Election 2010: Teabaggin' the Ds & Rs

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

But see this:

if 60% of the kids drop out, does it really matter what standards we follow?

think.
a
b
out.
it.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What's your 2010 political IQ?

9/10

9/10 - From a Fox News watcher no less.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

if 60% of the kids drop out, does it really matter what standards we follow?

think.
a
b
out.
it.

If 60% of the kids are dropping out, apparently so.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

9/10 - From a Fox News watcher no less.

the "how many candidates have a parent in congress" thing got hard after Teddy got deadey

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What's your 2010 political IQ?

9/10

Same. I missed the one on kids of other members of Congress running for office in 2010.

At least the current mods of this Board have acceptable political IQs, although for one of us, tendencies towards censourship and overuse of spurious blogs in the past cloud the current achievement. No offence.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

One problem with education reform is that most voters don't care. In the exit polling I saw, voters in Washington D.C. with kids in the public schools voted for Fenty, and by a larger proportion than any other group identified.

True, and it's even harder to get voters to care with a system as big as CPS, especially when most parents with the resources to help make something happen either go the Penske route or move to the 'burbs.

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

Hank, help me out here -- freedom of contract, or bullshit elitist crap?
.

Written like someone who has never "negotiated" a union contract.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

Of course, it doesn't matter. There is zero political will to empty out highly paid and highly skilled teachers from elite high schools (where people vote) to send them to failing inner city schools. And I agree with Adder that it probably won't help test scores one iota.

Written like someone who has never been charged with having to be "leader".

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

9/10 - From a Fox News watcher no less.

Congrats! You are qualified to be a Mod here!

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

True, and it's even harder to get voters to care with a system as big as CPS, especially when most parents with the resources to help make something happen either go the Penske route or move to the 'burbs.

And the massive corruption and graft in Chicago have little to do with it....

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Penske 2.0

Congrats! You are qualified to be a Mod here!

The coup will begin soon . . . .

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Penske 2.0

And the massive corruption and graft in Chicago have little to do with it....

It's relatively marginal on the CPS front, but no less of a problem overall.

Indeed, we might have a higher percentage of K-8 schools acceptable for UMC kids' attendance than you do in Seattle. Or is corruption and graft a bigger problem in Seattle than I had been lead to believe?

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

No shit. But what I'm saying is that schools are a reflection of the community they serve. They do not and cannot save that community from itself, no matter how much we would like to think the American Dream can be kick-started by one Jaime Escalante character per school.

I'm saying, we all have choices and what we have chosen is this: that the quality of an American education varies widely based on the resources and capacity of one's parents. We cry about this, but we do nothing to change it. People like Penske blame the school administrators and the unions for wanting the system to be this way. That is bullshit. The American people want the system to be this way, because (1) it's what they voted for one way or another; (2) the people who have excess capacity in their daily struggle to survive for their kid's education manage to have enough we-clawed-our-way-out stories to provide false anecdotal hope that people in horrifying situations can succeed if they make the right sacrifices and (3) all the people who vote have kids in good-enough schools.

BTW, before you hop on any bandwagon with Penske, we should be clear on something -- does P think we should have a system of public schools, and if so, should that system have the same, more or fewer resources than the system we have? Because I suspect the answer he'll give is the same Republican bullshit we've always gotten -- "all the inputs are bad EXCEPT money, which looks fine from here" -- and crying about inner city teens is just his way of railing against the system because he knows it's a cheap way to buy credibility on the topic.

I have run a school, in the black, with a $4MM budget and 250 kids, 20% of whom had parents earning less than $30K/year; and another 20% of whom had parents earning between $30K-60K/year, i.e. large financial aid budget; and no endowment.

I have seen the budgets for similarly sized Seattle public schools, and there is a lot of flab, mostly in the wages category. Administrative excess and waste. and Unions. That said, I would be in favour of significantly higher taxes to fund schools if there were appropriate budget controls and performance metrics put into place.

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

It's relatively marginal on the CPS front, but no less of a problem overall.

Indeed, we might have a higher percentage of K-8 schools acceptable for UMC kids' attendance than you do in Seattle. Or is corruption and graft a bigger problem in Seattle than I had been lead to believe?

King County Ds are adept at election fraud; but Seattle never had either of (i) a criminal enterprise like the Daley family or (ii) much influence from other established organized crime families.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Penske 2.0

King County Ds are adept at election fraud; but Seattle never had either of (i) a criminal enterprise like the Daley family or (ii) much influence from other established organized crime families.

Right. So it's mostly the same problems, with an overlay of vastly more segregated schools in Chicago.

[Penske 2.0]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

Right. So it's mostly the same problems, with an overlay of vastly more segregated schools in Chicago.

Although, on a black/white basis, Seattle is far more segregated (and racist) than I would have imagined before I moved here.