Education Scam

AJC, 5/13/18, page M-1 article “Lack of early education in Georgia a concern” reports that Educrats are lobbying for a take-over of Pre-K education. It appears that North Carolina and Tennessee have this Pre-K program for low income families.

The cost is estimated based on the current $370 million a year cost of Georgia’s age 4 Pre-K program for 84,000 students. Or $4405 per student per year. Expanding it to the 500,000 children under age 4 you could estimate a cost of $2.2 billion a year. The article said we should expect the cost per child to reach $7000 per student per year. That would cost $3.5 billion a year.

Apparently higher income families are more inclined to catch early grade deficiencies in reading and math and correct them. Pre-K education has always been done by parents, grandparents, churches and daycare centers, but it wasn’t perfect and wasn’t administered by the public school system. So they are leveraging their failures to protect their job security.

This is free daycare for the poor. It completely removes students and their families from the responsibility of teaching children how to read, write and do math.

Children who homeschool are typically 2 grades ahead of their age group and don’t need school bus drivers. The difference with homeschooling is that these students are not put on the cookie-cutter public school assembly line. Instead they have more control over what they learn and how they learn it. Homeschoolers learn more quickly to take personal responsibility for their education. They know they have to learn to read, write and do math and they learn it. This gives them the time to learn what they are interested in and this is the reward they get for staying ahead on their basic reading, writing and math skills.

Homeschooling is more efficient and doesn’t involve travel time or downtime. Homeschoolers have time to spend extra time on subjects they are interested in. Homeschools can exercise their choices and that keeps them motivated.

Most Georgia public school students do poorly in reading and math because reading and math are lost among the flurry of other activities teachers are required to cover. Common Core Math is a required math skills killer. Students and parents need the unnecessary computations to be eliminated. ESSA required psychological testing is a dangerous practice for any tyrannical government to undertake. Hitler and Stalin would have liked to have psychological profiles on all the students in their government schools.

I have a problem with saddling taxpayers with another $2.2 to $3.5 billion a year to add funding to our failed public school system to open free daycare for the poor.  Most poor kids are being watched by their grandmas where their parents live.  Students from low income families need to decide to learn to read, write and do math and their parents need to make sure they learn how to do this. Let’s try that for now. I don’t think government is responsible for education; I think student should take personal responsibility for their own education and should know the consequences if they don’t.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader