It Begins.

[Lek]

Maybe competition among the public schools might actually lead to some decent schools that actually give our kids a good education.  That would be nice for a change.

Oh, horseshit.  You can't have jesus and quality education dumbass.

Actually, you can, but I didn't mention Jesus.

[Cecelia]

I agree with your priorities but I think you underestimate how strongly the religious want to shelter their indoctrinates children from the secularizing influence of unfiltered information.  My first impulse is fuck them.  But politically, given the number of religiously dumb people there are in the country, that may not be a viable alternative.  As a result you have people wishing to win elections speaking up for charter schools.  While I'd like to avoid the divisiveness and creaming that comes with charters, maybe we have to cut the religious loose in order to save civilization.

Pandering to people who aren't going to vote for you seems like a bad strategy.  Evangelicals will never vote Democrat.  The best you can hope is they don't come out to vote.

[Minimalist]

Oh, horseshit.  You can't have jesus and quality education dumbass.

Actually, you can, but I didn't mention Jesus.

You don't have to.  I've heard your sorry routine for years.  It never changes.  The fictional bullshitter from Galilee is never far from your thoughts.

[Cecelia]

Maybe competition among the public schools might actually lead to some decent schools that actually give our kids a good education.  That would be nice for a change.

No.  Just no.  This is an incredibly dumb idea.

And here's why:  Yes, competition can improve quality of products.  But it also has one negative side effect that has little effect with most products:  Low Quality, Inferior products.

With most products, it doesn't matter.  Those who want better quality products will choose to pay more, and those who are fine with inferior products will pay less.  And it's all good.  Everyone wins.

But with Education, you have a serious problem.  The Quantity of High Quality Products will be limited, because schools can only accept so many students.  They'll reach their capacity much faster than most products do.  Not only can they only accept so many students, it's not going to be First come, First Serve.  It's going to be picking the best students, and certainly not the ones with disabilities.  That means that some students won't get their first choice of schools, or even their second or third.  With other products, you very rarely see this occur.

That creates a market for low quality education schools.  Things we already see at the college level with places like University of Phoenix -- which has a reputation so bad that employees tend to omit it from their job applications.  And employers vastly prefer people from traditional schools.   You also see with Charter Schools now, some of them close in the middle of the year--forcing them to put their kids in a new school.

Competition doesn't make everything better.  In the case of education, it would make it worse.  Teachers would have their feet held to the fire by parents, and blamed if their kids aren't doing well.  After all, if the parents are the customers (and in the case of education, they would be) the employer wants to keep the customer happy.  This means little room for innovation by teachers.  It takes classroom autonomy from teachers, and discourages the sharing of ideas (after all, why share your ideas with people who'll be trying to recruit students from your school to theirs?)  

And the more choice that's added, the more schools will open and fail.  Wasting valuable time of students so people will have the 'illusion of choice'.  Public Schools should be the focus of fixing the education system in our country.  Theyr'e the only schools required to take all and any students.  They're the only ones who can kick out students for only the worst of infractions.  I know that I personally would rather live in a society where the majority are educated, and not just the ones who aren't destined for 'skilled labor'

Education isn't an HDTV. It's not as simple as that by any means.

[Minimalist]

The rightards hates to be told that any silly idea they come up with is more complicated than a stupid slogan.

They love slogans.... especially if they fit on a hat.

[Ravenshire]

They can educate their children at home, with luke and mark.  Their tax dollars will still go to providing an actual education in public schools.  If they want their kids to read good and do other things, they can send their kids to a real school.  

There we go, "school choice" - as in, assholes can choose not to educate their children if they want to..and they desperately want to.

Maybe competition among the public schools might actually lead to some decent schools that actually give our kids a good education.  That would be nice for a change.

I'll bet funding them properly would do much more good. The public education system, outside a few, select, wealthy community schools don't have to money for up to date text books let alone quality teachers, proper maintenance and new school buildings when necessary. That could easily be solved if our government wasn't enthralled with the idea of having the biggest, most bad-assed military on the block.

Maybe we should tell the Air Force they should host bake sales for that new bomber instead of making the public school kids run fund-raisers for text books and smart boards. I'm betting you could put a brand new smart board in every single public classroom in the country just with the cost over-runs on the fucking F-35.

[Minimalist]

Kate McKinnon with a nice turn as Betsy DeVos on SNL.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/watch-k...nd-update/

WATCH: Kate McKinnon absolutely kills it playing a clueless Betsy DeVos on SNL’s Weekend Update

Too damned true.

[Minimalist]

Uh, no.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/...=emaildkre

AZ teacher posts salary and asks 'I need a college degree to make this?'

You actually need a Master's Degree!

[The Grand Nudger]

Every educator in my family eventually left the system for more lucrative positions, like driving a cab.

[Minimalist]

The money is obviously in "admin."

Here's another of DeVos' scumbag pals gaming the system.

http://www.azfamily.com/story/37782133/p...management

Phoenix charter school to close due to 'egregious financial mismanagement'

And what is the mismanagement?

State regulators plan to shut down a Phoenix charter school for “egregious financial mismanagement” after investigators determined the school’s president spent thousands of dollars of school funds on personal trips and her own bills, among other violations.

Do you think the assholes out here ever learn?  Nope.  They keep electing republicunts.