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Crabtree posted:Well there always seems a soros or actors or some other rival rich among those currently in power. If courts and smears don't work, they could just go after their children too to "cut off liberal indoctrination at its root". I hope our Illuminati masters pick Ellison over Perez although I guess Perez will be a decent vessel for their implacable secret agenda
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Feb 20, 2017 10:44
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Crabtree posted:If they're seriously going to force private schools to be christian than that's only going to make the rich stupid. Not to mention flood the market with a bunch of kids with a completely useless skill of selective bible passage recitation - if that information even retains outside of a more useless mandate to see it on SATs. I mean, what, are they going to expect preacher to be a paying job? I'll have you know that my encyclopedic bible knowledge has come in handy for internet arguments! As for private schools being just for the rich, that's just the high quality ones. There are plenty of private religious schools in the USA that are quite cheap because they are subsidized by churches with the aim of winning souls via a lot of religious propaganda in the lessons.
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Feb 20, 2017 14:44
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Lightning Knight posted:The poor will get stupider than the rich and the rich will enjoy obedient, unquestioning children. Not exactly... the conservative playbook for schools is to apply the same sort of business thinking that the Chicago School of Economics suggests (free trade solves everything and get government regulation out of it). The voucher and school choice fight is the exact same thing. Supposedly the thought is that by being able to choose schools, parents and students can force 'bad' schools to change or lose so many students that they can't operate anymore while 'good' schools will gain enrollment. To business people this seems to make sense on the surface...except there are several factors they aren't taking into consideration: 1. Kids aren't widgets - businesses get to choose their product and when something is defective or poor quality, they send it back. Schools can't operate that way. The only ones that do are private schools. I worked at a private school once and they very clearly stated that if a student on an IEP wanted to come to the school, there were no services for them so they joined knowing they were on their own there. That will end up happening more and more if private schools start getting voucher money...either non-IEP students will drain out of the public system creating an over representation in the remaining public schools or IEP students will not be getting any services in the private schools. It will harm the students who need the help the most while benefitting very few because even the private schools are not going to be able to absorb the numbers of public students. 2. How do you qualify 'good' vs 'bad'? Test scores? Sports programs? 'Nice and easy' teachers? I'm sorry, but schools aren't fast food...you don't just go up to the counter and place your order. Schools are institutions that are being treated as if the customer is always right and it's really making the job of education much more difficult. Helicopter parents, apathetic parents, parents who will game the system, and so on...it's become more about what you can get out of the system as opposed to actually following the program because sometimes adversity and not getting your way all the time is actually a lesson unto itself. What this means for schools is a slippery slope of competition to maintain enrollment where actual hard academics will be in schools only where they don't have to worry about enrollment ever and all the other schools will be fighting over just maintaining. To do that funds will have to be diverted to more 'fun' things just to keep kids there. It's something I deal with all the time working at a small charter...we're the closest 7-12 school for 30 miles, yet there are a lot of students who travel farther to the larger schools because of sports, even though paradoxically if we had enough students we would be able to offer sports as well. 3. Well what about charters? Right now I work for a charter...but I've worked for public and private schools. Overall I'm 50/50 on charters because I think there are some that are out there for the right reasons, but many of them aren't. The whole concept of charters in kind of pointless if the various states had allowed more lab and magnet schools to be created. The tradeoff is for less regulation, there is supposed to be increased performance...but data shows it's a mixed bag. Overall charters do no better than regular public schools (yeah, there are some cherry picked examples, but we're talking aggregate here). So really it just creates a fake competition among schools that didn't need to be there in the first place and distracts from the real issues like poverty (notice I keep bringing it back to poverty). The business model doesn't care about any of that. It's all about trying to 'prove' their way is right and to show those evil teacher's unions that they shouldn't have a say in this because they are just public employees (yet forgetting that states with strong teachers unions are generally doing better than those without...). It's a political dick waving contest sadly, with kids being used as the poker chips.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:03
