This one from Victor Davis Hanson:
Our schools rate just below Mississippi in math and science. Tell me why, given our high taxes and highest paid teachers in the nation? Can the governor or legislature explain? Is the culprit the notoriously therapeutic California curriculum? The inability to fire incompetent teachers? The vast number of non-English speaking students? Derelict parents? How odd that not a single state official can offer any explanation other than “We need more money.” What is the possible cure for the near worst math and science students in the nation? Yes, I see it now: the California Senate just passed a bill mandating the teaching of homosexual, lesbian, bi-, and transgendered history, just the sort of strategy to raise those English composition and vocabulary scores among the linguistic and arithmetic illiterate.
He has much more to say on a much broader subject, but that paragraph is QotD.
UPDATE: I am reminded that this is another good place to reference California state Senator Tom McClintock’s 2005 piece, A Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools. Nothing’s changed, except state Senator McClintock is now U.S. Representative McClintock.