Assault on education

[LD0506]

[TD_washingtonredskins]

12 hours ago, tshile said:

this is America. You’re too smart for it. Most of us are. 
 

at this point I’m content supporting private school vouchers. I want nothing to do with the public school system anymore. And that’s because both political ideologies suck gigantic donkey dick at doing anything to fix any of their problems. 
 

public schools have become another wedge issue. Both sides created it in their own way. Not really interested in having my children be part of it. 
 

right now we’re struggling with the idea that my son doesn’t want to transition out of the environment he’s made friends in for 3 years now, but also not wanting one kid in private and one in public, etc. 

 

 

I understand the impulse of wanting to pull kids from public schools. I truly do. My wife has actually encouraged me to do so a couple times (she's their stepmother and her biological kids/my stepkids are already in college). 

 

But part of me thinks that we are also inflating the issue. There are problems with the public school systems and it's often politicized...but it's also still VERY good for a public school system (especially in the Northern VA area). With some good communication with your kids (as much as is possible when they are teenagers are appear to be listening), you can do your best to get them to think for themselves, evaluate what they are hearing, and keep their heads on straight. 

 

That's real life anyway...they can't just continue to run to places where people are just like them. Well, they can, but they shouldn't. 

 

Edit - not that YOU are suggesting that...but I think that's many people's thinking with yanking their kids out of public school and putting them in private school. 

Edited February 2, 2023 by TD_washingtonredskins

[LD0506]

[GhostofSparta]

13 hours ago, tshile said:

 at this point I’m content supporting private school vouchers.

Nope, sorry, no can do. The Republican party, who supports vouchers, have made it very clear that changing the rules ever is unfair. If they ever pass voucher, I'll just have to sue to stop the program on the theory that it's not fair to my parents who had to pay for our private school themselves. Just like college debt forgiveness. Sorry bud.

[stoshuaj]

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, seems as though there may have been a little whoopsie to the tune of ~$200 mill:

 

“Charles Pyle, a spokesperson for VDOE, said the problem stems from a mistake with an online calculation tool that incorrectly overstated the amount of state aid going to local school divisions by roughly $201 million. Pyle said the formula used for estimations didn’t reflect a change related to a recent grocery tax cut.”……

 

more at link:  https://www.wric.com/news/politics/capitol-connection/no-quick-fix-for-school-budget-shortfall-after-state-error-virginia-lawmakers-say/amp/

 

**question from the cheap seats:  whatever happened to the “lottery money is going to go to the schools” mantra from days gone by?  (Admittedly a rhetorical question bc we know where it went, they cut the amount of lottery money schools rcvd from the standing school budget.  So if my formula is correct that was grand total net gain of…….zip **** for schools)

[Califan007 The Constipated]

 

 

[LD0506]

[justice98]

On 2/2/2023 at 9:28 AM, TD_washingtonredskins said:

I understand the impulse of wanting to pull kids from public schools. I truly do. My wife has actually encouraged me to do so a couple times (she's their stepmother and her biological kids/my stepkids are already in college). 

 

But part of me thinks that we are also inflating the issue. There are problems with the public school systems and it's often politicized...but it's also still VERY good for a public school system (especially in the Northern VA area). With some good communication with your kids (as much as is possible when they are teenagers are appear to be listening), you can do your best to get them to think for themselves, evaluate what they are hearing, and keep their heads on straight. 

 

That's real life anyway...they can't just continue to run to places where people are just like them. Well, they can, but they shouldn't. 

 

Edit - not that YOU are suggesting that...but I think that's many people's thinking with yanking their kids out of public school and putting them in private school. 

 

I'm having this conversation with my wife right now cuz she seems adamant that our 8 year needs to go to private school. I'm very iffy on it and don't see it as the panacea to alleviate her concerns about public school.  All at a premium cost.

 

Not to mention, it's not lost on me that we have these conversations surrounded by the fruits of public education.  Public education has really done well by my family.  

