Monday, January 31, 2005
reply to anon
Your government schools at work.
U.S. students say press freedoms go too far
If I were a parent these days, I wouldn't even consider sending a kid to the abortion the government schools have become. That link from USA Today, if read completely, makes me wonder about the quality of the HR at USAT. Hell, even I, the total disconnect, could have done a better job of that story.
* * * * * *
I'm not sure who anon is but since today is/will be spent fiddling with minor items like financial survival (questionable), reviewing 2 of last Spring's projects (one needs some money, the other LOTS of money), and paying bills, I often take breaks. Lots of breaks. One does that a lot when one is broke. anon wrote:
Interesting ramblings on "No Teacher Left Behind" Uncle Rev. Do ya think that if people would pay teachers their equivalent salary in the business world this problem would still exist? Name another professional field where you can expect to start at $30 with a Master's degree. Um,right. There's an enormous shortage of teachers all over the country and indeed the globe. Problem being that the salary is not very good for the hours that they put in, all the extras that are written into their contracts. In fact the money sucks!
Truly, with a PhD at a Community College I can expect to start at $62,200. Wonder what I'd make in business with that kind of qualification. Why do articles always insist that it's the teachers unions campaigning for their own selfish issues, like normal hours and a decent salary. Never mention that their salaries *should* be higher *as a given*, not as something that needs to be fought for!
I think if they make the salaries higher, competition for teaching positions will ensue and you'll be left with happy, well qualified candidates who you shouldn't need to evaluate.
You wanna try to explain that higher property taxes are a good thing? :)
# posted by Anonymous : 5:03 AM
Well, I didn't excerpt from the article, mostly because there are so many damning instances of the devolved public school system. One doesn't even need to have children in it anymore to be a bit disappointed with the results.
Those of you not in Florida are probably not familiar with the FCAT. It's something like the old CAT and SAT testing except it automatically assumes the children taking it are just slightly smarter than a possum. The possum child (at last observation) had to pass with a newly minted and seriously downgraded score of 58% on a test one would expect any talking unit with 12 YEARS of very expensive ($97,500 Florida dollars) to breeze through.
* * * * * *
5460 - REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATION GRADES 9-12
Brevard County (Florida)
Administrative Procedures
"D. Passed both the reading and math sections of the 10th grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test."
Do you want to launch your lunch? I'm just starting.
Flexing for FCAT"Time to Train for the 10th Grade FCAT
"Did you know that you’ve been working out since kindergarten? Forget about your quads and pecs, we’re talking about your brain cells. Did you know that you’ve
been exercising your brain since you started school? All of that mental exercise is going to pay off, now that you are planning ahead and gearing up for the FCAT.
Pumping up for the FCAT
The FCAT is an important high school graduation requirement, and students who want to do well on the FCAT do it by flexing their mental muscles before they enter the test-taking arena.
The more study reps you do — study your course work, practice sample test questions — the more comfortable you will become with the test content and format. Your confidence level is sure to rise.
Keep reading for more training tips to get you pumped (pimped?) up for test day."
(shnipt)
Yeah. Wanna take the 10th grade FCAT? I did several years ago and despite not being very bright, I'd most assuredly have passed it somewhere between Mrs. Demotropolis's second grade and Mrs. Sanders' third grade classes.
Want to view some totally fictitious graphs? They are all right here, all in pdf of course (.edu wouldn't have it any other way). Sarasota County seems to have figures at odds with the above. I picked it because it is probably the most neutral as far as voting in Florida gets. Mostly rich, mostly old, mostly DINO and RINO. In other words, floor-sweepings. Retired yankees with boats in the slip and a grandkid or so floating around in the system.
It has been quite interesting cruising the net for information about FCAT so far. Not one link with potentially useful information has been other than a pdf file. Whyso?
..from the Florida Department of Education of course..
Latest FCAT scores show improvement
By MATTHEW WAITE and ALISA ULFERTS
Published May 10, 2004
"Florida's public school students fared better on this year's FCAT in most grades, with a majority of students scoring at or above grade level in reading for the first time.
Only 8th and 10th grade reading scores dipped on average when compared to last year, state education officials said Monday. In math, sixth graders were the only class to fare worse than last year's counterparts."
I don't give a damn if you read it or not. Numbingly useless. Most of the rest of this post is pretty-much the same.
