LA Passes School Funding Program, Islam-o-fascist Schools Need Not Apply

Explain to me, O proponents of vouchers, the following:

1) When your pittance of annual property taxes doesn't even cover half a semester for private school tuition and little Rebekah or Joshua still aren't able to afford private schools, are the rest of us tax paying citizens able to not fund the portion of your child's education that your taxes don't cover?

It's all about choice, doncha know.

2) When your child graduates out of public school age, do you expect to be able to use that voucher system in the future for your grandchildren or other relatives? I should hope not.

The really big turd about about vouchers is that, it's so much easier to move from an underperforming district to a better performing one for the well heeled proponents of vouchers than it is for the people that they convince to vote for such changes who will ever be able to afford a private school with the few hundred to couple of thousand dollars in a voucher that they'll not get to use anyway.

 

I think that school vouchers, like restricting abortion, is an issue that Republicans claim to support but don't really want to implement.

1. If you are wealthy enough and can send your children to private schools, do you really want the children of the unwashed masses sitting next to your child? Won't their poor-people cooties rub off on your precious?

2. Theoretically, private schools perform better than public schools because of student ratios, discipline, and the ability to not admit weaker students and punish/kick out any children with disciplinary issues. If the children of the unwashed masses are let in, won't that skew the numbers? Can you kick someone out of a private school that is using vouchers? Will private schools be able to scale to support increased interest? Will there be lotteries for the best schools? Won't the rich people be thrilled if their child can't get in because the spot was taken by some middle class kid?

I think the rich people will just go out and create another, more expensive set of private schools that don't accept the vouchers. They don't want to go sharing with the non-rich.

 

Of course they will. And those schools will continue to be favored by the Ivies, so that students with lower test scores but the right families -- the families who signal that they are of the correct breed by sending their children to expensive prep schools -- will be admitted over better students from the public schools that the unwashed attend.

This is the way of the States.

 

This is how W got into Yale. That and his application having a science lab stapled to it.

 

I can see where this thread is going:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...357EFA24635E9EBEF19635&view=detail&FORM=VIRE2

 

Thanks for posting, I love girl fights!

My former high school is now attempting to ban the colors blue and red (good luck with that) due to gang violence. Not just ordinary gang violence, mind you, but gang violence between gangs of different races. So more like prison gang violence.

So when I defend public schools ... I don't defend all of 'em.

 

I completely disagree. What the Republicans favor is vouchers that aren't big enough to get the poor into private schools. Hell, they won't even get the middle class into private schools. The idea is a) to starve public schools b) allow the upper part of the middle class to send their kids to private schools and c) shovel money at people rich enough to have their kids in private schools.

Also, on a "meta" level, the modern GOP doesn't believe in any kind of collective action. They don't believe in collectively regulating air pollution, they don't believe in collective bargaining, and they don't believe in good public schools.

The old GOP wasn't like this. They didn't believe in collective action that favored only part of the population, for example, they didn't like labor unions. But they DID believe in stuff like stopping pollution and public schools, because everyone needs those.

 

And highways.

Quite socialist that, taking 85% of rich people's marginal income to build national highways that cut across state lines for the benefit of all.

 

The shocking thing about this is not the fighting but that there is such a thing as a pre-school graduation ceremony.

 

Don't forget about limiting the number of kids with special needs and/or learning disabilities into these schools.. These are the lower performing and highest cost per student students.
1. They generally affect test scores negatively (teacher and schools are 'failing' because test scores are low). Therefore, the conclusion should be made that public schools suck when scores go down after the exit of a number of students.
2. They are the most expensive to educate. Almost double the 'normal' student. They drive up the cost-per-pupil amount. When the normal student moves to a charter school, they actually take more aide than they really cost. Leaves the public school with a bigger hole to fill. Get ready for your property taxes to go up and cover that cost for the public school.

 

Fun stuff here -

I don't know about the rest of the book but that bit has a ring of truth about it.

http://crookedtimber.org/2012/06/18...wartz-chris-hayes-the-twilight-of-the-elites/

 

Eventually the Repubs will recognize that standing armies of citizens are expensive & go to hiring mercenaries.

