In a message dated 5/24/2004 6:21:19 PM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< I was probably one of the few people in that room that Doug Mann could have won over. He demonstrated a real understanding of educational issues and really showed me that he saw through NCLB. Unfortunately, he then launched in to a litany of what was wrong with desegregation, public education and how basically screwed up the system was...he also addressed foreign policy issues, not really something you can do from the school board. >> I criticized the school board for going out of its way to segregate students since it repealed the controlled choice desegregation plan and moved forward with what was known as the Community School Plan in 1995. The idea was that if students went to schools that were closer to home, parents would get more involved with their children's education, and that would somehow help to close the racial learning gap, but it didn't work out that way. >From my point of view, the public school system was basically on the right track in the 1970s and early 80s when it was closing the academic achievement gap. Then there was a fundamental shift in educational policy at the federal, state and local levels. The Reagan-Bush administration picked a blue ribbon panel of education experts that issued a report in 1983 entitled a Nation at Risk, which warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity that is threatening to destroy the very foundations of our educational system." That is the premise upon which educational policy has been based since the 1980s. However, the Reagan-Bush administration had no evidence of a "rising tide of mediocrity." And no evidence of a rising tide of mediocrity has been found in educational data from the 1970s to mid-80s. The education reform movement launched during the Reagan Bush administration was based on a lie, the nonexistent threat of a rising tide of mediocrity, not unlike the way that the war in Iraq was launched to deal with the nonexistent threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That analogy was the closest that I came to addressing any foreign policy issue at the 5th district Green Party endorsing convention. -Doug Mann REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