* * * * * *
Yeah. And since the totally NEA-generated FCAT has a top score of 1,000 and one only needs a 10th grade "score" (pdf as usual) of 582, even a total moron should be able to make the grade. In 2002, Florida graduated 55% of it's high-schoolers. Read that link. Weep. I wonder how many of that 55 per cent were actually literate? A 58 would be a F back before the NEA started writing the rules. So now a 10th grade F is fittin' fer graduation from the Peepels Republick Scuule Sistim?
Go take the tenth grade FCAT math test . You will be instructed on how to use your calculator. 32 page, 1.8 MB pdf (what did you expect?). I just did, it's substantially different than the one posted in 2003, contains one glaring error, and is much more fun. The tenth grade writing test is only a 24 page, 1.2 MB pdf with the first 5 pages just instructions and TOC. Be sure to fill in the answer bubbles correctly. Do not make any stray marks around answer spaces.
* * * * * *
Back to anon. Whoever you are, did you actually read Terry's article? He was suprisingly succinct for a California academic. Also quite candid. It's worth another pass and this time I'll just post the entire column.
No Teacher Left Behind
Unions don't have children's best interests at heart.
BY TERRY M. MOE
Saturday, January 22, 2005 12:01 a.m.
(Editor's note: This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13.)
The teachers unions have more influence over the public schools than any other group in American society. They influence schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities that shape virtually every aspect of school organization. And they influence schools from the top down, through political activities that shape government policy. They are the 800-pound gorillas of public education. Yet the American public is largely unaware of how influential they are--and how much they impede efforts to improve public schools.
The problem is not that the unions are somehow bad or ill-intentioned. They aren't. The problem is that when they simply do what all organizations do--pursue their own interests--they are inevitably led to do things that are not in the best interests of children.
To appreciate why this is so, consider the parallel to business firms. No one claims that these organizations are in business to promote the public interest. They are in business to make money, and this is the fundamental interest that drives their behavior. Thus, economists and policy makers fully expect firms to pollute the water and air when polluting is less costly (and more profitable) than not polluting--and that is why we have laws against pollution. The problem is not that firms are out to destroy the environment. The problem is simply that their interests are not identical to the public interest, and the two inevitably come into conflict.
Teachers unions have to be understood in much the same way. Their behavior is driven by fundamental interests too, except that their interests have to do with the jobs, working conditions, and material well-being of teachers. When unions negotiate with school boards, these are the interests they pursue, not those of the children who are supposed to be getting educated.
The resulting contracts often run to more than 100 pages, and are filled with provisions for higher wages, fantastic health benefits and retirement packages, generous time off, total job security, teacher transfer and assignment rights, restrictions on how teachers can be evaluated, restrictions on nonclassroom duties, and countless other rules that shackle the discretion of administrators. These contracts make the schools costly to run, heavily bureaucratic, and extremely difficult for administrators to manage. They also ensure that even the most incompetent teachers are virtually impossible to remove from the classroom. The organization of schools, as a result, is not even remotely the kind of organization one would design if the best interests of children were the guiding criterion.
Exactly the same can be said about the design of government education policy, which is tilted toward teacher interests through the unions' exercise of political power. The sources of their power are not difficult to discern. With three million members, they control huge amounts of money that can be handed out in campaign contributions. More important, they have members in every political district in the country, and can field armies of activists who make phone calls, ring doorbells and do whatever else is necessary to elect friends and defeat enemies. No other interest group in the country can match their political arsenal. It is not surprising, then, that politicians at all levels of government are acutely sensitive to what the teachers unions want. This is especially true of Democrats, most of whom are their reliable allies.
When the teachers unions want government to act, the reforms they demand are invariably in their own interests: more spending, higher salaries, smaller classes, more professional development, and so on. There is no evidence that any of these is an important determinant of student learning. What the unions want above all else, however, is to block reforms that seriously threaten their interests--and these reforms, not coincidentally, are attempts to bring about fundamental changes in the system that would significantly improve student learning.
The unions are opposed to No Child Left Behind, for example, and indeed to all serious forms of school accountability, because they do not want teachers' jobs or pay to depend on their performance. They are opposed to school choice--charter schools and vouchers--because they don't want students or money to leave any of the schools where their members work. They are opposed to the systematic testing of veteran teachers for competence in their subjects, because they know that some portion would fail and lose their jobs. And so it goes. If the unions can't kill these threatening reforms outright, they work behind the scenes to make them as ineffective as possible--resulting in accountability systems with no teeth, choice systems with little choice, and tests that anyone can pass.
