The Sunday Times.

TFW you’re listening to Sean Spicer pic.twitter.com/pSKuxDA6kv

— VICE News (@vicenews) June 3, 2017

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The school funding mess in Illinois is a result of bi-partisan mendacity, which is another way of saying elected officials lie whenever they talk about education funding.

While they talk about freezing property taxes, they say nothing about adequately funding the state’s public schools. Relying on property taxes to finance education means the poorest communities in Illinois have less money to spend on their schools and suffer under the highest property tax rates.

It’s a system rigged to benefit wealthy homeowners and wealthy communities, while punishing the working class and small businessman. And it allows elected leaders to escape their constitutional obligation while spending your tax money on other things.

People whine that Illinois has no budget, but this state has shirked its responsibility for decades and few cared because only disadvantaged children suffered. The property tax system is corrupt. Phil Kadner

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Two years waiting for a harp.

He pays out of his pocket the cost to rent the two harps his students use.

“The kids love it,” Turner said. “It just pulls them in, it pulls them in. And I really hate to have to tell a student we don’t have an instrument that they can learn on if they’re really interested.”

Beginner harps start around $700 and small folk harps go for about $2,500 each, while the two pedal harps that his two long-time students need run between $10,000-15,000 each — used — he said. DNAinfo

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The truth can be used to tell a lie.

The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.

The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education. Leslie T. Fenwick

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Wish ultra-lefties would stop telling me how things I consider important are just “distractions”.

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) June 3, 2017

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