Sieg heil! mein teacher!

Oh, key-rist, as if this country is militaried-up enough already, now idiot Des Moines Independent School District Superintendent Nancy Sebring proposes setting up a "charter school" along military lines, reports this AM's Sunday Des Moines Register

Des Moines school officials want to open a charter school for boys that draws from traditional military principles, such as leadership and self-discipline.

A formal proposal and price tag are months away, but Superintendent Nancy Sebring said it could include a separate facility for an estimated 50 middle school boys. Fall 2010 is the target opening date, she said.

The military theme is more about resilience and physical well-being than rigid reform, Sebring said.

I have no problem with public schools requiring kids to wear uniforms. Nor do I object to public schools experimenting with single-sex class rooms whereby teaching is geared to the needs and intellectual developmental levels of the two sexes. But a military charter school? Aren't the Boy Scouts and ROTC enough?

According to The Register news story Sebring thinks, a military-themed charter school will somehow, perhaps magically, lower the Des Moines School District's dropout rate. Huh?!

Why doesn't the dumb bitch just ask the kids at Des Moines' high schools why they might drop out? Why doesn't she order some sort of outreach and survey program toward kids who've already dropped out and ask them why they quit school? I'll bet you the reasons why kids drop out have little to do with lack of self-esteem or self-discipline. I'd hazard a guess that most kids drop out for economic reasons, like helping mom pay the rent. And I'll bet there are even some kids who drop out because they're aren't intellectually challenged by the school curriculum.

But this brilliant school administrator's idea is to take the district's hardest cores, put them in one school, give them bootcamp-style training and expect them to come out model citizens. If anything the little bastards will graduate from Sebring's charter bootcamp as better gang leaders or cops (also a criminal gang.)

No word on opinions of Sebring's proposed charter bootcamp from the Des Moines School Board's resident nutcase Jonathan Narcisse.

Update!

Stale news story from Thursday's Washington Post

ATLANTA -- The U.S. Marine Corps is wooing public school districts across the country, expanding a network of military academies that has grown steadily despite criticism that it's a recruiting ploy.

The Marines are talking with at least six districts _ including in suburban Atlanta, New Orleans and Las Vegas _ about opening schools where every student wears a uniform, participates in Junior ROTC and takes military classes, said Bill McHenry, who runs the Junior ROTC program for the Marines.

None of the Chicago military schools made "adequate yearly progress" last year, meaning they fell short of basic standards under the federal No Child Left Behind law.