What is more Republican than privatizing the armed forces?

 

I remember an old Sean Hannity bit about how if you gave all the money from the rich to the poor, it would only take the rich a few years to earn it all back due to their hard work and experience.

That rings to me like true bullcrap, because the first thing I'd do with my money is buy off our whole congress to make it illegal to tax me and hand me huge contracts with no oversight.

 

I'd put it the other way around. The poor would need only a few years to blow what you gave them. I've lived with poor and I've lived with rich. The poor don't work any less hard. But collectively, they sure do a lot of stupid things with money.

 

The last middle school I taught at was down to four colors --black, yellow (school's colors), white and athletic grey-- due to gang activity. I wouldn't recommend a teaching job there to anyone. My own HS opened a freakin' day care center on the premises a few years ago as the neighborhood changed. Quite a few alums (myself included) opposed the move, but it happened anyhow.

Unfortunately, that's been around for some time. It's moved on to HS juniors having 5-year reunions for their elementary school "graduating" classes. Graduation used to mark the passage into the full-time workforce for a lot of students. I guess fewer students are reaching the 12th grade these days and (grand)parents are wanting to see their child in some form of ceremony or another before they get arrested, get shot, get someone pregnant or just drop out. You havent lived until you've seen a young girl walking across the HS stage with no honor ribbons, waving like she's at a pageant with one hand and carrying her baby with the other.

 

Oh it's not shocking because its new to me, it's shocking because it's shocking. Moon landing deniers are as shocking to me now as they were 40 years ago.

 

For the student moms? Yikes.

I think one girl got pregnant at my son's high school in the 4 years he was there. He saw one fight in the 4 years ... and you couldn't really even call that a fight. One kid pushed another, the other pushed back, the one swung and missed, then onlookers grabbed the kids and broke it up.

I told my son, "See now that's the difference. In my high school the onlookers never broke up a fight. They formed a circle and started yelling for blood. If somebody tried to break up a fight, the other onlookers would jump him and beat his ass, because he was spoiling the show."

Two Americas, man that holds true.

 

So do the rich.

When Manchester United does something stupid, they have the money to fix their error. When Wolves does something stupid, they are stuck with the problem and get relegated.

 

Yup, for the student moms. I understand that it takes two and that sending only the girl to a centrally located day-care/school sends the message that it's all her fault. But I thought even less of keeping them in the regular school for everyone to see them and conclude that everything's still all right.

Your HS sounds like mine is now and your son's HS sounds like mine used to be- I saw about three fights, all broken up pretty fast. Now, I think maybe a fight would turn to a stabbing or shooting. The first time a friend of mine became a parent I was in my last U-grad year. Plenty of us were having sex, tho, so I'll assume that some abortions were taking place.

 

This is exactly how you convince an entire religion of people (as well as onlookers who have no religious dog in the fight) that your country is everything bad that they want to believe about it.

 

Agreed. Most of my income is tips and you can see how some coworkers will never have a dime to their name and others will have a nest egg.

 

In my high school, the onlookers would cheer and do what they could to prevent the counselors from getting through the circle to break up the fight. Unless it was a girl fight. The counselors in that case would take their time because they weren't going to break up the fight until the girls both fell down. Kinda like the way NHL linesmen break up fights.

I wish I could report on pregnant girls getting in a fight, bu if that happened in my school, I missed it.

 

I used to do the personal tax returns for a doctor's group. Each of them earned at least $250K. Almost every one of them had less investment income (interest and dividends) than I did as a 20-something accountant earning far, far less. I get that you may have big school loans and a larger mortgage than I did, but to tell me you have ZERO liquidity was rather alarming.

 

Now getting sidetracked but when I was in college pre-AIDs the drill was that when the girls started college, they went on the pill, which was offered for free through student health. That was how things were done. No condoms -- condoms were for sailors, not students. I never heard of either a child being born on an abortion, although sure the latter must have happened on occasion.