One in three schools in Oregon do not meet federal guidelines for standardized testing. What is even more sad is that for a school to pass this test "at least 59 percent of its students must be at grade level in math, and 60 percent in reading". Now, honestly, 59% is only 2/3 of the school's population. Sixty percent, when I was in school, was failing.
An objection I hear constantly to these numbers, and I agree with it, is that there is a huge influx of immigrants into our public schools where English is the student's second language.
That gets me all fired up about another issue--closing our borders and giving our public services to citizens only. Our own population of students is suffering because the curriculum is being dumbed down to hit the median levels of a classroom for these populations. My opinion....students who are citizens or in the country legally can use our public school services only.
Rush Limbaugh (don't stop reading please) did a quick summation of Mexico's immigrant laws last April pretending to state how it would be in Limbaugh land if he made the immigration laws. He ends his tirade giving the audience "These laws are not my ideas actually, they are the actual immigration laws to Mexico." Now this is his summation, so it also has his verbiage that I find so testy, but he gets the point across:
“All right, immigration proposals under discussion. Let me add mine to the mix. I want to call this proposal the Limbaugh Laws. …First, if you immigrate to the United States of America, you must speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor. [America is] not going to take unskilled workers…There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, no government business will be conducted in your native language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote…nor will they ever be allowed to hold political office. According to the Limbaugh Laws, if you're in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled, ever, to welfare, to food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here, but it must be an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If you don't know have that amount of money, you can't come and invest. You have to stay home. If you do come and you want to buy land, okay, but we're going to restrict your options. You will not be allowed to buy waterfront property in the United States. That will be reserved for citizens naturally born in this country.”
“In fact, as a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to property… Another thing. You don't have the right to protest when you come here. You're allowed no demonstrations, you cannot wave a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies, or you get sent home. You're a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out, and if you come here illegally, you go straight to jail and we're going to hunt you down 'til we find you.”
By the way, he is right. I did a whole bunch of looking up on this issue, and without giving you a link that was just verbose with legal language on what it takes to move the Mexico this seemed to sum it up best. By the way, it is a felony to be in Mexico illegally. You get caught, you go to Mexican jail.
Seems a little unfair if you ask me. Also seems to me that we are taking it in the backside from Mexico who is raking our public services dry, and our students are suffering because we do have bilingual programs in our schools.
I listened to an interview Lars Larsen did a few years ago interviewing an LA police official. The American rules for illegals in our country is this; we don't arrest illegal aliens/immigrants unless they break the law. So as long as they don't break the laws, then they can stay and rake over our public services. I get so incensed by our lack of prudence with this aspect of our tax dollars. Imagine the billions of tax dollars that could be saved if we could only use other country's immigration laws as a model for our own. Forget stimulus dollars, forget cash for clunkers, forget health care reform.....if our country limited public services for legal citizens we wouldn't be where we are now financially as a country. Period.
Now this isn't just Mexico. Here in Oregon we have an influx of other languages too. Lots of Eastern European, slavic people groups are here. They are also part of the problem as well. Most of those I meet, though, are here on work visas and get here legally. I am so willing to be corrected on that with solid numbers if anyone has them.
Our classroom teachers are given thirty kids from all over the world, and are expected for every single one of them to meet basic academic standards. Almost impossible. I don't think those students should be in our classrooms. I think if they are here legally, they get another classroom setting that boosts them up, and doesn't drag down English speaking kids. No, it's not racism. I am not dividing a classroom based upon race, I am dividing a classroom based upon skill level. That is the American way. I am not a brain surgeon because I don't have that skill set. Same for our classrooms. We shouldn't put non English speaking kids in a room where they will fail, or expect our English speaking kids to be patient in their education while others are failing.
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