[LD0506]

19 minutes ago, justice98 said:

 

I'm having this conversation with my wife right now cuz she seems adamant that our 8 year needs to go to private school. I'm very iffy on it and don't see it as the panacea to alleviate her concerns about public school.  All at a premium cost.

 

Not to mention, it's not lost on me that we have these conversations surrounded by the fruits of public education.  Public education has really done well by my family.  

 

People tend to have a narrow selfish focus and rationalize it with "But its for the children" and don't look any deeper. That's not a criticism, but honestly just a different view (before anyone gets all huffy)

 

What do you deny your children by sending them to private school? You limit their social contacts to the children of others that chose the same and could afford it.

 

What do you deny to kids in public school that might benefit from going to school with your kids? If you did such a great job raising them they might be needed as examples or mentors for others.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

36 minutes ago, LD0506 said:

 

People tend to have a narrow selfish focus and rationalize it with "But its for the children" and don't look any deeper. That's not a criticism, but honestly just a different view (before anyone gets all huffy)

 

What do you deny your children by sending them to private school? You limit their social contacts to the children of others that chose the same and could afford it.

 

What do you deny to kids in public school that might benefit from going to school with your kids? If you did such a great job raising them they might be needed as examples or mentors for others.

 

Eh, no one would be missing anything with my two...🤣

 

I'm kidding, that's a good point. Theoretically, if everyone who could afford to do so pulled their kids out of the public school system. And, if even a decent overlap of those people were engaged and good parents who are bringing up good kids, then the public school system is going to missing out on large population of its population's best and brightest. 

[GhostofSparta]

Ok, so I don't know how many people here actually went to private schools at any point in their lives, but I went from 6-12 grade. And I gotta tell some of you, not all private schools are created equal and some are, in fact, vastly INFERIOR to public schools in a lot of ways. So I'd like to shed some light on the lie that "private schools are always better than public schools because....they just are! It's an obvious and universal fact!" with some personal anecdotes (the best kind of science!) about both the positive and negative aspects of that type of schooling.

 

So for the record, I grew up in Southern Maryland. The public high school I would have attended was Chopticon (that's right, good old "Cow Pie High") and instead ended up going to a very small, very conservative, VERY religious K-12 private Baptist school (and my family was not Baptist, so that was an extra layer of fun for me). So for the sake of fairness, I'll give some positives about the place before I dig in with all the things that I think were negative. So let's begin:

 

Positives:

-Small class size. My grade had 9 kids. That's not a typo. We were the largest group of any 7-12 class. You want your kids to have small class sizes for a lot more individual focus, you got it there in a way that no public school could possibly match. The elementary classes were bigger, but also combined (1-2, 3-4, 5-6 all shared a classroom with 1 teacher)

 

-No Special Needs students. Because private schools are allowed to discriminate, the school didn't have to waste any time dealing with Special Ed classes or IEDs, and they didn't have to waste any money on Special Ed certified teachers. So as long as your child isn't special needs or require an IED in any way, your child can attend private school where teachers can spend much less time worrying about those issues.

 

-Discipline. The principal was allowed to spank students all the way until 9th grade. So on the one hand if a 3rd grader is being an unruly dick, you can send them to get spanked. But, sadly (in the opinion of some, anyway) they weren't allowed to spank high school kids. Probably something about the principal being male and being the only one who did the spanking wouldn't have looked good if he was spanking 16 year old girls, but that's not focusing on the positive. So spanking children was OK, a positive for some. Also, you can expel kids from a private school a lot easier, so any "problem" kids could be dealt with quickly, and even if they were wrong it didn't matter because private school=we have complete control over who is allowed in here.

 

-Religion. If you're the kind of person that thinks prayer and Bible reading should be not just allowed, but in fact mandatory on a daily basis, then congrats! Every morning we pledged allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag, AND the Bible, as well as a daily morning prayer and daily Bible classes every single year. Plus every Friday was an extra class called "Chapel" which was basically 50 minutes of church. Plus, as a religious school, there were no gay, trans, or pregnant out of wedlock students/teachers to be bad influences on us.

