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View Full Version : GOP Could Capitalize On 'Urban Unrest'



Kathianne
04-29-2015, 09:08 AM
Throwing more (http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/28/obama-on-baltimore-republican-congress-wont-invest-in-urban-communities/) money (http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/28/democratic-leader-says-solution-in-baltimore-is-more-federal-spending/) isn't the answer. Considering most blacks favor 'vouchers' and charter schools, the candidates should know where to start:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/04/29/How-Stop-Next-Urban-Race-Riot-Ask-Republican


How to Stop the Next Urban Race Riot? Ask a Republican

BY LIZ PEEK (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Authors/P/Liz-Peek),


The Fiscal TimesApril 29, 2015


Why are young black men so quick to take to the streets, rioting and looting their own neighborhoods? Because they have nothing to lose. Yes, they may be thrown into jail, but for too many, that is likely to happen anyway.

Unlike the majority of white or Asian kids, they do not risk being bounced out of school, or not being accepted to their university of choice. Their parents are not going to ground them or make them do chores for a month. This doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it helps explain it. These kids are untethered to their own futures – and that is a challenge for our country.



Republicans should win the debate, by talking about opportunity. Marco Rubio is gaining on his rivals not because of his communication skills, which are at best above average, but because he talks about the American dream in a powerful and convincing manner. He genuinely believes in the freedoms and opportunities that are available to people in the United States, and his conviction is contagious. The task for Republicans is to match policy with promise, and to take that optimism into our inner cities.

They can start with erecting a ladder to success for every child in the country. The rungs of that ladder are the skills, which will allow young people to get a decent job – as an electrician or computer – jobs that are becoming available as Boomers retire. Unless young people learn how to become self-sufficient, they will be dependent on the state, one way or another.

At the Milken Conference (http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/conferences/global-conference/global-conference-2015/) this week, a large gathering of business people and policy makers embracing “The Power of Ideas,” a panel involved with education, discussed the lack of ambition among inner-city kids. The grade school children they described had no idea what it might take to earn a living, or support a family. Their models of success are NBA stars or rappers – or worse, the drug seller down the street. They don’t know much about middle-class goals and lives.
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Vocational training in high school, once thought discriminatory, is an appropriate path for many young people. The approach is becoming more popular. Carmen Farina, Democrat schools chancellor of New York City, is among those on board with rejecting a decades-old antipathy to teaching students jobs-related skills. She understands that such training will allow young people to become self-sufficient, and successful.

Republicans need to embrace any and every policy that can lead low-income young people to earn a living. Money from the federal budget should flow to counseling, internships and health services – not to prisons. Not only is self-reliance the path to dignity, it is also the bedrock of the upward mobility that the United States celebrates. Opportunity is the most potent remedy for despair and the kind of destructive behavior on display in Baltimore.

This is not the approach favored by Democrats. For over six years, President Obama has stirred the coals of envy, trying to spark anger over income inequality in the United States. Americans aren’t buying it. They are not uncomfortable that some people in our country are better off than others, despite statistics showing that the gap between rich and poor continues to increase, even under Obama’s watch.

That doesn’t mean they are happy. While tolerant of income disparity, Americans are increasingly incensed over growing “opportunity inequality” – the idea that not every child has a shot at success, that outcomes are preordained by zip code.

President Obama’s solution has been to send more young people to college. Where has that gotten us? Millions of college graduates working in low-paying jobs that do not take advantage of their advanced degree and that promise no hope of paying off burdensome college loans. Billions of federal dollars flowing into our college system, raising costs.

Defaults are rising, and are concentrated among low-income families. Of people who took out student loans in 2009, 70 percent from low-income neighborhoods were struggling to repay their debt (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-income-and-older-borrowers-are-struggling-to-pay-off-their-student-loans/), according to the New York Fed, compared to only 37 percent from wealthy areas. These young people are trapped.
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fj1200
04-29-2015, 09:44 AM
This dovetails with Jeff's fixing poverty thread.

Kathianne
04-29-2015, 10:21 AM
Hmmm, company we keep:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/417622/krauthammers-take-want-decrease-inner-city-violence-let-kids-choose-their-schools-nr


Krauthammer’s Take: Want to Decrease Inner-City Violence? Let Kids Choose Their Schools.

“We know what the problems are” that lead to mass inner-city violence, says Charles Krauthammer, commenting on this week’s mayhem in Baltimore.

“There are essentially two problems. . . . One is single parenthood, and the other is the worst schools on earth,”​ said Krauthammer on Tuesday’s Special Report. “Of the first, we have no idea how to solve that. Of the second, we do. If you can’​t improve the schools, give the kids a choice to go to better schools. The parents begged to have that opportunity, but the teachers’ unions won’t allow it and thus the Democrats won’t. If you want to do something, let them choose their schools.”

Noted Krauthammer, “Pat Moynihan once said that the one rule of any society is to socialize its young males, and it’s the young males who were out there rioting yesterday.” But the mayor of Baltimore, Democrat Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, did nothing: “They deliberately held back the police for reasons that these were, 15-, 16-year-old kids. If a 16-year-old kid is torching a CVS store, a drugstore, the police have to do something. They can’t just say, ‘Well, they are underage, or they are too young, so I’m going to give them a pass.’”

Said Krauthammer, scolding Rawlings-Blake post-riot comments: “You elect a mayor not to express sadness, but to do something to prevent the events that cause sadness.”

Kathianne
04-29-2015, 11:09 AM
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/give-every-child-baltimore-17329-school-choice-voucher


"The education system has failed them."That is part of the explanation that Billy Murphy, a lawyer representing the family of Freddie Gray — who died after his spine was severed while in police custody — gave CNN's Wolf Blitzer for why some young men in Baltimore rioted on Monday afternoon after Gray's funeral.

"These kids have had bad experiences in school," Murphy said.

"They are frequently harassed by the police," he said. "They are unemployed because there's no summer jobs, and so this is what you would expect in a tense time like this. That's not a justification, though, because what they're doing is wrong, and we need to stop them. And those of us who are more mature in Baltimore, black and white together, we need to have a demonstration that shows them the right way to do it, rather than permitting them to go without leadership, the way that they're going now."

He is right.

And one way to start moving things back in the right direction is to give every parent in Baltimore a voucher worth $17,329 that they can redeem at any school — public, private or religious — to which they choose to send their child.

Why $17,329?

Actually, it probably should be a bit more than that. But, according to the U.S. Department of Education, $17,329 is the total expenditure that the Baltimore City Public Schools made per student in the 2010-2011 school year, the latest year for which the Department of Education has reported this data. ($17,329 in 2011 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, equals about $18,083 in 2015 dollars.)

What did parents and taxpayers get in return for that $17,329 when it was spent by the public schools?

Well, judging by National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, most of the students did not get a good education.

In 2013, according to the Department of Education, only 16 percent of the eighth graders in the Baltimore City Public Schools scored at or above grade-level proficient in the NAEP reading test. That same year, only 13 percent of the eighth graders in the Baltimore City Public Schools scored at or above grade-level proficient in math.

According to the Department of Education, eighth graders in the Baltimore City Public Schools had average NAEP math and reading scores that were lower than the national public school averages, lower than the Maryland averages, and lower than the averages for the nation's large cities.
The Baltimore City Public Schools are not failing for lack of money or personnel.

In the 2012-2013 school year, according to the Department of Education, the city's schools enrolled 84,747 students. But they also employed approximately 5,380 classroom teachers — meaning they had a student-to-teacher ratio of 15.75 students per teacher.

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