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I don't think we should joke about butt death tbh. Also the property tax thing was in Governing magazine last week. In Texas it's just another facet of how hosed up our property tax system is.
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Sep 12, 2016 23:15
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| # ? May 17, 2024 16:39 |
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Rick Perry's first episode of Dancing With the Stars is on atm.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:10
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http://www.houstonchronicle.com/denied/ This state is a magical place.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:20
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That lines up with my friend who is a SPED teacher at a lower income school in Lamar ISD saying he had a couple of new students a few years who were kicked out from Katy ISD, I told him that sounds like the parents not understanding since that wasn't legal. drat, I guess I was wrong
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Sep 13, 2016 01:45
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Holy poo poo, why are the districts fellating those standards?! WTF posted:A Dallas ISD spokeswoman defended that district's low percentage by noting it "falls within the Texas state acceptable range of 0%-8.5%."
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Sep 13, 2016 02:03
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:Holy poo poo, why are the districts fellating those standards?! Because the state is threatening to cost them a lot of money, make their lives miserable, or even take over (which usually involves firing a ton of high administration positions) if they don't: quote:Districts that scored poorly on the PBMAS could be fined, visited by regulators, compelled to complete "Corrective Action Plans" or taken over entirely, the system manual said.
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Sep 13, 2016 02:09
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Doesn't mean they can't professionally voice their disapproval while still following those rules. Like, "We are obligated to follow those standards as a district, though we don't agree with them" Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 02:23
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Sep 13, 2016 03:09
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If anyone is wondering, he was really stiff and got the worst scores of the night. (All 5s.) The highlight was the Corndog booth behind him being labeled "Rick's Corndogs."
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Sep 13, 2016 03:11
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The rumors are true! It's OK I'm allowed to say this. Spacebump posted:The highlight was the Corndog booth behind him being labeled "Rick's Corndogs." BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 03:20
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Sep 13, 2016 04:26
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Well, so much for him running against Ted Cruz for senate.
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Sep 13, 2016 04:30
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  Still … jeez.
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Sep 13, 2016 04:36
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Sent my mother that Houston Chronicle article, she is a 3rd grade teacher at a very lovely school.quote:Excellent article. I believe it. It takes forever to get a student tested. They don't get the help they need and the rest of the students suffer because they need too much teacher time. Our hands are tied. Then we hire idiot people like ------- and associates that say that sped kids need to be in the regular classroom and that we have too many sped teachers and aides. Morons.
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Sep 13, 2016 15:57
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go3 posted:Sent my mother that Houston Chronicle article, she is a 3rd grade teacher at a very lovely school. My mother is also an elementary schoolteacher, and she's been complaining for years that her school has been aggressively trying to put higher functioning down's syndrome kids into normal classrooms. Apparently every year the "high functioning" bar gets a little bit lower and it's getting harder and harder to deal with without any help from special ed aides. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 15:59
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Nthing the 'my momma said' about this. She has been complaining about the handling of special ed for the last 20+ years and they keep coming up with new ways to make it worse.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:22
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It's massively more expensive to educate a special ed kid, even with our current inadequate formula, so I don't see what the shock is here. The alternative to doing this is raising taxes to pay for better special education.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:32
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zoux posted:It's massively more expensive to educate a special ed kid, even with our current inadequate formula, so I don't see what the shock is here. The alternative to doing this is raising taxes to pay for better special education. Which is a thing we should do.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:46
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We won't
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Sep 13, 2016 17:55
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zoux posted:We won't We do. Texas is the one bucking the trend E: Granted, the South in general is bucking the trend, mostly because of moronic politicians who think that disorders are just the result of not being hit with a belt enough CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 18:14
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I just want to say that absentee voting in this state is pretty messed up. I'm going to be away at sea from 3 Oct to 11 December, and so need to vote by mail, but they'll only mail my absentee ballot to an address outside my county, even though I'm going to be in county at my residence until the day I leave. All they offered for solutions was a shady sounding workaround where they email me my ballot even though I've put my mailing address in county, and I dunno that just sounds like grounds to have some dick somewhere toss my ballot out on a technicality. What a terrible system. I'm going to have to have it mailed to my parents and have them turn around and mail it to me, and that's unnecessarily complicated.