 

-Mostly white. Now I know how racist that sounds, but remember that private schooling only really took off after Desegregation when Southern Whites didn't want their kids to go to integrated schools, because they believed that minorities are scary criminals (like my father did, even if he mostly spoke in dog whistles and was only occasionally overtly racist), so if you're the kind of person that thinks public schools are scary for your children because "certain types" are there, then private schools offer a solution for you. Sure, they let in token minorities to keep up a façade, but they make sure they're some of the good ones!

 

OK, so now with those out of the way, here are some ways in which my specific private school was concretely worse for me than the local public school

 

Negatives:

-Racism. I know I kinda touched on it above, but even as a white kid I knew how overtly racist my school was. There were 3 non-white kids in the entire K-12 student body. And the college that they encouraged us all to attend, Bob Jones University, was the place that was in the news during the 2000 Republican primaries because the college DIDN'T ALLOW INTERRACIAL DATING ON CAMPUS. Now, they changed the rule soon after all the attention, but I was already in High School by that time and my school attempted to defend the college's policy up until they changed it. To a bunch of children. Also, there was 1 African-American student in our 7-12 classes. At one point it got around the school that she had a crush on me, but since I was a Senior and she was in 8th grade there was no way that we would be dating, it was just a crush on her part. When the principal found out, he pulled me into the office to interrogate me about it. Not because of the age gap, but because we were 2 different races. Sure, not every private school is like this, but given the history of the movement and the types of people that "fear" their kids going to public school for "reasons that aren't racist, I swear! (but secretly are)" it might be a good idea to find out about if the private school you want your kid to attend has this undercurrent or not.

 

-Private school teachers aren't required to be certified. Any public school teacher that you know may teach different subjects, but they'll at least be related to each other. I am no longer in education, but in college I got a Social Science degree with my teaching license, so I was qualified to teach anything in that field such as History, Civics, Anthropology, etc. As long as it was in a field related to my degree, I could teach it. But I couldn't teach, say, Calculus or French or PE because I didn't have my degree in those fields. In my school, the entire 7-12 curriculum was taught by 5 teachers. And 2 of those teachers actually had degrees in English and they stuck to that subject. One 7-9 graders, one 10-12 graders. That means, for those keeping track, every other subject we had in school was taught by 3 teachers. One teacher taught Spanish, Bible, Speech, Biology, Chemistry, and Health. He has a Business degree and a minor in Spanish. You wanna guess how good of an education we got in the subjects that he didn't have a degree in? Spoiler alert, we weren't 3 levels ahead of our poor, unfortunate public school peers in those areas. We were, in fact, behind. When we were junior, we managed to convince our teacher that we didn't need to learn math and equations to learn Physics. And it ****ing worked! A bunch of 16 year olds, whose parents were paying money to get us a better education, managed to convince an adult teacher that we didn't need to learn about formulas or use math in a science class.

 

-Science. This may be confined to religious school, but our science and health classes were a joke. We did not learn about evolution. We spent a year learning Physics (and Chemistry! somehow!) with no math involved. We did not have any sexual education classes. I know not every private school is religious, and not even all religious schools are this conservative, but again, this is only to give my experience on how "private school > public school 100%" is a lie.

 

-Very limited class options. We did not have electives. At all. Every single one of us took the same classes. Our only foreign language option was Spanish, which we took Junior and Senior Year. Meanwhile, one of my friends in Public school had taken 2 years of Latin and 3 years of Spanish by his Junior Year. Our Senior year math class was Algebra 2, his was Calculus 2. We had no music teacher, so we had no music classes. Our Art teacher was also our PE teacher, so the 1 year of Art we had we played basketball for class instead of doing anything art related. There were no shop classes at all. We also had a daily Bible class every year, so that's just 1 more class period where any option of an elective was eliminated. We had no AP classes.

