few hours a day out
of the lives of children. Nothing more is expected, planned or adhered
if there is a tinge of truth in the minds of educators, the ones who
are trying to save their asses from discovery, that of total
incompetence The current education model has nothing to do with
learning
DCI
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