[Bubba]

On a similar subject....did anybody see 20/20 last night on ABC? It was called Stupid in America. It compared the public schools in America to the schools in Belgium. They put a school in the US against a school in Belgium and each took some kind of international test. Both classes said the test was pretty easy and they thought they did good. The Belgium class scored an average of 76% and the American school scred an average of 46%. Most of the kids in the American class couldn't tell what the Bill of Rights were or what was the cause of the civil war.

It seemed to me that most of the Belgium kids spoke English, as a second language, better than the American kids spoke English.

The show then went on to show how the schools that keep saying that they need more money per shild to teach them did poorly against some private schools that taught kids with much less money per child.

They also said how in Belgium the money that is tied to each student, goes with the student and not with a school district. The child/family chooses where to go to school and the money goes with the child to that school. If a school consistently has poor student grades on testing, the school fails and is closed down and the children go to a school that has a better record of teaching kids.

I thought it was a good concept, if you can't teach kids, close them down and send kids somewhere else. It also showed how more money doesn't show how well a child is taught. Dodge City should learn this.