'Underfunded' Baltimore schools among best funded in nation

As unrest in Baltimore continues, journalists and liberal activists think they have identified the culprit – underfunded schools.

The only problem is that public schools in Baltimore are among the best funded in the entire country. And author and expert Alex Newman charges the demands for more money are nothing more than lies designed to prop up a failing system.

In an exclusive interview with WND, the co-author of "Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children," observed, "One of the great lies promoted by the education establishment is that more taxpayer funds are needed to properly educate students.

"Baltimore offers a perfect example of how easy it is to discredit this fraud. In recent years, government schools in Baltimore have been at the top of the list in terms of spending per pupil – literally in the top three among the nation's largest school districts. Yet, Baltimore schools are also some of the worst performing in the nation, consistently ranking in the bottom third. The situation in Detroit is similar, spending thousands more per pupil than the national average yet achieving results that can only be described as a disaster of monumental proportions. This alone is proof that more money is not going to solve the very real crisis in education."

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If anything, Newman may be understating the disparity between spending and results in the Charm City. In 2011, the Baltimore school system spent the most per pupil of any school system in the country except New York City. Grants from the federal government were an important factor in paying for the $15,483 spent per pupil, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Find out what American schools really are like now, in "Crimes of the Educators."

Baltimore does not seem to be getting much of a return on its investment. According to statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education, the average score of eighth-grade students in Baltimore City is lower than the average score for public school students in large cities. Nor is this an exception. As the report shows, this performance is statistically similar to Baltimore students' performance in 2011 and 2009.

Along with his co-author and fellow educator Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld, Newman calls current policy a waste of money.

"Homeschooling parents can teach kids to read with virtually no money, yet these government schools waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce high-school graduates who can't read their own diplomas. This is insanity and criminality on a massive scale. The real solution to this crisis begins by recognizing what Dr. Blumenfeld and I document in 'Crimes of the Educators.' The education establishment is using government schools not to educate children, but to dumb them down and indoctrinate them.

"Until America realizes that this is deliberate and not some sort of huge national accident that can be solved by squandering more money on government schools and the progressive education establishment, the educational crisis will continue to grow, and we will see many more Baltimores in the years ahead."

It's a message unlikely to be heard in the mainstream media. During a recent interview with former Clinton official and ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos, Jon Stewart argued, "If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan's schools, we can't, you know, put a little taste Baltimore's way. It's crazy." And as the wild applause the comment garnered shows, this opinion is taken for granted in the mainstream media.

• Professor Rashawn Ray, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who has been widely quoted by several news sources in the wake of the riots, writes, "I see under-funded schools with infrastructure issues and not enough resources for students to thrive, let alone feel they should value education."
• The Boston Herald, in an article recommending commentators watch the HBO series The Wire to inform themselves on the situation in Baltimore, says Baltimore suffers from "under-funded and ill-equipped schools, failing students who fall through the cracks."
• A column in the DC political newspaper The Hill charges one of the reasons for the violence in Baltimore is the "lacking" quality of education and "severely underfunded" schools.

And as a report from Al Jazeera shows, this is also the go-to rationale for foreign media, as the Qatari news network charged Baltimore students "attend schools in underfunded and decaying facilities."

Newman agrees that government schools are partially responsible for the crisis in Baltimore, but not in the way the mainstream media thinks.

"The education establishment has deliberately produced a generation of young Americans who cannot read or do basic math properly, much less find a decent job or run a business. Then when we examine the values being foisted on children in these institutions – everything from the notion that America and liberty are evil to the idea that there is no right and wrong, no objective morality, no God, and no value to human life – suddenly it all becomes clear.

"The promotion of socialism, progressive lunacy, and the rejection of private property, Jude-Christian values, and America's founding principles of liberty – these are all key tenets of the secular-humanist faith and socialist ideology being preached in government schools. It is precisely these values that we are seeing on display in Baltimore and other crumbling cities across America. Unless and until America deals with the miseducation regime dumbing down and indoctrinating students, we will continue to see more and more unrest, violence, and societal collapse."

Some progressives are also charging the root cause of the Baltimore riots is "white privilege." Tony Brown, an associate chair of sociology at Vanderbilt, believes the riots in Baltimore constitute evidence of "racism." In an article in The Tennessean, he called for readers to videotape whites to shame them for politically incorrect conduct.

But Newman says government schools are the real perpetrators of oppression against African-Americans.

"As we show in 'Crimes of the Educators,' while all government-schooled students in America are being victimized by this lunacy, black Americans have been especially betrayed. In the early 1900s, blacks were on the way up, and illiteracy in the black community was on its way to being totally eradicated. Then John Dewey and his progressive cohorts seized the reins, and it was all downhill from there.

"Today it is estimated that a full 50 percent of blacks are functionally illiterate, whereas in 1920 it was less than one fourth. There are numerous causes for this, but the schools are where it really all begins. Progressives and the educational establishment, of course, teamed up with the eugenics movement led by luminaries such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and Edward Thorndike at Columbia's Teachers College. These eugenicists outrageously considered blacks to be 'inferior,' and so, decided that the black community did not need a real education. They taught teachers that blacks had fewer abilities and less intelligence than whites.

"This of course is nonsense, but was touted as scientific fact by the eugenics quacks of the early- to mid-1900s who played such a massive role in shaping government education. Today, in public schools across America, students are having their reading abilities permanently impaired through the use of the whole-word, or look-say, or sight method of learning how to read instead of the phonics system used successfully since time immemorial. This quackery produces so many other problems that it would be hard to exaggerate the damage being wrought on America and the black community."

And when asked for the solution, Newman says drastic actions are necessary.

"All parents, black or white, should do all they can to get their children out of these schools. Homeschooling and certain private or Christian schools are an excellent option for many. For those parents who cannot get their kids out of the government system, an understanding of the problem will go a long way toward counteracting the damage being inflicted on children. Once enough Americans understand what has happened, the hard work of reforming the schools and undoing the damage can begin."