But hey, it’s important to punish the people who need it most:
Last year, 53,000 children in the state attended full-day kindergarten funded in part with the grants, which began under Gov. Ed Rendell in 2004-05.
Now Gov. Corbett, who campaigned as a supporter of early-childhood education, has proposed eliminating the grants to save $260 million. Last year, about $200 million of that went to early-education programs, including to expand kindergarten to full-day.
Enrollment in full-day kindergarten has grown from 35 percent of students to more than 68 percent since the state started the grants, according to Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. Philadelphia could lose $55 million in block grants, of which the city used about 90 percent to fund full-day kindergarten for nearly 13,000 students.
Corbett wants to cut funding for public schools by 11 percent, a prospect that leaves districts scrambling to figure whether they can preserve full-day kindergarten.
In a part-day program, Citerone said, there was not enough time to do much writing. The difference by the end of the year is dramatic, she said. Previously, Citerone said, she might have one student in a class reading by the end of the year.
“I didn’t have readers for 22 years,” she said. “Now, over 80 percent go into first grade reading on level or above level. There’s really no comparison. I never thought I’d have children reading.
And right across the bridge, we’re also taking away their health care.
It is now well known established science that children do almost all of their important learning and development before age 6. If we have to close any schools, we are better off closing colleges and high schools, and pouring money into pre-school and early childhood day-care, medical care and nutrition. If we turned our country into a paradise for little children, provided them with all the food and care and education enrichment they could hold, filled in all the gaps where their parents fell short, we would revive our country in less than 20 years.
You’re so right. That’s why it won’t happen unless there’s a revolution first.
The oligarchists, made up of some meritocracrats, some monied aristocrats, etc., but basically those that have it made, want to limit the competition their own children will face for good jobs. Since the corporacratists are working to eliminate good jobs with good pay and good benefits, they want find ways to ensure their own offspring will land the good jobs which remain (as not all of them are yet rich enough to trust fund their children for their entire lives).
So, we will have a society as stratified as feudal societies, with the small top run classes doing very well, the professional classes will be on tenterhooks as to whether or not they will be able to keep their jobs and thus subservient to the upper class, and a very few in the lower classes will emerge on merit or catching the the attention or fancy of some influential upper or higher profession class member and thus be given preferred status. For as long as they please their overlord.
Amazing.
A comment attributed to Sinclair Lewis* noted that when fascism comes to the United States it will be uniquely American in form and style. I think it’s here, in the form of corporatism enabled by both parties.
*Two altervative sources.
what have we come to when someone has to say “we can’t stop people from being human” to plead for some basic health care?