TEACHING THE THREE R'S...UM, MAKE THAT THE TWO R'S.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan scientifically explains how much $100 billion amounts to. Either that or he's showing off the size of his willy.

I'm sure we all remember the old gag that kids went to school to learn the "Three R's"; Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmitic. Well nowadays, in the age of multi-trillion dollar budgets and a Federal Department of Education and endless "reforms", it seems that budget cuts are so severe that Chicago schools have to drop one of the R's; 'Riting.

Illinois will assess only reading and arithmetic now that high school juniors will no longer be tested on their writing skills during standardized exams every spring, according to a published report.

"We're trying to minimize the damage" of the cuts, Schools Superintendent Christopher Koch told the Chicago Tribune for a story published Wednesday. "Writing is one of the most expensive things to assess."

Lack of funds has long been a source of angst amongst Chicago schools. If only there were more far-left politically-connected socialists in the system to fix things up. We do have a great many education experts in Washington these days, all of them just coincidentally from the Chicago political machine, so perhaps they can fix the problem by finding larger shovels to throw even more money at it.

The unneeded renovation of Chicago's Vladimir Lenin Middle School could have cost the jobs of up to three public school administrators.

Take Secretary of Education Arne "the male Sandy"Duncan. As the CEO of Chicago's Public School system, Arne accomplished a great many feats, such as, according to Wikipedia, "building consensus" as well as stumping for all-gay high schools and finding time to get involved in gun control. Arne also heroically attempted to overcome budget shortfalls, with a mere $11,300 spent per school student, by cutting the system down to the bare bones, increasing the number of "administrators" making over $100,000 a year by a mere 140% during his tenure.

Another big wheel in the Chicago School System was none other than Bill "the Bomber" Ayers, a casual stranger in the neighborhood barely known by Barack Obama, a peripheral figure who babysat his kids and ghost wrote his autobiographies and held parties in his home, but whom Barry hardly knew. Anyway, complete stranger Bill Ayers, along with Arne the anti-Swartzenegger and Barack Obama, formed something called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Abbreviated CAC, it is pronounced like a cat coughing up a hairball.

Bill Ayers, photo circa 1970. "Writing is not important, as long as they can read the books I wrote, The Audacity of Hope (but I repeat myself) and The Anarchist's Cookbook."

CAC's Five-Year Plan, with a $50 million grant and tens of millions of dollars in matching funds, improved Chicago's public education not with silly old-fashioned ideas such as putting money into actual schools or students, but by basically throwing money at left-wing kook "external partners" and "community organizers" Arne, Bill and Barry liked (or felt they could gain something from later), to include ACORN and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. According to "Professor" Ayers, the purpose of teachers isn't to do anything so silly as to teach, but to act as community organizers to, "...provoke resistance to American racism and oppression". Alas, CAC failed in its mission to improve Chicago schools, no doubt due to insufficient funding.

This was back when Barack was "working" as a "lawyer" for the firm of, I believe, Boye, Dewey, Cheatum & Howe, his only brief foray into the private sector, which he likened to, "being behind enemy lines." What with Barry's lowly income of a piddling $165 per hour as a lowly associate, and the high price of cigarettes in Chicago coupled with a lack of illegal alien groundskeepers for their $1.5 million home, Michelle Obama overcame her slave blood and went to work as well, acting as assistant vice-figurehead at the University of Chicago and saving money desperately needed for public education by accepting a miserly quarter million dollar a year salary.

Take hope, my fellow Americans. With the whole incestuous array of political cronies having migrated from Chicago to Washington D.C. we will no doubt see marked improvements in the performance of our public school students, except maybe for that pesky writing thing.

As a first step, Barack Obama has heroically shoveled out an extra $100 billion in "stimulus" money to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan since the Department of Education has been just barely scraping by on a paltry annual budget of a mere $71 billion taxpayer dollars.

Yet even that might not be enough. A radical new idea, probably from Ayers, is to substitute a new test on "texting" instead of writing. A sample of this new test, with answers in parenthesis, appears below.

S^ GANGSTA (What is up, Gangster?)

N2MJCHBU (Not too much. How about you?)

GD&R (Grinning, Ducking And Running.)

LMAO MOFO (Laughing my ass off, motherf****r.)

LM4a~##zzzx> (Let’s meet for a joint.)

NFG GTKOLS4$ (No f***ing good. Got to knock over liquor store for money.)

SLAW (Sounds like a winner.)

L8R sk8r GTG (Later, skater. Got to go.)

IOH2 (I am out of here too.)

So you can see American taxpayers, students and parents, with such reforms in the works you are USCWAP (Up Shit Creek Without a Paddle.)