 

-Social Skills. Again, I know this isn't true of everywhere, but any time you intentionally limit who your kid can have contact with, it has some negative consequences later in life. When your potential friend group is limited to about 20 people, most of whom come from a very similar background, it can make it difficult to adjust outside of that environment. Thankfully for me I went to a public Elementary school and got a job in high school so I had a base level and was able to readjust to interacting with "normal" humans again before heading off to college, but not everybody was so lucky. Anybody that went to college with or worked with somebody that was clearly homeschooled without being allowed much outside social interaction knows the kind of personality I'm talking about. Some of those people can adjust given some time and help, but some can't.

 

-You can't shield your kids from every negative thing. One of my dad's stated reasons for sending me to a private school was because there wouldn't be any drugs there. I didn't do drugs in High School, but I definitely hung out with our school's main weed dealer, so LOL on that reasoning. Also, turns out that a few years after I graduated, the principal got fired for inappropriately touching some of the young girls, but since it was a church run school and he was a Deacon in that church they just fired him, made him step down, and swept the whole thing under the rug as churches tend to do. Who would have thought that the kind of guy who take a job because it lets him spank strangers' children would be a creep?

 

 

I'm not saying that there aren't some great private schools or terrible public schools. But I tend to get a little agitated at the whole "private schools, especially hyper conservative religious ones, are better than public schools in every way!" mantra because I experienced just how incorrect that mentality is. So the idea of my backwards private school getting extra funding from the government through vouchers while still being able to get away with all they **** they did because there would be no oversight attached to those fund, just pisses me off. Thankfully the school is closed now, but it may have survived longer had it gotten some extra funding instead of the local public schools that did an objectively better job in almost every way. I know the idea has its merits, but I can't pretend that the idea hasn't been pushed the most vocally by people who hate the very idea of public education and view it as just another way to undermine public schools as a whole. 

Edited February 3, 2023 by GhostofSparta

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

We already have enough politics in our schools, this would only add to it.  

 

‘One of the Stupidest Ideas I’ve Ever Heard’: Chris Hayes Howls Upon Learning Trump Wants Elections for School Principals

 

Chris Hayes had himself a grand old time when he learned former President Donald Trump said public school principals should be elected officials.

 

“More than anyone else, parents know what their children need,” Trump said last week in a video posted on his Truth Social account. “If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to vote to fire them and select someone who will. This will be the ultimate form of local control.”

 

Over the last couple of years, conservative media outlets have pushed the narrative that critical race theory – typically a field of study seen only in a handful of graduate programs – is being taught in schools. Additionally, some in conservative media have claimed teachers are sexually “grooming” children.

 

On Friday’s All In on MSNBC, Hayes discussed the 2024 Republican presidential primary. There has been rampant speculation about whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will challenge Trump for the GOP nomination.

 

During the conversation, Tim Miller of the Bulwark informed the host of Trump’s idea.

 

“You saw Trump – I don’t know if you caught this the other day – Trump comes out and he said he wants all principals to be elected officials, which, that’s gonna be great. Politicize our schools even more.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LD0506]

[China]

Trampolines and cowboy classes: Arizona parents take advantage of state’s homeschooling funds

 

hen the former governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, signed a law last year that lets any family receive public funds for private school or homeschooling, he said he “trusts parents to choose what works best” for their children.

 

Over 46,000 Arizona students now take part in the state’s education savings account, or ESA, program, which provides about $7,000 per child annually for a huge array of school expenses. But with households in greater charge of curricular choices, some purchases are raising eyebrows, among them items like kayaks and trampolines, cowboy roping lessons and tickets to entertainment venues like SeaWorld.

 

The apparent permissiveness is one reason Beth Lewis, a former teacher and director of Save Our Schools political action committee, opposes the program. “These are all the things that we scrape the couch cushions for to fund for our kids,” said Lewis, whose group failed to collect enough signatures to put Ducey’s expansion of the program up for a referendum.

 

The debate in Arizona is being closely watched by GOP governors hoping to emulate the state’s approach. With passage of a new program just last month in Iowa, there are now nine states with ESAs and at least six more considering them. As in Arizona, the Iowa program will be open to any family that wants to participate. A Florida proposal would do the same.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

23 Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math, per state test results

 

Baltimore City is facing a devastating reality as the latest round of state test scores are released.

