Public Sector Reform

Ethical Solution to Mortgage Crisis: De-Bundle Loans and Identify Known Risks

I have just sent this appeal to my representatives in Washington. Feel free to copy and paste and send to your representatives.

Dear Representative,

Please do NOT support the $700 Billion Bailout Plan until the Banks and the Lending institutions identify the Toxic Loans and DE-BUNDLE them.

It would take very little effort on their part to identify each loan based on a computer search of their existing loans:
1. Full Default = no payments in 3+ months (Toxic)
2. Partial Default = no payments in 1-3 months (Potential Toxic)
3. Good Standing = on-time payments

[Read more…]

Fixing Washington D.C.’s School System

Fast Company | by Jeff Chu | September 2008

No one is attacking Washington, D.C.’s stagnant culture more boldly than Michelle Rhee, head of the city’s failing schools. Is there a lesson here for our nation’s leaders?

Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School in Washington, D.C., is one of the worst schools in one of the worst school districts in America. “The mentality of excellence? We wish we could have that,” said principal Harriett Kargbo, as we toured the school one morning in May. “But this,” she said, pointing at the metal detector guarding the entrance, “is the reality. [Read more…]

Private Company Does in 3 Days What Government School Could Not Do in 12 Years

Sylvan Learning Center private company success by John Stossel –
With public schools spending more than $100,000 per student on K-12 education, you’d think they could teach students how to read and write.

South Carolina is one of many states to have trouble with this. It spends $9,000 per student per year, and its state school superintendent told me South Carolina has been “ranked as having some of the highest standards of learning in the entire country.” So let’s ask the infamous question, “Is our children learning?”

Dorian Cain told me he wants to learn to read. He’s 18 years old and in 12th grade, but when I asked him to read from a first-grade level book, he struggled with it.

“Did they try to teach you to read?” I asked him.

“From time to time.”[Read more…]