If we really want to improve schools, something has to be done about the teachers unions. The idea that an enlightened "reform unionism" will somehow emerge that voluntarily puts the interests of children first--an idea in vogue among union apologists--is nothing more than a pipe dream. The unions are what they are. They have fundamental, job-related interests that are very real, and are the raison d'être of their organizations. These interests drive their behavior, and this is not going to change. Ever.
If the teachers unions won't voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them--through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education, link teachers' pay to their performance, make it easy to get rid of mediocre teachers, give administrators control over the assignment of teachers to schools and classrooms, and prohibit unions from spending a member's dues on political activities unless that member gives explicit prior consent.
These reforms won't come easily because the unions will use their existing power, which is tremendous, to defeat most attempts to take it away. There is, however, one ray of hope: that the American public will become informed about the unions' iron grip on the public schools and demand that something be done. Only when the public speaks out will politicians have the courage--and the electoral incentive--to do the right thing. And only then will the interests of children be given true priority.
Mr. Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, and a professor of political science at Stanford, is the winner of this year's Thomas B. Fordham Prize for distinguished scholarship in education.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006192
anon: "Do ya think that if people would pay teachers their equivalent salary in the business world this problem would still exist? "
self: anon, I've enjoyed a large number of teachers over the last half-century. There were three I would consider absolutely brilliant, knew exactly HOW to teach and even the slowest in their classes benefited as much as the best. One in particular always comes to mind. He had a blue alphanumerical tattoo on his remaining arm. He got paid the same as the required phys-ed "coach" that always had us strip in the exercise room before he turned the lights out for 30 minutes of "contemplation". Yeah. Right. He got a major-league knuckle sandwich when he fondled MY balls. I did not pass his required course.
anon: "..equivalent salary in the business world"
self: You'll have to find me "equivalents" in the business world.
anon: " Name another professional field where you can expect to start at $30 with a Master's degree."
self: Define "professional" for me. I just scanned the offerings from UC Berkeley and there seems to be quite a lot of things with no real use other than amusement easily afforded by a low-priced internet connection. It's hard to think of a paying job for a Ph.D. in "Folklore" or what I consider a horror, "Political Science". The latter should be brought around back and shot as soon as possible.
There are really no equivalents in the "business world". The very best teachers are those that part-time FROM the business world. Been there on both sides. Wonderful both sides except it costs too much on one, pays too little on the other! ;o)
anon: "Truly, with a PhD at a Community College I can expect to start at $62,200. Wonder what I'd make in business with that kind of qualification."
self: PhD in what? Bean sprout cultivation? If it was a field I'm familiar with such as electronic engineering, the chances of teaching at a CC would probably be quite low as the call for such in a young, competent state is quite high and those that are actually competent often get offers over $40 K a year!. It's best to make plans with EE much prior to 34. 35 is corporate cutoff. I imagine that the gummit would pay that enormously ridiculous amount using the usual stolen monies to someone teaching the fine art of cooking turkin.
$62,500 plus the normal state benefits (usually around 40% of base salary) to "teach" CC gummit "students" is quite nice. Did you get a teacher's certificate with the PhD? Most gummit skuuls require such these daze.
anon: "I think if they make the salaries higher, competition for teaching positions will ensue and you'll be left with happy, well qualified candidates who you shouldn't need to evaluate."
self: Now why would you even think that could make a tiny difference? What competition? There is NO competition allowed by the NEA. More pay for the same old NEA crap? Sorry, it doesn't play, not without accountability. Good teachers; priceless. Third-gen trash teachers, can't even fire them. Hence, what we've got and what will remain except for the few parents that pay the government schools while sending their kids to private schools and the few percent that can and do the best by home schooling. Think about it. An average classroom in Florida costs around $200,000 per year per teacher. Pitifully few "graduate" and the ones that do, well, met any of those "college-ready" kids recently? Weep.
anon: "You wanna try to explain that higher property taxes are a good thing? :)"
self: Hopefully the smiley at the end means you have remembered I'm a hard-core libertarian. Property taxes are unconstitutional. Read it. There isn't even a possibility of any sort of a post, phone call, letter, radio messege, pony express, nothing, nada, nyet, zip, zilch, that would have me attempting "higher property taxes are a good thing". Thoughts of that nature remind me I like fava beans and a nice Chianti. Liver is optional.
