Why Win On Education When You Can Lose On Sotomayer?

Got this from Ace of Spades via Hot Air: the LA Times has just profiled one of the most successful schools in California, a charter school in Oakland with a student body composed primarily of Asians, Latinos, and African-Americans. Why am I so excited about this? Well, the article is actually titled Spitting in the eye of mainstream education and here’s a couple juicy quotes:

• “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism . . .”
• “School administrators . . . frequently [fire] teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded . . . panhandlers . . . ” and my favorite
• “He began by . . . shucking the Native American cultural content . . . . ‘You think the Jews and the Chinese are dumb enough to ask the public school to teach them their culture?’”

It’s well worth a read at either site but it comes back to why I think education is a winning issue for conservatives on several levels.

• It is an issue where conservatives and minorities can be on the same side: in the long run this could be huge
• Kids who get used to achieving based on hard work start to expect other people to do the same. That’s another plus for conservatives and conservative thinking in the US.
• Let’s say it straight out: the teachers unions are mortal enemies of conservatives and are killing education in this country. Anything that pokes them in the eye is a good thing.

Previous posts on this:

• San Francisco Values talks about the open hostility San Francisco schools have for business
• Why We Should Be Talking About Education reviews the wasted opportunity of taking on Obama over DC vouchers, lost while sniping about the details of Obama’s foreign travels
• Home School Vs. State Rule describing when a California court came right out and said that indoctrination was a purpose of the schools and
• Speaking Of The State’s Political Theory De Jour about how California Teachers are more interesting in indoctrinating children with the teachers’ political beliefs than in teaching them anything