A Great Education Discussion

I watched a previous discussion on public education on C-SPAN that took place in Arkansas as a part of the Clinton School speaker series. When it comes to education, I think many Democrats and Republicans come to the same page. Some conservatives were angry with Newt Gingrich for teaming up with  leftist liberal, Al Sharpton to rally for education at different schools around the country solely because of Al Sharpton, but more understood. The teaming was not about the conservative Republican/liberal Democrat debate over throwing money at schools.

It was about dealing with the disparity of graduation rates and education of minorities through driving the importance of learning, not disrespecting teachers in the classroom and taking going to school seriously throughout life. I cannot fault Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Sharpton for doing that. Hey, non graduation rates for black males is the highest in Detroit. See the Education section in Tale of Two Cities. I am in no way excluding parental blame, because there is some to go around, but this concentration is on the school/educator side.

On C-SPAN Mayor Kevin Johnson (Democrat and formerly of the NBA) of Sacramento, California and his fiancée, the former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system in Washington, D. C., Michelle Rhee  discussed  the “State of Education.” I was on Ms. Rhee’s side during her embattled time as the D. C. schools chancellor.  Mayor Johnson’s past education building efforts led to a low-income area majority black student school out performing suburban majority white schools in test scores.

I restrain my partisan being when it comes to education.  Please at least listen to a portion of the entire discussion in the video here. You will hear Mayor Johnson talk about the school that out performed suburban schools among other great things.