States and school systems around the country have been reformatting cafeteria menus, partly pushed by Michelle Obama’s 2010 “Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act,” which essentially has taxpayers triple-paying for the food schools serve under wild and conflicting nutrition regulations, and partly pushed by a desire to be politically correct. This has led to some outrageous incidents, including the recent North Carolina incident where a teacher forced a child to swap her homemade lunch for the school’s chicken nuggets, a Michigan state child obesity registry and tracking system, and now a new set of rules in Massachusetts that forbid school vending machines, bake sales, door-to-door candy fundraisers, and snacks at after-school events and parties.
The state’s justification is “an obesity epidemic.” And, to be fair, lots of American kids are fat–not pudgy, fat. But does this justify blanketing schools with often conflicting and nonsensical food requirements? Massachusetts State Sen. Susan Fargo thinks so.
“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” she said. “But this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long, healthy life.”
Ah, yes, government. Giver of good, long, healthy lives!
These regulation-happy state officials don’t seem to understand the law of unintended consequences, and this action has several. The problem for them is that some of the unintended consequences pit government regulation against government regulation, with the not-unlikely possibility the public begins to notice the Kafka-esque absurdity of it all.
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America’s fixation on diversity is logical. We are a nation of immigrants, a great “melting pot” of ethnicities, nationalities and cultures, brought together by a choice to be an American made by us or our ancestors, and by a shared commitment to a unique set of values that constitute what George Will has called the “catechism” of America’s civil religion.
To acknowledge and appreciate our national diversity is to embrace our American heritage and culture. But diversity itself pales in comparison to the values that all Americans share; we come together as Americans not because we respect everyone’s differences, but because we are commonly invested in a core set of beliefs enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These ideals transcend diversity.
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Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a 
discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: While education reformers focus on big schemes like Common Core standards and teacher evaluations, little over the several past decades has seemed to change about American education. Author Beverlee Jobrack, a long-time textbook editor for SRA-McGraw Hill, explains in Tyranny of the Textbook that some of the reason why is that textbooks have not changed. Teachers keep teaching the way they always have, and publishers print books that make them happy, whether it’s based on research about how children learn best or not. Jobrack also explains why the Khan Academy and crazes over much education technology are non-research-supported fads. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: Eric M. Fraser discusses his extensive research and writing on municipal wi-fi systems, finding them to be more expensive and less effective than promised by governments willing to put taxpayers on the hook to pay for them. Fraser also addresses the technical and regulatory limitations of municipal wi-fi systems. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) executive director Tom Harris explains how ICSC is turning Earth Hour into Energy Hour.
Listen here.
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The Tampa Bay Times printed a flattering story of how “parent groups” stopped the Parent Trigger legislation in Florida recently. Unfortunately, the reporter completely bought the labels of this “grassroots” “coalition of disparate, but determined parent groups.” Indeed, it’s reflected in her lead:
It was one of the hardest-fought battles of the legislative session.
On one side: a coalition of disparate, but determined parent groups.
On the other: former Gov. Jeb Bush and the powerful school choice lobby.
I did have to laugh that she considers the school choice lobby powerful, but makes no mention or comparison of their power compared to teacher unions, their most consistent and much better (publicly) financed foe.
Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: Is the American Educational Research Association is advancing a political agenda over actual social science? The American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess thinks so, and joins the podcast to explain why the nation’s largest professional education research organization should stop playing politics or stop receiving public funds. Read his blog post on Rick Hess Straight Up for the backstory. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: Detroit record store owner Warren Westfall discusses how he uses the Internet to supplement his bricks-and-mortar retail operation, and how online sales now represent 20 percent of his business. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo explains why meteorologists are skeptical of alarmist global warming predictions.
Listen here.