U.S. students say press freedoms go too far
If I were a parent these days, I wouldn't even consider sending a kid to the abortion the government schools have become. That link from USA Today, if read completely, makes me wonder about the quality of the HR at USAT. Hell, even I, the total disconnect, could have done a better job of that story.
* * * * * *
I'm not sure who anon is but since today is/will be spent fiddling with minor items like financial survival (questionable), reviewing 2 of last Spring's projects (one needs some money, the other LOTS of money), and paying bills, I often take breaks. Lots of breaks. One does that a lot when one is broke. anon wrote:
Truly, with a PhD at a Community College I can expect to start at $62,200. Wonder what I'd make in business with that kind of qualification. Why do articles always insist that it's the teachers unions campaigning for their own selfish issues, like normal hours and a decent salary. Never mention that their salaries *should* be higher *as a given*, not as something that needs to be fought for!
I think if they make the salaries higher, competition for teaching positions will ensue and you'll be left with happy, well qualified candidates who you shouldn't need to evaluate.
You wanna try to explain that higher property taxes are a good thing? :)
# posted by Anonymous : 5:03 AM
Well, I didn't excerpt from the article, mostly because there are so many damning instances of the devolved public school system. One doesn't even need to have children in it anymore to be a bit disappointed with the results.
Those of you not in Florida are probably not familiar with the FCAT. It's something like the old CAT and SAT testing except it automatically assumes the children taking it are just slightly smarter than a possum. The possum child (at last observation) had to pass with a newly minted and seriously downgraded score of 58% on a test one would expect any talking unit with 12 YEARS of very expensive ($97,500 Florida dollars) to breeze through.
* * * * * *
5460 - REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATION GRADES 9-12
Brevard County (Florida)
Administrative Procedures
"D. Passed both the reading and math sections of the 10th grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test."
Do you want to launch your lunch? I'm just starting.
Flexing for FCAT"Time to Train for the 10th Grade FCAT
"Did you know that you’ve been working out since kindergarten? Forget about your quads and pecs, we’re talking about your brain cells. Did you know that you’ve
been exercising your brain since you started school? All of that mental exercise is going to pay off, now that you are planning ahead and gearing up for the FCAT.
Pumping up for the FCAT
The FCAT is an important high school graduation requirement, and students who want to do well on the FCAT do it by flexing their mental muscles before they enter the test-taking arena.
The more study reps you do — study your course work, practice sample test questions — the more comfortable you will become with the test content and format. Your confidence level is sure to rise.
Keep reading for more training tips to get you pumped (pimped?) up for test day."
(shnipt)
Yeah. Wanna take the 10th grade FCAT? I did several years ago and despite not being very bright, I'd most assuredly have passed it somewhere between Mrs. Demotropolis's second grade and Mrs. Sanders' third grade classes.
Want to view some totally fictitious graphs? They are all right here, all in pdf of course (.edu wouldn't have it any other way). Sarasota County seems to have figures at odds with the above. I picked it because it is probably the most neutral as far as voting in Florida gets. Mostly rich, mostly old, mostly DINO and RINO. In other words, floor-sweepings. Retired yankees with boats in the slip and a grandkid or so floating around in the system.
It has been quite interesting cruising the net for information about FCAT so far. Not one link with potentially useful information has been other than a pdf file. Whyso?
..from the Florida Department of Education of course..
Latest FCAT scores show improvement
By MATTHEW WAITE and ALISA ULFERTS
Published May 10, 2004
"Florida's public school students fared better on this year's FCAT in most grades, with a majority of students scoring at or above grade level in reading for the first time.
Only 8th and 10th grade reading scores dipped on average when compared to last year, state education officials said Monday. In math, sixth graders were the only class to fare worse than last year's counterparts."
I don't give a damn if you read it or not. Numbingly useless. Most of the rest of this post is pretty-much the same.
