The Daily Top Five: March 12, 2007

1. Betsy Newmark tells the story of the lottery for admission to the charter high school where she teaches.

[A]s the Raleigh News and Observer writes about the lottery today, it is clear that there is a great demand for alternatives to the regular public schools.

Forget Powerball. The region's real education lottery was held Saturday morning at Raleigh Charter High School. With 705 applications and only 79 open spots, the annual drawing to see who is admitted to the acclaimed public academy has become an annual spectacle.

Hundreds of rising ninth-graders and their parents packed into a windowless, dimly lit room in the former textile mill that serves as the school's campus. More waited outside in the parking lot, all hoping to hear their names called.

With so much at stake, families huddled together. Some cracked wry jokes in an attempt at levity. Others were visible balls of worry, with parents wringing hands and at least one young girl vigorously devouring her fingernails.

Jonathan Olaya, a West Cary Middle School student, said he woke up Saturday morning and prayed for admission.

"There are a lot of opportunities here for me," said Olaya, who was with his mother and little brother. "It will open so many doors."

With the highest average SAT scores of any public high school in North Carolina, many parents see getting their child into Raleigh Charter as the educational equivalent of unwrapping the Willy Wonka bar with the winning golden ticket.

Link in original

Betsy notes that one of the problems with North Carlina in particular is that the State Legislature has limited the number of charter schools statewide to 100. Many other states have a similar cap, or even lower. Maryland's for instance is limited to 24 statewide, at all levels. The reason for the charter caps is fairly obvious, traditional public school advocates, including the teachers unions are ardently opposed to charter schools (many of which operate outside teacher collective bargaining agreements) as taking resources away from public schools.

2. Captain Ed writes:

Or, as I said earlier, how can we trust these men and women to defend the United States and stand up to Iran, North Korea, and Osama bin Laden when they run screeching from Roger Ailes and Fox's viewers?

Memo to Democrats: When Dennis Kucinich has to scold you for lacking courage, you need a serious search-and-rescue for your party's stones.

A fair question in response to the Democrats withdrawal from the Nevada debate to be aired on the highest rated cable news network. Shame on those Nevada Democrats for wanting some coverage.

3. The LA Times of all papers is chastising Congressional Democrats for their strategy to end the war.

AFTER WEEKS OF internal strife, House Democrats have brought forth their proposal for forcing President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2008. The plan is an unruly mess: bad public policy, bad precedent and bad politics. If the legislation passes, Bush says he'll veto it, as well he should.

It was one thing for the House to pass a nonbinding vote of disapproval. It's quite another for it to set out a detailed timetable with specific benchmarks and conditions for the continuation of the conflict. Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower had been forced to adhere to a congressional war plan in scheduling the Normandy landings or if, in 1863, President Lincoln had been forced by Congress to conclude the Civil War the following year. This is the worst kind of congressional meddling in military strategy.

This is not to say that Congress has no constitutional leverage — only that it should exercise it responsibly. In a sense, both Bush and the more ardent opponents of the war are right. If a majority in Congress truly believes that the war is not in the national interest, then lawmakers should have the courage of their convictions and vote to stop funding U.S. involvement. They could cut the final checks in six months or so to give Bush time to manage the withdrawal. Or lawmakers could, as some Senate Democrats are proposing, revoke the authority that Congress gave Bush in 2002 to use force against Iraq.

But the Democrats still harbor the illusion that the November elections were about them and their plan to pull out of Iraq. I believe, with time and distance every day, that the November elections were really about the GOP instead.

4. Speaking of the war in Iraq, Ted Koppel made some really bold statements about Iraq as part of a larger, 24 year long war on terror, only we didn't realize it then. He draws a strong correlation to the Cold War. See more over at Newsbusters. I think Koppel may be the highest profile newsman to make the connection so explicitly.

5. Outside the Beltway's James Joyner is commenting on a recent Army report that nearly 75% of America's teenagers are unfit for Army service, that is they are "morally, intellectually or physically" unfit for service. Joyner notes another problem:

College, [Gen. William S. Wallace] said, is now the preferred post-high school activity and youths surveyed said they perceived the Army as "ordinary." According to Wallace, those surveyed considered the Marine Corps "elite but dangerous." They considered the Navy "somewhat elite but safer" and the Air Force was considered "elite and highly technical."

That’s probably not an unreasonable perception, really, depending on how one defines "elite." Clearly, the Air Force and Navy are more technically oriented than the Army and the Marines are generally more physically demanding. The Army is by far the biggest service and almost certainly the one with the most variety of missions and standards.

Given that we have an all-volunteer force and are in the middle of a long war, recruiting is naturally difficult. One would think that if one’s goal were front-line combat, the Marines would be the most appealing and that if one wanted the benefits of military service while minimizing the risk of bodily harm, the Navy and Air Force are the logical choices. The Army, then, is in something of a no-man’s land.

I tend to think that the massive effort of nearly everyone to make college the choice of high schoolers, we are letting otherwise qualified people forgoe military service as a means to an educational end when we don't need to. I, for example, benefited greatly from a term of service prior to going to college. The result was a great deal more maturity about my college education and the ability to take 8:00am and 9:00am classes with no ill effects. Oh, yeah, I could buy beer without breaking the law.