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Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: The waning days of Virginia’s 2012 legislative session are packed with unfinished education bills, which include far-reaching changes to charter schools, virtual schooling, teacher tenure, and a tax credit for private school tuition. Chris Braunlich, a Virginia board of education member and vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute, joins the podcast to outline what’s at stake, how bills have endured the legislative meat grinder, and the politics in play. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, discusses the recent report that crowd funding site Kickstarter will disburse more money to arts projects this year than the National Endowment for the Arts. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: Energy economist Donn Dears discusses the economic benefits of natural gas fracking and its outstanding environmental record.
Listen here.
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Last Sunday’s New York Times had an article highlighting the implementation of the new teacher evaluation system being put in place in Tennessee. The system is part of the Race-to-the-Top attempt to drive education reform in the states by dangling federal cash for reforms.
As you read the article, you should begin to realize why “reform” fails and why many people in both the Government Education Complex and Education Transformation* movement find these rules so absurd.
There simply is no way that a federal bureaucracy (or any bureaucracy, for that matter) can devise a unified system of teacher evaluation. There are too many variables, and teachers are correct to be skeptical of this top-down approach to their craft.
For example, the first few paragraphs of the article expose the unworkable nature of the evaluation process.
Steve Ball, executive principal at the East Literature Magnet School in Nashville, arrived at an English class unannounced one day this month and spent 60 minutes taking copious notes as he watched the teacher introduce and explain the concept of irony. “It was a good lesson,” Mr. Ball said.
But under Tennessee’s new teacher-evaluation system, which is similar to systems being adopted around the country, Mr. Ball said he had to give the teacher a one — the lowest rating on a five-point scale — in one of 12 categories: breaking students into groups.** Even though Mr. Ball had seen the same teacher, a successful veteran he declined to identify, group students effectively on other occasions, he felt that he had no choice but to follow the strict guidelines of the state’s complicated rubric.
“It’s not an accurate reflection of her as a teacher,” Mr. Ball said.
What a shock. A principal knows his teachers better than the federalized check list. Wonders never cease.
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The story of a schoolteacher ripping away a 4-year-old girl’s carefully packed lunch from home–containing a turkey sandwich, banana, and snack bag of chips–to make the girl eat school-served chicken nuggets has ripped through the talk show circuit and prompted angry letters to the U.S. Ag Department from her family’s elected representatives.
Now the school principal and Associated Press have come in to set the story straight. Except that learning more facts makes the truth uglier.
The child’s teacher mistakenly sent the girl to the wrong school line at lunch, said Hoke County Schools Assistant Superintendent Bob Barnes yesterday. Instead of handing her a carton of milk to “round out her lunch,” the teacher wrongly made the girl eat the entire school lunch.
“We’re not trying to force government down anybody’s throat,” Barnes said. “All we’re trying to do is make sure that our children get a good education and a nutritious meal every day. It comes back to: We had an employee who made a mistake.”
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Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: With wickedly funny, deeply poignant prose, Providence College Professor Anthony Esolen‘s new book dissects how current approaches to education and parenting squash children’s imaginations and cheapen childhood. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child discusses forming a child’s mind and heart to wonder at the world around him. “Imaginative children are by nature difficult to herd,” he says. “Schools are built for a certain kind of efficiency and anonymity; they look like factories, and serve many of the same functions.” Esolen both explains why and discusses what to do about it. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: Author and consultant Larry Downes discusses the spectrum crunch, as well as Federal Communications Commission opposition to legislative efforts to alleviate it by conducting auctions. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: Emergency medical physician Dr. John Dale Dunn explains how EPA is misrepresenting data regarding lives allegedly saved through regulation.
Listen here.
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It always annoys me when people write what they think are “even-handed” pieces that gyp both sides of an argument by pretending they have equal merit. That’s not fair-mindedness, it’s mental homelessness.
The Atlantic, which I generally enjoy reading, published an article entitled “How School Choice Became an Explosive Issue“ during School Choice Week, this week. The magazine’s first mistake in this regard was to present writer Kevin Carey’s think-tank, Education Sector, as an “independent” organization. Independent sounds hip because it implies this same detachment, which is the very essence of cool.
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