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Oxphocker posted:Not exactly... the conservative playbook for schools is to apply the same sort of business thinking that the Chicago School of Economics suggests (free trade solves everything and get government regulation out of it). The voucher and school choice fight is the exact same thing. Supposedly the thought is that by being able to choose schools, parents and students can force 'bad' schools to change or lose so many students that they can't operate anymore while 'good' schools will gain enrollment. To business people this seems to make sense on the surface...except there are several factors they aren't taking into consideration: This gets at a lot of the reasons the "increase competition" approach doesn't really accomplish any of the goals it's supposed to. I'm in Michigan, where the DeVos family has driven us to go all in on this approach and it's been an unmitigated disaster. The competition takes many forms but it's almost never anything that has a positive effect on student learning. Some districts go all in on building shiny new facilities to attract students, others pour money into their sports programs and allow coaches to actively recruit. Most of the districts in Michigan are too small and don't have the resources to hire marketing consultants, but it's the logical next step and you could probably justify it economically with how much funding comes with each new student. And the "customer is always right" approach, as you mention, is extremely toxic and seeps into every aspect of a school. As my former principal liked to say, "enrollment is everyone's job," and the main way we lost kids was when they failed classes, so let's make it virtually impossible to fail - sound educational philosophy right there! My take on charters is that they're a brilliant political strategy because it lends itself to so many easy arguments that tug on the heart strings, but they're a horrible strategy if the goal is to improve the overall education system. The studies say they have a negligible effect on student performance, but the resources they drain from school districts has a huge impact that makes it virtually impossible to run a decent school once you start hemorrhaging students. You sound like an ideologue if you have a problem with charters because then you're taking away options from poor kids, and there will always be at least some charters doing legitimately innovative things. Plus it's easy to get the local news to do a 3 minute segment on a school doing something different that makes it sound like some panacea. The decreased regulations might make it marginally easier for those schools to get off the ground, but it also makes it way too easy for charlatans, quacks, and people with good intentions who just aren't qualified to run a school. But IMO the good ones that are providing some value could be just as successful under stricter oversight. I mean, if the only way they can provide a better education for the money compared to public schools is if they don't have to play by the same rules, then how is that an accomplishment? If charter advocates thought they were a real solution to systemic problems, like how they're often portrayed, they wouldn't feel compelled to gut regulations every chance they get.
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Feb 20, 2017 17:56
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Oxphocker posted:
This seems to be the major problem though, because the current system is treating kids like a uniform commodity where there is a single clear desired end.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:49
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Shbobdb posted:This seems to be the major problem though, because the current system is treating kids like a uniform commodity where there is a single clear desired end. I would say that's a symptom of the standardized testing movement. When you start attaching high stakes to educational outcomes in reading, math, and science...policy wise it is going to shift resources away from all the other areas to those that are tested only. As a social studies teacher, I've seen it happen to ss being relegated to a second rate core subject that is often supporting reading instead of the focus being on critical thinking skills, primary document analysis, and civic education. The electives and other areas get hit even harder because when the budget runs short, they are the first ones on the chopping block usually because core tested areas have to come first. Then the schedule gets changed around and intervention classes are put in place to catch up the students falling behind. Even back in the 1990s, you would have seen a lot more flexibility to class choices when high stakes wasn't attached.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:30
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Even still, the "go to college of bust" movement was big in the '90s. Clinton was big on pushing college as the raison d'ętre for high school (and HS was the goal for middle school).