* * * * * *
Yeah. And since the totally NEA-generated FCAT has a top score of 1,000 and one only needs a 10th grade "score" (pdf as usual) of 582, even a total moron should be able to make the grade. In 2002, Florida graduated 55% of it's high-schoolers. Read that link. Weep. I wonder how many of that 55 per cent were actually literate? A 58 would be a F back before the NEA started writing the rules. So now a 10th grade F is fittin' fer graduation from the Peepels Republick Scuule Sistim?
Go take the tenth grade FCAT math test . You will be instructed on how to use your calculator. 32 page, 1.8 MB pdf (what did you expect?). I just did, it's substantially different than the one posted in 2003, contains one glaring error, and is much more fun. The tenth grade writing test is only a 24 page, 1.2 MB pdf with the first 5 pages just instructions and TOC. Be sure to fill in the answer bubbles correctly. Do not make any stray marks around answer spaces.
* * * * * *
Back to anon. Whoever you are, did you actually read Terry's article? He was suprisingly succinct for a California academic. Also quite candid. It's worth another pass and this time I'll just post the entire column.
Unions don't have children's best interests at heart.
BY TERRY M. MOE
Saturday, January 22, 2005 12:01 a.m.
(Editor's note: This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13.)
The teachers unions have more influence over the public schools than any other group in American society. They influence schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities that shape virtually every aspect of school organization. And they influence schools from the top down, through political activities that shape government policy. They are the 800-pound gorillas of public education. Yet the American public is largely unaware of how influential they are--and how much they impede efforts to improve public schools.
The problem is not that the unions are somehow bad or ill-intentioned. They aren't. The problem is that when they simply do what all organizations do--pursue their own interests--they are inevitably led to do things that are not in the best interests of children.
To appreciate why this is so, consider the parallel to business firms. No one claims that these organizations are in business to promote the public interest. They are in business to make money, and this is the fundamental interest that drives their behavior. Thus, economists and policy makers fully expect firms to pollute the water and air when polluting is less costly (and more profitable) than not polluting--and that is why we have laws against pollution. The problem is not that firms are out to destroy the environment. The problem is simply that their interests are not identical to the public interest, and the two inevitably come into conflict.
Teachers unions have to be understood in much the same way. Their behavior is driven by fundamental interests too, except that their interests have to do with the jobs, working conditions, and material well-being of teachers. When unions negotiate with school boards, these are the interests they pursue, not those of the children who are supposed to be getting educated.
The resulting contracts often run to more than 100 pages, and are filled with provisions for higher wages, fantastic health benefits and retirement packages, generous time off, total job security, teacher transfer and assignment rights, restrictions on how teachers can be evaluated, restrictions on nonclassroom duties, and countless other rules that shackle the discretion of administrators. These contracts make the schools costly to run, heavily bureaucratic, and extremely difficult for administrators to manage. They also ensure that even the most incompetent teachers are virtually impossible to remove from the classroom. The organization of schools, as a result, is not even remotely the kind of organization one would design if the best interests of children were the guiding criterion.
Exactly the same can be said about the design of government education policy, which is tilted toward teacher interests through the unions' exercise of political power. The sources of their power are not difficult to discern. With three million members, they control huge amounts of money that can be handed out in campaign contributions. More important, they have members in every political district in the country, and can field armies of activists who make phone calls, ring doorbells and do whatever else is necessary to elect friends and defeat enemies. No other interest group in the country can match their political arsenal. It is not surprising, then, that politicians at all levels of government are acutely sensitive to what the teachers unions want. This is especially true of Democrats, most of whom are their reliable allies.
When the teachers unions want government to act, the reforms they demand are invariably in their own interests: more spending, higher salaries, smaller classes, more professional development, and so on. There is no evidence that any of these is an important determinant of student learning. What the unions want above all else, however, is to block reforms that seriously threaten their interests--and these reforms, not coincidentally, are attempts to bring about fundamental changes in the system that would significantly improve student learning.
The unions are opposed to No Child Left Behind, for example, and indeed to all serious forms of school accountability, because they do not want teachers' jobs or pay to depend on their performance. They are opposed to school choice--charter schools and vouchers--because they don't want students or money to leave any of the schools where their members work. They are opposed to the systematic testing of veteran teachers for competence in their subjects, because they know that some portion would fail and lose their jobs. And so it goes. If the unions can't kill these threatening reforms outright, they work behind the scenes to make them as ineffective as possible--resulting in accountability systems with no teeth, choice systems with little choice, and tests that anyone can pass.