 

Project Baltimore analyzed the results and found a shocking number of Baltimore City schools where not a single student is doing math at grade level.

 

Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state. Just 7 percent of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, which means 93 percent could not do math at grade level.

 

“We're not living up to our potential,” said Jovani Patterson, a Baltimore resident who made headlines in January 2022, when he filed a lawsuit against Baltimore City Schools. The suit claims the district is failing to educate students and, in the process, misusing taxpayer funds.

 

“We, the taxpayer, are funding our own demise,” Patterson said at the time.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Jacksonville bookstore adds 'Books Recently Banned in Duval County' display

 

A Jacksonville bookstore is taking a stand against Florida book bans in schools, with a new “Books Recently Banned in Duval County” display. Chamblin Bookmine and Chamblin Uptown are using the sections to raise awareness about the hundreds of books banned in schools across the state.

 

Hanging from the shelves in Chamblin Bookmine in front of the banned books display: the definition of “censored.” Manager Abby Bell said that’s what Duval County Public Schools are doing by removing books from teachers classrooms to review or ban.

 

“There are a lot of kids that don’t have access to libraries or are financially unable to purchase their own books,” Bell said, “and so these things being taken away is a really big deal and something that we’re very passionate about.”

 

Chamblin Uptown Manager Cari Hamoui said it’s concerning that an overwhelming majority of the books being pulled for review are about minorities and children of color.

 

“When we read books, we need to have representation,” Hamoui said. “A lot of kids are not readers and they don’t really want to read, but if they see someone who looks like themselves, that’ll make them pick up the book.”

 

When asked about the removal of books about minority populations, Duval County Public Schools Director of Strategic Communication Laureen Ricks told First Coast News: “we have a wide range of diverse titles including books about African American history, African American literature, and African American leaders. In fact, the State of Florida recently recognized our school district as an “Exemplary School District” for teaching African American History.”

 

Ricks also said: “Now and in all phases of this process, there should not be a case when a classroom doesn’t have any books. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

 

[China]

 

This is the bill he's referring to:

 

Bill would ban the teaching of scientific theories in Montana schools

[China]

Ohio Department of Education Says It Won't Do Anything About Neo-Nazi Homeschoolers

 

After investigating the neo-Nazi homeschool network in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, the Ohio Department of Education appears to have concluded that the group is doing nothing wrong.

 

Logan and Katja Lawrence were unmasked last week as the operators of a neo-Nazi homeschool network with thousands of members, known as Dissident Homeschool on Telegram, by VICE News and the Huffington Post based on research from an anti-fascist research group called the Anonymous Comrades Collective. 

 

The Lawrences openly advocate white supremacist ideologies with the aim of making the  children they teach, they’ve said, “become wonderful Nazis.” Katja Lawrence said she initially started the group because she “was having a rough time finding Nazi-approved school material for [her] homeschool children,” and has shared lesson plans that include Hitler quotes, pictures of a cake she baked for Hitler’s birthday, and a recording of her children saying ”sieg heil” in unison. 

 

Days after the news broke, the Ohio Department of Education said that it was investigating the Lawrences and the neo-Nazi homeschool network. Stephanie Siddens, the interim superintendent of public instruction at the Department of Education, told VICE News that  she was “outraged and saddened” by the news, adding that “there is absolutely no place for hate-filled, divisive and hurtful instruction in Ohio’s schools, including our state’s home-schooling community.”

 

But, in a new statement to VICE News, the findings from the Department of Education’s investigation seem to have concluded that there is simply nothing the department can do, or would do, to sanction the Lawrences or anyone else doing something similar due to the state’s homeschool policies.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Hey, it's not like they did something objectionable, like teaching kids that racism exists, and it's bad.  

 

Or that gay and trans people exist.  

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[dfitzo53]

OK, universe, haha very funny. Put us back in the real timeline now. 

[Larry]

But object to a monument built to honor the Confederacy, and "you're trying to erase history".