Des Moines School Board Elections-your commentary requested.

In less than three weeks Des Moines residents will have the opportunity to elect three members to the Des Moines School Board. With the Presidential campaign in full swing it is likely that the voters’ attentions will be directed up the ballot and on November 4. If so, Des Moines residents will overlook one of the most important choices they face not just this year but for many years in the future.

Last fall we know that a Johns Hopkins study labeled three DSM high schools, North, Lincoln and East as “drop out factories”. The superintendent’s response, asserting that the Hopkins study was based on the “unfair” expectation that students will graduate from high school in four years more clearly reflects the sanguine acceptance of failure that permeates the modern educational establishment than anything we could write here.

This morning we learned that nineteen, yes, that’s right-NINETEEN-Des Moines public schools are on the federal watch list as deficient in one or more areas of math and reading. No wonder teachers, administrators and school boards hate No Child Left Behind-it requires accountability in a world where the lack of accountability is the polestar of existence and the hill upon which the education establishment will die to preserve.

Competence doesn’t appear to be the only problem the DMPS passes down the chain to Iowa, content is also deteriorating as curriculum has become increasingly focused on effecting social change than training good citizens who appreciate the country in which they are lucky enough to win. For example, every minute spent on the GLBT agenda in a school whose students cannot read proficiently is a minute of misspent tax dollars.

Finally, it looks like conservatives have begun to engage in Des Moines’ School Board elections. Remember, today your children, tomorrow the world so we’d better get involved if we have any hope of stopping the nightmarish P.C. nanny state that the radical educational establishment wants for us.