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Sep 13, 2016 19:49
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zoux posted:It's massively more expensive to educate a special ed kid, even with our current inadequate formula, so I don't see what the shock is here. The alternative to doing this is raising taxes to pay for better special education. The epitome of penny wise and pound foolish. How many of these sped kids are from minority populations and will end up in the state's care because of this lack of education funding? Oh I know how to solve that problem - privatize prisons!
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Sep 13, 2016 21:14
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This current topic just hit home in a big way. I'm a high school teacher, and since I teach on-level classes I get a lot of mainstreamed Special Ed students. I'm supposed to modify their assignments and tests for their level, and differentiate instruction to their needs. Which is a challenge, as I'm a pretty new teacher whose degree isn't in education, so I've never really had training on how to do that effectively. But that's okay, I'm learning. What I just found out is that one of my ESL students has a serious learning disability, everyone knows it, but since she spent 18 months in a refugee camp with no schooling, SpEd gets to throw their hands up and claim it's not their problem. Must be the gap, must be the language issue. We won't even test her. This is a kid who speaks and understands English pretty well, but her written language skills are basically nonexistent even in her native language. She cannot process written words. She tries - she tries so hard - but she cannot parse written language. She knows what it's supposed to look like, but everything she puts on paper is literally gibberish even when she uses a translator. ESL knows this, and has tried for a year to get SpEd to test her. SpEd won't touch her case with a ten foot loving pole. Because they don't have to, because they can blame her ESL status, and the time she spent in a goddamn refugee loving camp as reasons why she can't learn. The Special Education department in this school needs a righteous correctional rear end-whooping to remember why they exist. Not to fulfill a legal requirement, but to educate the students to the best of their loving ability. This isn't the first time I've had issues - I get basically no support or training for how to modify my assignments and my classroom support for these kids is one coach with no training either - and not even in all the classes I have SpEd students. This turned into more of a rant on my specific situation than a contribution to the discussion, and I apologize for that, but goddammit learning about this student's situation made me angry today. They are leaving her twisting in the wind. There's not a snowball's chance in Hell she'll be able to pass the EOCs or get a diploma unless she gets some kind of support. But SpEd won't come near her case. Makes me want to start slapping my way up the food chain until I get somebody to agree to fix this poo poo, but I'm not senior enough to get away with that.
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Sep 13, 2016 23:57
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ReidRansom posted:I just want to say that absentee voting in this state is pretty messed up. I'm going to be away at sea from 3 Oct to 11 December, and so need to vote by mail, but they'll only mail my absentee ballot to an address outside my county, even though I'm going to be in county at my residence until the day I leave. All they offered for solutions was a shady sounding workaround where they email me my ballot even though I've put my mailing address in county, and I dunno that just sounds like grounds to have some dick somewhere toss my ballot out on a technicality. What a terrible system. I'm going to have to have it mailed to my parents and have them turn around and mail it to me, and that's unnecessarily complicated. Well of course it has to be difficult, if they made it easy to vote there might more  voter fraud.
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Sep 14, 2016 00:30
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Lemniscate Blue posted:This current topic just hit home in a big way. God bless you for the job you're doing. Hang in there.
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Sep 14, 2016 00:34
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I taught in a school that had a one-hour-per-day sped/regular classroom integration. It's essentially a lost hour. The school itself was an elementary school but the special ed department was open to anyone under 18, which created massive problems and dangerous situations.
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Sep 14, 2016 02:14
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Aliquid posted:The school itself was an elementary school but the special ed department was open to anyone under 18, which created massive problems and dangerous situations. Hey, this sounds like the worst idea anyone's ever had ever.
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Sep 14, 2016 04:26
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Lemniscate Blue posted:This turned into more of a rant on my specific situation than a contribution to the discussion, and I apologize for that, but goddammit learning about this student's situation made me angry today. They are leaving her twisting in the wind. There's not a snowball's chance in Hell she'll be able to pass the EOCs or get a diploma unless she gets some kind of support. But SpEd won't come near her case. Yeah, this kind of think sucks and is far too common. It sounds like your student would have been tested under TELPAS for at least a year. Assuming he/she has shown improvements (or was rated advanced/advanced high) in the areas other than reading/writing (so speaking and listening) in that time, you can and should absolutely make a case for SPED testing, SPED department be damned. If need be, get your local http://texasprojectfirst.org/ReferralProcess.html Assuming you can get the parents to consent, the school has to comply within 15 days or give a legal reason why they won't. If you support it with documentation of TELPAS improvements/high scores their hand will be forced. (FYI I'm a teacher not a lawyer though) The EOC thing is also a can of worms. They recently made it where they don't give students their required modifications (accommodations are still given, mostly, on the computer-based version though) for the state testing of SPED/504 students. While the students don't generally have to pass to graduate like other students, their scores do get averaged in with all other students with no qualifiers. Given the amount of pressure the state puts on districts for testing scores, you can imagine where that leads districts.
