Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives created the Task Force on Poverty, Opportunity, & Upward Mobility to explore alternatives to reducing poverty that focus on private solutions and program flexibility rather than “one-size-fits-all, top-down” programs.
In the 35-page report (PDF), released on Tuesday, lawmakers suggest government dollars should be spent on programs that actually help, not those intended to help.
Policy recommendations include insisting that adults on food stamps capable of working actually work, giving state and local governments more control and flexibility over incentives, evaluating programs to make funding decisions, expanding the use of information technology to prevent incorrect payments, and supporting state and local governments to expand school-choice programs.
The Center for Urban Renewal and Education’s (CURE) Star Parker believes school choice will benefit children from low-income families. From a recent column:
“The bottom line: When parents have choice where to send their child to school, their children perform better in reading and math tests.
…
“According to their ‘meta-analysis of 19 “gold standard” experimental evaluations of the test-score effects of private school choice programs around the world. The sum of reliable evidence indicates that, on average, private school choice increases the reading scores of choice users by about 0.27 standard deviations and their math scores by 0.17 standard deviations. These are highly significant, educationally meaningful achievement gains of several months of additional learning from school choice.’
“…[A] black mother, whose child is trapped in a failing urban public school, doesn’t need research to inform her that it is a good idea to give her control to pull that child out of that school and send him or her to a different one. It’s obvious.”
CURE’s objective is to fight poverty — and restore dignity to the individual — through traditional values and the principles of limited government and free markets.
Public schools, urban or not, are more concerned indoctrinating youth into progressive Marxists than educating. As long as they can fill society with the mindless non-thinking democrat they feel they have done their duty.