A school, is just like a family, needs money to operate and survive. When government consistently spends more on wars than on its school systems, school systems have to fight to stay afloat, just like a family in financial crisis. When a school is in so much financial debt that it has to turn to cheap tricks like that to get money just to educate its students, someone has to think twice about what’s going on up in the chain of commands.

Education is among the most fundamental needs of a society, without it, nothing will flourish (where will they find the skilled people with the knowledge to make all those advanced weapons to wage wars on foreign countries?! There are certain things Bush just can’t outsource to India). It’s disturbing to see the U.S. Senate and Congress passing emergency budgets to pour billions and billions of dollar supporting other countries (who don’t even want America to be there) within weeks, but when it came to increasing budget for education and social programs for its very own people, the two law-making bodies scrutinized on every single detail and still threaten to cut budgets out of certain programs. Is the quality of life of American citizens worth less than its foreign policies on the Middle East?

It’s also unfair that the government keeps adding unrealistic expecataions and ever-increasing burdens on the public school systems when the school systems don’t get the appropriate funding to keep those programs going. And guess what happens? They find ways to “get” students like you to get money to stabalize its finances and cut programs like music and arts. “No Child Left Behind” is a joke among school teachers and administrators. While its goals are noble, the Bush Administration (once again) falls short on providing adaquate funding to support its objectives. While most other countries are teaching advanced reading and math at lower grades (subject to another debate), the U.S. administration passed a law to get basic reading, writing and arithematics without giving it logistical support. How will U.S. ever sustain its growth and leadership in the world like this? Rely on highly educated people to immigrate from overseas? Com’on.

Checks and balances? They are there for sure. The checks get written & cashed and the bank account balances go up. Yay capitalism.