....who've ruined it!
1. Capitalism protects individual liberty at a fundamental level. It is a free market system in which each of us chooses the purpose and rewards of our labor, and determines his own best vocation.
2. Conservative proposals for education include private school vouchers, charter schools, high-stakes testing, No Child Left Behind, high mandatory standards, moral education and proposals for educating religious students in secular public schools. A close inspection will reveal the thread of capitalism running through all of the proposals, the free market of resources and ideas.
3. The current system is rife with a lack of choice for parents, and the lack of accountability for schools and for teachers. And, provably, a lack of learning by students.
4. The one aspect of capitalism is the funding, meaning that they receive funding based on the average attendance. This is the argument against vouchers: if a student leaves, the school receives less in funding.
a. Proponents of performance-based funding recognize this reallocation from a poorly performing school to a thriving one as a good thing!
b. Voucher programs across the country aer consistenly oversubscribed, as parents are eager to gain this choice for their children. The message is clear.
5. Schools should not only compete on educational quality, but also on content. Parents who wish to send their children to religious schools or to ensure that their children are taught certain moral values, should also have choices in the educational system. Parochial schools should be on an equal footing with secular schools in term of access to resources- and, in fact, secular schools themselves should not be forced to adopt the moral values of bureaucrats simply because someone in Washington thinks that a belief that God created the world is quaint.
a. The price for being poor should not be a mandatory abandonment of one's family values once a child sets foot outside her home.
6. Rejection of accountability has led to many of the injustices inherent in our current system, including a persistent racial achievement gap. Accountability in education begins and ends with standards! And this refers to both student teacher performance. Standards ensure that student learn to read, to write, to do math, and to understand our national history.
7. Our Founders envisioned the states as laboratories of democracy and enshrined into our Constitution the principle of federalism. Under federalist principles, the American people endowed the national government with a defined set of limited, enumerated powers in the Constitution. Any powers beyond those specifically given to the federal government fall entirely within the province of the states. Federalism protects liberty by protecting against the overreaching of any one branch of our federal government, and is part of the uniquely American system of checks and balances. In the same way, federalism should inform our educational policy.
a. States must be allowed both to identify standards, and to determine for themselves the pace of progress toward higher standards.
8. Capitalist principles can help us overhaul our education system at the systemic level, but capitalist incentives at the level of the individual student have also met with success. "At the end of every five-week marking period, Green for Grades participants can earn $50 for every A, $35 for every B, and $20 for each C they receive in English, math, science, social studies, and physical education." Giving Students Cash for Grades - US News and World Report
a. The opposite approach is to deemphasize quantitative, competitive grading scale. This is what has been done for decades. The result is evident.
Paloma Zepeda, "Reinventing the Right," p. 163-173.
Capitalism, federalism, and accountability......the very antithesis of Liberalism.
1. Capitalism protects individual liberty at a fundamental level. It is a free market system in which each of us chooses the purpose and rewards of our labor, and determines his own best vocation.
2. Conservative proposals for education include private school vouchers, charter schools, high-stakes testing, No Child Left Behind, high mandatory standards, moral education and proposals for educating religious students in secular public schools. A close inspection will reveal the thread of capitalism running through all of the proposals, the free market of resources and ideas.
3. The current system is rife with a lack of choice for parents, and the lack of accountability for schools and for teachers. And, provably, a lack of learning by students.
4. The one aspect of capitalism is the funding, meaning that they receive funding based on the average attendance. This is the argument against vouchers: if a student leaves, the school receives less in funding.
a. Proponents of performance-based funding recognize this reallocation from a poorly performing school to a thriving one as a good thing!
b. Voucher programs across the country aer consistenly oversubscribed, as parents are eager to gain this choice for their children. The message is clear.
5. Schools should not only compete on educational quality, but also on content. Parents who wish to send their children to religious schools or to ensure that their children are taught certain moral values, should also have choices in the educational system. Parochial schools should be on an equal footing with secular schools in term of access to resources- and, in fact, secular schools themselves should not be forced to adopt the moral values of bureaucrats simply because someone in Washington thinks that a belief that God created the world is quaint.
a. The price for being poor should not be a mandatory abandonment of one's family values once a child sets foot outside her home.
6. Rejection of accountability has led to many of the injustices inherent in our current system, including a persistent racial achievement gap. Accountability in education begins and ends with standards! And this refers to both student teacher performance. Standards ensure that student learn to read, to write, to do math, and to understand our national history.
7. Our Founders envisioned the states as laboratories of democracy and enshrined into our Constitution the principle of federalism. Under federalist principles, the American people endowed the national government with a defined set of limited, enumerated powers in the Constitution. Any powers beyond those specifically given to the federal government fall entirely within the province of the states. Federalism protects liberty by protecting against the overreaching of any one branch of our federal government, and is part of the uniquely American system of checks and balances. In the same way, federalism should inform our educational policy.
a. States must be allowed both to identify standards, and to determine for themselves the pace of progress toward higher standards.
8. Capitalist principles can help us overhaul our education system at the systemic level, but capitalist incentives at the level of the individual student have also met with success. "At the end of every five-week marking period, Green for Grades participants can earn $50 for every A, $35 for every B, and $20 for each C they receive in English, math, science, social studies, and physical education." Giving Students Cash for Grades - US News and World Report
a. The opposite approach is to deemphasize quantitative, competitive grading scale. This is what has been done for decades. The result is evident.
Paloma Zepeda, "Reinventing the Right," p. 163-173.
Capitalism, federalism, and accountability......the very antithesis of Liberalism.
against the British foundations of American culture; then, latterly and massively, by Americans of non-European origin against the European foundations of that culture.” 
