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Tancredo Makes Newt Look Good

The following item was in the March 9 School Board News:

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a former Education Department official who has been a longtime advocate of getting the government out of education, now wants to eliminate all public schools.

Tancredo signed a pledge pushed by the Separation of School and State Alliance, which calls for an end of "government compulsion in education funding, attendance, and content." It says, "Separation of school and state is essential to restore parental responsibility and create an environment of educational freedom in which both students and teachers can flourish."

The California-based alliance has gathered 6,000 signatures on its pledge so far and hopes to get 25 million in the next decade.

Tancredo is on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

'Use the Schools'

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, in one of its trade publications, offered the following advice to gun manufacturers:

"There's a way to help insure that new faces and pocketbooks will continue to patronize your business: Use the schools. This is where most of your potential down-the-line shooters and hunters now are."

-- From a column by Bob Herbert in The New York Times.

No Bathroom Breaks Allowed

Commenting on the "fill them with facts" approach to the history portion of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, Brookline High history teacher Deborah Quitt has quipped: "If you go to the bathroom in your sophomore year, you've missed 500 years of history."

Poor People Not Welcome

Milwaukee's suburbs do not put "No Poor Allowed" signs on their borders. But they might as well.

Families earning $12 an hour, which account for about one-fifth of all households in the metropolitan area, could not have afforded the median price of a home in any of the 77 suburbs in the Milwaukee metropolitan area in 1997, according to a new report.

The report, "Housing Affordability in the Milwaukee Metropolitan Area: A Matter of Income, Race and Policy," was published by the Institute for Wisconsin's Future. It was directed by Gregory Squires, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who has long been active in red-lining issues in the metropolitan area.

Summer 1999