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Feb 20, 2017 20:49
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See, the problem that crops up when we say "not everyone should go to college" is that all the rich, privileged families still can and would send their kids to college. College remains one of the few ways that people can be upwardly mobile. Considering the issues we face in America today, "less people should have education" seems like a really poor position.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:57
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I mean, we already have a broken system where the rich get a great world-class education and the poor get a sub-third world education. Saying the best way to fix social mobility is to saddle the poor with an unpayable debt seems perverse in the extreme.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:04
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Yeah, so let's incorporate tertiary education into our public education system a la Finland. Telling poor people "our system is really hosed up, so don't even bother trying to have a better life" is also pretty perverse.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:06
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We should also incorporate a comprehensive voucher system like Finland. Let's fix primary and secondary education before we worry about tertiary education.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:53
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Shbobdb posted:We should also incorporate a comprehensive voucher system like Finland. Can you source that info on voucher systems in Finland? I have never heard anything like that in regards to Finland's education system. Why can't we fix more than one thing at a time? That seems like an argument designed to keep poor people poor.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:02
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Finland has no private education at all. It is illegal.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:23
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You are right. I was totally thinking of Sweden.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:40
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If you read Ruby's Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty...it's an interesting look at how school is approached differently by low income, middle income, and high income. High income, college is mostly about maintaining social networks and traditions (ala Yale, Harvard, etc) so that the connections are there for post school employment...like heading up someone's business or getting a high managerial position with little/no experience. Also access to the shadow job market, positions that never get posted because they are filled by contacts before open posting. Middle income, college is mostly about improving place in society. This is the stereotypical American Dream reasoning behind colleges being a step up to a professional job. Networks are based on more traditional means like job fairs and local contacts. Low income, college is a mostly unattainable idea mostly because of the barrier of cost. Typically, more common would be a 2 year or tech program. They are lacking the soft skills and networks to access higher education or better jobs in the market.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:26
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Cease to Hope posted:I hope our Illuminati masters pick Ellison over Perez although I guess Perez will be a decent vessel for their implacable secret agenda Well eventually you're going to go after Ivy Leagues if too many liberals keep coming out of them! BarbarianElephant posted:I'll have you know that my encyclopedic bible knowledge has come in handy for internet arguments! Or the local Podunk Religious organization's big university - Like Jerry Falwell's own Liberty! For years the "education" it handed out was not only embarrassing even to other religious schools, the most it would accomplish would just allow you mobility in and around the city of Lynchburg. That's it, hope you like staying here forever! And when you take a look at the eye sore its become over the years, the hill its defaced with a giant LU, the other hill it put the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Center to understand the complexities of Jesus as you impress foreign tourists; the place is resembling more of a carnival than an education facility. And with Junior wedging himself into De Vo's rear end, I'm sure its only going to get more money to expand the most pointlessly flashy Christ Themed Roller-coaster park or whatever.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:45
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Oxphocker posted:If you read Ruby's Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty...it's an interesting look at how school is approached differently by low income, middle income, and high income. I second Ruby Payne's book- it's an extremely informative read, especially concerning the navigation of hidden rules amongst different economic classes.
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Feb 21, 2017 05:09
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Oxphocker posted:I would say that's a symptom of the standardized testing movement. When you start attaching high stakes to educational outcomes in reading, math, and science...policy wise it is going to shift resources away from all the other areas to those that are tested only. As a social studies teacher, I've seen it happen to ss being relegated to a second rate core subject that is often supporting reading instead of the focus being on critical thinking skills, primary document analysis, and civic education. The electives and other areas get hit even harder because when the budget runs short, they are the first ones on the chopping block usually because core tested areas have to come first. Then the schedule gets changed around and intervention classes are put in place to catch up the students falling behind. Even back in the 1990s, you would have seen a lot more flexibility to class choices when high stakes wasn't attached. Does anyone know why they even introduced standardized testing? It's so loving stupid and is just national dickmeasuring.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:38
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Huzanko posted:Does anyone know why they even introduced standardized testing? It's so loving stupid and is just national dickmeasuring. To provide the best bureaucrats for the Chinese emperor's government.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:57
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Huzanko posted:Does anyone know why they even introduced standardized testing? It's so loving stupid and is just national dickmeasuring. more competition among workers a company can always threaten workers to move to an area with cheaper labor, if they can say that this labor has the same standards as them
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Feb 21, 2017 11:28
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Huzanko posted:Does anyone know why they even introduced standardized testing? It's so loving stupid and is just national dickmeasuring. Originally standardized testing was supposed to be a diagnostic tool to help schools identify areas where students were struggling or if curriculum wasn't lining up with state standards. Until NCLB however, high stakes accountability wasn't a factor in testing. Post NCLB, now testing could mean sanctions from the state otherwise the state could lose their federal funding. So this is where the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) part came into play. So instead of being a diagnostic, it was now the measuring stick that all schools are being held to. That's a vastly different purpose than what those tests were originally designed for. Standardized testing by itself isn't evil and can actually help some school identify where they are struggling...but politicians getting their hands on it has been terrible for education. Again, applying the same business style solutions to education like I was talking about previously.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:08
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As soon as a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be useful as a metric.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:37
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Oxphocker posted:Originally standardized testing was supposed to be a diagnostic tool to help schools identify areas where students were struggling or if curriculum wasn't lining up with state standards. Until NCLB however, high stakes accountability wasn't a factor in testing. Post NCLB, now testing could mean sanctions from the state otherwise the state could lose their federal funding. So this is where the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) part came into play. So instead of being a diagnostic, it was now the measuring stick that all schools are being held to. That's a vastly different purpose than what those tests were originally designed for. Standardized testing by itself isn't evil and can actually help some school identify where they are struggling...but politicians getting their hands on it has been terrible for education. Again, applying the same business style solutions to education like I was talking about previously. Ah, so just typical olds and corps whining about "muh taxes" spurned more "accountability." So, in other words, another stupid loving Republican idea. Cool, thanks. I'm not a teacher but I feel so bad for all of you who are. I hope you guys hold it together for the next [however long this loving orange monster is president].
