Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 480038)

Wait. I spend those cars so my kids CAN be surrounded by Asians.

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick (Post 480027)

So gun policy is maybe 9,845 on my list of why I choose public schools, but similar stories of jackassery can hardly be considered rare (where schools don't let kids eat the lunches prepared by parents, randomly enforcing dress code provisions that don't actually exist in the policy, etc.) but I admit that the media I consume may be more inclined to report such events. A lot of it is probably due to our overly litigous society. There's probably at least 1 similar story per day picked up on Drudge from somewhere in the country, and those are just the ones that make the news.

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick (Post 480027)

First, based on the data available, public schools don't generally appear to be that successful in educating children if you look at the % of kids deemed 'proficient'. The curriculum is lacking and the standardized testing excessive, but that is largely the fault of NCLB. At times, actions are taken to benefit career administrators or the teacher's union at the expense of children. Those are my real issues.

At our school we don't have to do the testing. The school board is made up of parents who have a vested interest in the success of the school and teachers and administrators can be fired for doing a crap job. Most of all, we do a lot of fundraising to back up the promise that anyone admitted be able to attend regardless of family income and resources (AFAIK, this is real, as the school was recommended to me by my former paralegal, who was a single mom and sporadically received only minimal child support), and there are not academic testing standards to get in. Because of demand, you have to fill out the paperwork for pre-K and the only real admission requirment is a meeting with the principal. So our schools testing results (they do ITBS only) are not due to self selecting upper income people or kids who already had high test scores to begin with. They are self selecting for people who give a crap about their kids education, which alone makes a huge difference.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 480031)

There are some horrible schools out there but some great ones too. My kids had friends that went off to the "academically challenging" high school that draws from the southern portion of Oakland County. Those kids went to a school that was way more racially and economically homogeneous than the school my kids stayed at. Their parents crowed over how better prepared they were than those at the normal public school, but that didn't show up in college. PS kids did as well as the elite grads.

The big thing for me (and what my kids have told me) is they spent four years in a school that looks like our metro area as to ethnic mix and economic mix. They blend easily with any type people (although we were nervous for a bit there when my son was dating a Chaldean girl (their brothers are supposed to beat the shit out of guys who dishonor the family)).

I also wanted my kids to realize they are fortunate and that plenty of people are poorer. It hopefully leads to understanding choices made in majors and the job market can result in a lower lifestyle for them.

That said, I fully sympathize with parents stuck in the Detroit public schools that jimmy up false suburban addresses or bail to a charter school. There are plenty public schools I would not put my kid in; but you cut too wide.


I do not mean this personally, but this would scare me off that school. Over-involved parents are the worst. I don't mean volunteers, but infringing into the teaching is not a good thing.

Originally Posted by Icky Thump (Post 480019)

My crim law final was actually like this except instead of saying it like Hank it was more like, "The cab driver thrust his penis into her vagina but missed, slipping it into her anus where he continued thrusting until he had a big gooey orgasm."

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 480040)

One thing about being Sidd's son, you'd be warned if you ever want to do a Mohawk or some other funky haircut you better do it by your early 20s.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 479999)

I want to be clear: Everybody is wrong about 50 things having to do with guns, but I believe the NRA is wrong about 50 million more things.

Speaking as someone who sometimes has to justify one of those "crazy" suspensions from school, I think we all need to face the fact that the human cost of our collective demands that fake handguns be treated differently from real ones on school campuses, which is certainly a demand with impeccable logic on its side, is that every once in a while a child will be mistakenly shot by a police officer on campus. It will be rare, we all hope, but I have a hard time suggesting in today's day and age that an officer who sees a child with a gun-shaped object in his hand should make efforts to ascertain whether it is real before opening fire. Those zero-tolerance-for-gun-toys are also in place because some elementary kids get panicked when they see these things and a rumor gets started that it's real (usually when it's in somebody's backpack or locker, not when it's there for everyone to see). It's fun to mock the people who the press pillories for these rigid outcomes and supposed lapses of common sense, but I've come to learn that even the stupidest rules have a rather troubling anecdote in the distant past that animated them.

I'll grant you the Pop Tart story. Also, finger pointing. But only in public schools. Link a news story about somebody being mistreated by a private school or daycare -- an organization with which they have a consumer relationship -- and unless it's racial discrimination I simply won't give a shit.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 480030)

Toy gun policy never crossed our minds, though since our kids are at a French immersion school mostly they play at dropping the toy guns and seeing who can run away faster.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 480030)

Concur with everything you say, except your last point to some extent. Yes, kids with that sort of parents nearly always do better -- but being surrounded by other kids who also have that sort of parents is a bonus.

I grew up in public schools, as did Mrs. Finch, but now we pay approximately one Honda Accord per year, times three kids, to a private school.

Our reasons were that the public school system in SF is very uneven, that we wanted to insulate our kids from the state budget issues that periodically result in class sizes being expanded or music/art/whatever getting cut, and an overriding concern that public school textbook publishers are exposed to influence from crazy-people. Over time, our reasons have shifted more towards "it's going really well, why mess with it when we can still afford it?"

Toy gun policy never crossed our minds, though since our kids are at a French immersion school mostly they play at dropping the toy guns and seeing who can run away faster.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 480047)

I have actually given Sidd, Jr. this specific advice.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 480051)

I liked this post quite a bit, up until the final paragraph, at which point I started liking it a lot.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 480049)

I missed this the first time I read it. Say what?

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 480054)

The legal standard is what it is — whether the officer was reasonably in fear he was in imminent danger. What I'm saying is the old rule of "That can't possibly be a real gun; that kid is nine years old — gotta be a realistic fake" is no longer operative.

People get shot if they make a false move while holding any kind of dark-colored object. We all wish it weren't so. Telling cops they should do a better job distinguishing between real handguns and fake ones is not a winning suggestion, and no school official is completely wrong in saying "No toy guns here." I might have a personal problem with expulsion because 95% of the time it's used, it's a waste of a teachable moment. But I understand the administrators who say "We could NOT have been more clear about this imperative" while redneck parents are jaunting down to the Big 5 Sporting Goods to buy their sons Airsoft rifles that look like fucking AR-15s.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 480055)

"Everybody should do what they think best for their own kids" is really the only thing that anyone can productively say about school choice, but I would appreciate it if the enlightened self-interest folks would shut up for a moment about what is "wrong" with public schools. Schools are a nearly perfect mirror of the neighborhood from which they draw, but parents believe they can pick the "best" school for their child based on test data* like they're Michelin stars. I know PhDs in hard sciences who brag to me about how they got their child into the school with the highest test scores in their school district, which is a bit like picking a restaurant because fat people go there.

Smart people can be just as stupid as dumb ones, when they're responding to a primal fear.

*Confidential to Hank: this is a plural noun.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 480054)

The legal standard is what it is — whether the officer was reasonably in fear he was in imminent danger. What I'm saying is the old rule of "That can't possibly be a real gun; that kid is nine years old — gotta be a realistic fake" is no longer operative.

People get shot if they make a false move while holding any kind of dark-colored object. We all wish it weren't so. Telling cops they should do a better job distinguishing between real handguns and fake ones is not a winning suggestion...

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 480054)

...and no school official is completely wrong in saying "No toy guns here." I might have a personal problem with expulsion because 95% of the time it's used, it's a waste of a teachable moment. But I understand the administrators who say "We could NOT have been more clear about this imperative" while redneck parents are jaunting down to the Big 5 Sporting Goods to buy their sons Airsoft rifles that look like fucking AR-15s.