Senate The US Politics discussion

You equated the perception of spending with results. I addressed it. Succinctly.

 

No I didn't.

I said that there was a link between a lack of education, minorities, and systemic inequality. Hence people's concerns about the Trump admin.

 

It is a faulty metric. You are talking about signals (perception). I addressed it. Is it possible people can dumb down the equation to more/less dollars equals more/less education or the problems associated with education by individual student needs, then yes it is possible and on full display in the thread.

 

The first complaints you will hear out of the mouths of educators from K-U will almost universally have "administration" as the subject.

 

Education should be free to all. End of story. It's probably the best investment a government can make in terms of future tax revenue and industrial/commercial innovation....and resulting tax revenue.

 

I'm sorry, you appear to have used invisible ink to address the point about systemic inequality.

 

What is your alternative? What is your point?

Our complaint was never simply about spending. It's that, simultaneously, DeVos is proposing to:

1. Defund the existing system for disadvantaged students (impoverished, disabled, English second language, etc)
2. Promote a voucher system in its place to incentivize private schools, even though these institutions are less likely to deal with the aforementioned students
3. Believes that rather than a matter of federal law, discrimination against disabled students should be down-graded to offenses that may or may not be pursued/rectified as particular states see fit

There's no argument for an alternate system that might work better here. You are literally just stripping away everything that exists.

 

Trump wants military parades in the US: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-military-parades

Copying Putin, again

Spoiler

I heard Putin especially loves when the Topol-M nuclear missile launcher trucks roll by

I think those provide him compensation for the small size of his own you-know-what

Probably Trump feels like that too...

He would, likely, also really love this part of the parade

 

In my experience (working in education, being married to a teacher and coming from a family of educators) those complaints are usually related to work conditions, not to the quality of the education system itself. They are also important, but a whole separate issue. When it comes to what's wrong with education, they will usually point to structural issues, ranging from the whole educational system being rebuilt every 4 or 8 months and thus having to start over to a more and more impenetrable and often contradictory legal system.

 

Sergey for ****'s sake, use the spoiler tag for >1 picture. Even Ghost has learned this.

Yes, but. Bootstraps!

 

Better?

 

Video now going around of Cory Booker speaking at Betsy Devos's school privatization organization:

 

Booker's always been in favor of limited usage of charter schools, where applicable. That's entirely not new, and his stance was trying to work on a totally failing system for Newark schoolkids with both Chris Christie and Mark Zuckerberg (so Vivec, by law, has to be in favor), IIRC. Again, I'm not a Booker fan, but not because of this.

 

WTF is a charter school? Or a magnet school?

We have public and private and that's the way I like it, dammit! (not your stupid reversed versions in the UK.)

 

LMGTFY?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_States

Also, Australia has charter schools according to the main Wiki, according to most definitions...

tl, dr:

 

"A charter school is a term for a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established public school system in which it is located, and in some cases are privately owned."

So it operates as a 'private' school. We already have lots of them- every school here gets government funding (the level of which is a matter of controversy). As a model I don't see the problem- so long as it operates in conjunction with a robust public school system, which we also have.

There are issues with segregation and privilege concentration, so I can see the pitfalls. We also don't have for-profit schools, which I think would be a horrible idea.

 

I think "magnet" is where kids are made to wear metal bracelets on legs and arms, and there are powerful magnets placed which keep them attached to their desks, so they can't skip class

Or is that just my crazy imagination?

 

That describes my workplace.

 

We have a couple of music and language ones, but they are generally called Special Interest schools.

 

We don't have charter schools. The "technically" aspect you lifted from Wikipedia is Americentric. What we have is the British public school system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)) which has been expanded upon because though many are old - mine, for example, was established in 1863 - they aren't as old as Harrow, Eton, Rugby, etc and aren't as tied to the ruling class as they are there. But if you compare the coats of arms of those 24 great schools to the Great Public Schools of Australia (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newington_College) you see the heritage.

So the concept was further made 'egalitarian' (as "public" in the British sense means they are not restrictive by religious denomination etc) here. It's not the same as the charter school model though, unless you want a drastic oversimplification to define parameters.

 

Violent Violet Menace I was an echo chamber.