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Feb 21, 2017 15:49
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Huzanko posted:Ah, so just typical olds and corps whining about "muh taxes" spurned more "accountability." So, in other words, another stupid loving Republican idea. Cool, thanks. Obama's education policy wasn't that different from Bush's, and might have been worse, so this might just be a bipartisan issue at this point.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:16
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BigFactory posted:Obama's education policy wasn't that different from Bush's, and might have been worse, so this might just be a bipartisan issue at this point. Obama wanted to cap PSLF at a number so low as to be useless (58k) so it's definitely arguable he was worse I'm still hoping for more details about ibr/paye/repaye/pslf but devos hasnt said anything afaik
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Feb 21, 2017 17:29
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https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/834420050748641281
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Feb 22, 2017 16:40
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Wow, I would not have thought the advocate for Transgender Student Rights would have been Betsy freaking DeVos of all people
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Feb 22, 2017 18:16
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But she caved so extra gently caress her. "Transgender students are important, but not as important as my job." gently caress that.
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Feb 22, 2017 20:10
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Hawkgirl posted:But she caved so extra gently caress her. "Transgender students are important, but not as important as my job." gently caress that. I guess when you pay +$200mil to buy a high government office, things like ethical behavior are moot...
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Feb 26, 2017 19:13
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So this happened: https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/836425805085429761 DeVos' big takeaway from Historically Black Colleges is that segregation justifies school vouchers.
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Feb 28, 2017 05:48
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The X-man cometh posted:
Well, I guess it makes sense if you somehow believe that Christians are the true oppressed minority in the US, so at least it's internally consistent. Strange that HBCUs managed to do it without government funding and now you're asking charters to do it with equal funding per kid, while at the same time shunting the most expensive students back into public education but why should the poor church led schools suffer to help the most needy, or the for profit ones let a kid cut into their profit?
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Feb 28, 2017 07:23
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Oxphocker posted:Manufacturing isn't the only trade... In Australia the vocational education is integrated into the High School curriculum so that students have the option to pursue apprenticeships and traineeships (in pretty much anything from viticulture to automotive manufacturing) starting from Year 10 and alongside the rest of their studies. Some schools have the facilities for this to happen on campus, otherwise students might spend a day a week at a training center. High school vocational education is necessarily tracked either, so it's quite possible for students to pursue vocational subjects but and graduate with the ability to apply for university. Pretty shocked to hear that trade classes have evaporated in US high schools. Most of the schools, public and private, I've visited or taught at here Australia have at least a tech center with some metalworking and woodworking classes.
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Feb 28, 2017 09:38
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http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/strong-principals-make-a-difference/article_09697133-49da-55d1-932f-e2110f0ad4a1.html Thoughts on the article?