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Sep 17, 2016 05:23
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So I moved and in changing address I had to update my voter registration. In filling out the voter registration change of address it required me to state Dem/Rep/Indep/Other for the first time that I can ever remember. Is it just me or is this a new thing? I don't recall even having the option to register as with a party in the past, you only had to declare which primary you were voting in if you were voting in one.
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Sep 17, 2016 05:26
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Zwabu posted:So I moved and in changing address I had to update my voter registration. It got added to help with future gerrymandering and disenfranchisement planning meetings. Though I had to change mine in 2012 and don't remover something like that on the form. Don't see it on the online form either, may be a county form then that had that. https://tax-office.traviscountytx.gov/images/tax_assessor/pdfs/voters/VR_Application.pdf
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Sep 17, 2016 22:55
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Zwabu posted:So I moved and in changing address I had to update my voter registration. I just changed my voter registration address online and didn't have to do any of that. But then mine was just an in-county move and I did it online, so who knows.
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Sep 17, 2016 23:06
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I just changed mine by mail to a different county and it didn't ask anything about that. Didn't even know that was legal.
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Sep 17, 2016 23:08
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Yeah that all sounds mighty fishy. Voter registration is all state-level laws, there shouldn't be any variation in what they're asking or requiring county to county. It might not be a bad idea to contact some friendly organization that deals with election law just in case.
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Sep 17, 2016 23:26
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To add to teacherchat, my mother taught MI (multiply impaired, the severe SPED) for ~20 years in Houston and San Marcos, and even before she retired 3-4 years ago, they were trying to push IEPs and standardized "testing" on her classes, which were largely full of kids that couldn't even feed themselves, let alone do any sort of normal school activities. These aren't your high-functioning  and Downs, this was cerebral palsy and hardcore non-verbal autism and any number of major neurological and physical disabilities. She's raged against the state of special ed in schools for decades and yet continues to vote straight-ticket Republican all her days. 
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Sep 18, 2016 00:49
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TheKennedys posted:To add to teacherchat, my mother taught MI (multiply impaired, the severe SPED) for ~20 years in Houston and San Marcos, and even before she retired 3-4 years ago, they were trying to push IEPs and standardized "testing" on her classes, which were largely full of kids that couldn't even feed themselves, let alone do any sort of normal school activities. These aren't your high-functioning Haha, a teacher in Texas voting Republican. Shameful
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Sep 18, 2016 00:52
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PostNouveau posted:Haha, a teacher in Texas voting Republican. Shameful Actually I goofed, she voted for Ross Perot twice. Otherwise she's an old-school Reagan Republican, yet will push that big red DONALD TRUMP button this year because she's old and white. I've heard her talking about the Kennedy assassination in terms of "Oh, I'm surprised nobody's tried anything with that guy we've got in there now! He's just so out there." Verbatim. I love my mother, she was a fantastic teacher and has been a great mom and grandma but she's 70 and old people are the worst voters.
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Sep 18, 2016 00:57
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People in the Metroplex are hosed up. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-stadium-arms-race-snap-story.html quote:On Fridays the football faithful gather, setting up grills and tailgating for hours in a vast parking lot before packing into the stadium built with rose-colored brick. Also I can't believe Allen ISD didn't sell the naming rights to that stadium.
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Sep 19, 2016 00:53
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i can't wait to vote against this prick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUfXujs8Abs
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Sep 19, 2016 04:49
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Aliquid posted:Texas Politics: i can't wait to vote against this prick
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Sep 19, 2016 05:32
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| # ? May 17, 2024 16:39 |
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MariusLecter posted:
loving cosigned.
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Sep 20, 2016 04:52
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