UK Daily Mail: State schools admit they do not push gifted pupils because they don’t want to promote ‘elitism’

We have said it for decades, the left promotes “equality” by aiming for a low common denominator. Excellence and competition are frowned upon.

Daily Mail:

As many as three-quarters of state schools are failing to push their brightest pupils because teachers are reluctant to promote ‘elitism’, an Ofsted study says today.

Many teachers are not convinced of the importance of providing more challenging tasks for their gifted and talented pupils.

Bright youngsters told inspectors they were forced to ask for harder work. Others were resentful at being dragooned into ‘mentoring’ weaker pupils.

In nearly three-quarters of 26 schools studied, pupils designated as being academically gifted or talented in sport or the arts were ‘not a priority’, Ofsted found.

Teachers feared that a focus on the brightest pupils would ‘undermine the school’s efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234906/State-schools-admit-push-gifted-pupils-dont-want-promote-elitism.html#ixzz0Zo3JRYTI

Senate Moving to Pass Yet Another Trillion Dollar Spending Extravoganza; But Yanks Education Funding for DC Inner City Minorities.

…

Associates Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate is poised to clear away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill rewarding most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.

The $1.1 trillion measure combines much of the year’s unfinished budget work – only a $626 billion Pentagon spending measure would remain – into a 1,000-plus-page catchall spending bill that would give Cabinet departments such as Education, Health and Human Services and State increases far exceeding inflation.

After a 60-36 test vote on Friday in which Democrats and a handful of Republicans helped the measure clear another GOP obstacle, the bill was expected to win on Saturday the 60 Senate votes necessary to guarantee passage. A final vote is expected Sunday.

The measure provides spending increases averaging about 10 percent to programs under immediate control of Congress, blending increases for veterans’ programs, NASA and the FBI with a pay raise for federal workers and help for car dealers.

ANOTHER raise for Federal Employees??

Via SmartPlanet: Last week, USA Today reported that Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Department had one person earnings $170,000 or more when the recession started. Now there are 1,690 employees making that much. The average federal worker’s pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

Back to the AP:

The bill would also void a long-standing ban on the funding of abortion by the District of Columbia government and overturns a ban on federal money for needle exchange programs in the city. It also phases out a D.C. school voucher program favored by Republicans and opens the door for the city to permit medical marijuana.

It would also lift a nationwide ban on the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs.

Federal workers would receive pay increases averaging 2 percent, with people in areas with higher living costs receiving slightly higher increases.

Once the bill clears the Senate, it would advance to President Barack Obama’s desk.

Is this the hope & change you voted for?

I bet the parents of those inner city kids voted for the Democrats, now kids who had a real opportunity will be doomed to violent, failing, DC public schools which are among the worst in the nation. – LINK.

Democrats Propose Bill to Have Federal Government “Design” Your Local Communities

Interesting article and the facts behind it are solid. More marxist utopian planning in the name of the “environment”.

 But hey who needs local government when we have a known crook like Senator Chris Dodd? Don’t you all know that a corrupt senator from Connecticut knows better what choices to make for your community than the local officials you elected? Dodd was the senator who slipped in the language in the stimulus bill to see to it that AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got their super bonuses paid for by you and me because they were the biggest people donating to his campaign.

WND:

When the term “Sustainable Development” first entered the world, it was defined to be:

“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The term and the definition are the creation of the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then vice-chair of the International Socialist Party.

To give meaning to this grandiose definition, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development adopted Agenda 21, signed by 179 nations, including the United States.  This document is a 40-chapter laundry list of recommendations to create “Sustainable Communities.” 

Sen. Christopher Dodd is facilitating these U.N. recommendations through his “Livable Communities Act” (S. 1619), which further defines the term this way:

“The term ‘sustainable development’ means a pattern of resource use designed to create livable communities by:

(A) providing a variety of safe and reliable transportation choices;

(B) providing affordable, energy-efficient, and location-efficient housing choices for people of all income levels, ages, races, and ethnicities;

(C) supporting, revitalizing, and encouraging the growth of communities and maximizing the cost effectiveness of existing infrastructure;

(D) promoting economic development and economic competitiveness;

(E) preserving the environment and natural resources;

(F) protecting agricultural land, rural land, and green spaces; and

(G) supporting public health and improving the quality of life for residents of and workers in a community.”

Dodd’s bill will authorize the appropriation of billions of dollars to bribe states and local communities to transform the nation into soviet-styled communities where freedom is sacrificed for the utopian vision of sustainable development.