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Mar 13, 2017 22:07
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I interact with around 30 schools and can confirm a good principal, and good administration in general, make a big difference. I've also worked in a school with a bad principal and inept administration in general and can confirm it impacts the classroom significantly. It's like building your own island fortress of competence in a sea of disorder. That's probably more true with SpEd, though.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:55
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JeffersonClay posted:I interact with around 30 schools and can confirm a good principal, and good administration in general, make a big difference. I've also worked in a school with a bad principal and inept administration in general and can confirm it impacts the classroom significantly. It's like building your own island fortress of competence in a sea of disorder. That's probably more true with SpEd, though. I've got a smaller sample size but I agree. Most of the quitting teaching horror stories I've heard are something like "I'm in a really lovely situation and my principal told me to suck it up / doesn't care." For as much poo poo as higher ed gets about administrative bloat and uselessness, good admins are so essential at the K-12 level. You're doing God's work, Ox.
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Mar 14, 2017 02:45
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Oxphocker posted:http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/strong-principals-make-a-difference/article_09697133-49da-55d1-932f-e2110f0ad4a1.html My first year, the school I work for non-renewed 1/3 of the teachers, and I would figure probably another 15-20% transferred or quit. My second year was similar, although I would say there were fewer non-renewals and more transfers/quits. Lots of TFA and emergency certifications that left very quickly. My third year, I took on a doubled class load because there were issues with actually hiring enough teachers. Fourth year I quit, but came back because there were unfilled spots for an entire semester and I didn't like where I had ended up. School had become IR - state monitors regularly observing classrooms. Next year, probably the principal will be gone. Maybe the AP's, too. I hope so, at least. Watching an administrative team purge teachers until a school descends into complete failure was instructive.
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Mar 14, 2017 03:58
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JeffersonClay posted:I interact with around 30 schools and can confirm a good principal, and good administration in general, make a big difference. I've also worked in a school with a bad principal and inept administration in general and can confirm it impacts the classroom significantly. It's like building your own island fortress of competence in a sea of disorder. That's probably more true with SpEd, though. I know doxxing is against the rules, so I'm OK with the probation I'm sure I'll get but: Welcome Betsy! At your next conference, someone will ask you if you have "stairs in your house." I haven't liked many of your posts, but I applaud you being willing to really "delve deep" and spend time with the opposition. Together, hopefully, we can all work towards proving ourselves wrong about each other.
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Mar 14, 2017 04:51
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Kaysette posted:good admins are so essential at the K-12 level. You're doing God's work, Ox. Yeah I dunno... am I a super teacher/admin? No, not really...I'm competent but I'm no Ron Clark. The problem is that the need levels are so high, we need those extra support people to take on tasks that really outside organizations should be dealing with. The amount of work I do as superintendent/principal/teacher/tech support/driver/handyman/etc is impossible to sustain for any long amount of time. It just leads to burnout and putting out fires on a day to day basis. You can't actually get good at your job, because it's just keeping the door open most of the time as opposed to actually having the time to spend on things that really matter. It's a catch-22 in many ways. By the way, an easy way to help your local district is to sign up for smile.amazon.com and see if your schools are listed as a donation recipient. If they are, any purchases you make through smile.amazon.com will donate a portion of your order to the school. For simply buying poo poo like you normally would, you can help out. If your local school doesn't, then you should contact someone there to let them know about this. At my tiny rear end school, we still average about $30 a quarter that we put back into school supplies and things like that. And if anyone wants to set my school as their donation recipient, please PM me...I'd rather not broadcast it to an entire forum because internet detectives...
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Mar 16, 2017 06:15
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Well I guess all hope is not lost for education. If any of you didn't catch it, SCOTUS decided in the case of Endrew v. Douglas last week. Siding with the family. Overturning SCOTUS nominee Gorsuch decision that only the minimum needed to be done for students with spec ed. Good to know that this would have turned out this way regardless of Gorsuch's vote. http://www.bazelon.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=uisxCmCwSFw%3d&tabid=813 "Today, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected that standard, holding that students who are offered such minimal benefit “can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all.” Instead, schools must provide “an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.”"
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Apr 3, 2017 05:49
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Well that's going to make next week awkward when Gorsuch shows up for his first day on the scotus.
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Apr 3, 2017 08:36
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