If we really want to improve schools, something has to be done about the teachers unions. The idea that an enlightened "reform unionism" will somehow emerge that voluntarily puts the interests of children first--an idea in vogue among union apologists--is nothing more than a pipe dream. The unions are what they are. They have fundamental, job-related interests that are very real, and are the raison d'être of their organizations. These interests drive their behavior, and this is not going to change. Ever.
If the teachers unions won't voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them--through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education, link teachers' pay to their performance, make it easy to get rid of mediocre teachers, give administrators control over the assignment of teachers to schools and classrooms, and prohibit unions from spending a member's dues on political activities unless that member gives explicit prior consent.
These reforms won't come easily because the unions will use their existing power, which is tremendous, to defeat most attempts to take it away. There is, however, one ray of hope: that the American public will become informed about the unions' iron grip on the public schools and demand that something be done. Only when the public speaks out will politicians have the courage--and the electoral incentive--to do the right thing. And only then will the interests of children be given true priority.
Mr. Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, and a professor of political science at Stanford, is the winner of this year's Thomas B. Fordham Prize for distinguished scholarship in education.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006192
anon: "Do ya think that if people would pay teachers their equivalent salary in the business world this problem would still exist? "
self: anon, I've enjoyed a large number of teachers over the last half-century. There were three I would consider absolutely brilliant, knew exactly HOW to teach and even the slowest in their classes benefited as much as the best. One in particular always comes to mind. He had a blue alphanumerical tattoo on his remaining arm. He got paid the same as the required phys-ed "coach" that always had us strip in the exercise room before he turned the lights out for 30 minutes of "contemplation". Yeah. Right. He got a major-league knuckle sandwich when he fondled MY balls. I did not pass his required course.
anon: "..equivalent salary in the business world"
self: You'll have to find me "equivalents" in the business world.
anon: " Name another professional field where you can expect to start at $30 with a Master's degree."
self: Define "professional" for me. I just scanned the offerings from UC Berkeley and there seems to be quite a lot of things with no real use other than amusement easily afforded by a low-priced internet connection. It's hard to think of a paying job for a Ph.D. in "Folklore" or what I consider a horror, "Political Science". The latter should be brought around back and shot as soon as possible.
There are really no equivalents in the "business world". The very best teachers are those that part-time FROM the business world. Been there on both sides. Wonderful both sides except it costs too much on one, pays too little on the other! ;o)
anon: "Truly, with a PhD at a Community College I can expect to start at $62,200. Wonder what I'd make in business with that kind of qualification."
self: PhD in what? Bean sprout cultivation? If it was a field I'm familiar with such as electronic engineering, the chances of teaching at a CC would probably be quite low as the call for such in a young, competent state is quite high and those that are actually competent often get offers over $40 K a year!. It's best to make plans with EE much prior to 34. 35 is corporate cutoff. I imagine that the gummit would pay that enormously ridiculous amount using the usual stolen monies to someone teaching the fine art of cooking turkin.
$62,500 plus the normal state benefits (usually around 40% of base salary) to "teach" CC gummit "students" is quite nice. Did you get a teacher's certificate with the PhD? Most gummit skuuls require such these daze.
anon: "I think if they make the salaries higher, competition for teaching positions will ensue and you'll be left with happy, well qualified candidates who you shouldn't need to evaluate."
self: Now why would you even think that could make a tiny difference? What competition? There is NO competition allowed by the NEA. More pay for the same old NEA crap? Sorry, it doesn't play, not without accountability. Good teachers; priceless. Third-gen trash teachers, can't even fire them. Hence, what we've got and what will remain except for the few parents that pay the government schools while sending their kids to private schools and the few percent that can and do the best by home schooling. Think about it. An average classroom in Florida costs around $200,000 per year per teacher. Pitifully few "graduate" and the ones that do, well, met any of those "college-ready" kids recently? Weep.
anon: "You wanna try to explain that higher property taxes are a good thing? :)"
self: Hopefully the smiley at the end means you have remembered I'm a hard-core libertarian. Property taxes are unconstitutional. Read it. There isn't even a possibility of any sort of a post, phone call, letter, radio messege, pony express, nothing, nada, nyet, zip, zilch, that would have me attempting "higher property taxes are a good thing". Thoughts of that nature remind me I like fava beans and a nice Chianti. Liver is optional.
