Increase Class Size - Layoff Teachers

#76
#76
The Ron Mexico said:
I'm sure it has already been said, but, the public school system is an embarrassment. Not because of the teachers, the parents. Many parents expect 100% of the education to occur at school. They, the parents, have no desire to push their kids academically or have any involvement whatsoever.

Kids with involved parents do much better in school. This is not a teacher problem or Governor problem.

Signed,
Captain Obvious
Click to expand...


It's not all parents. We do have bad teachers, but that's because it's a hard system to be sucessful in right now.

I think our biggest issue is the welfare system. I've had a lot students tell me they don't need an education, because they're just going to get their check every month and ride fourwheelers, hunt, and fish all day like their dad.
 
#77
#77
Except then welfare for them will run out at some point. Not that it's enough for anybody to actually live off of (I spent months debating this point with posters here, if you find it contentious I will dig up the other thread -- let's keep this one on point with education), and I wholly reject the notion that most people would prefer to be on welfare.
 
#78
#78
milohimself said:
Except then welfare for them will run out at some point. Not that it's enough for anybody to actually live off of (I spent months debating this point with posters here, if you find it contentious I will dig up the other thread -- let's keep this one on point with education), and I wholly reject the notion that most people would prefer to be on welfare.
Click to expand...

It sounds preposterous to have an entire facet of society that is content with collecting welfare benefits, but trust me there truly is.. I am a social worker, my job is too counsel this "facet" of society and determine eligibility for government programs as well as be a liaison to community resources.. I have seen cases where people have turned down jobs so their benefits wouldn't be cut by as little as a few dollars seen people who are at retirement age and have never worked a day in their life, seen people who have turned down $7000 in social security back payments so their food stamps wouldnt close. It happens, these people are real. If I weren't mobile I would start a thread and break it down even more.. Enough to make you truly question the intelligence of the people at the helm. You will stop talking about education reform and focus that energy on calling for welfare overhauls
 
#80
#80
milohimself said:
Except then welfare for them will run out at some point. Not that it's enough for anybody to actually live off of (I spent months debating this point with posters here, if you find it contentious I will dig up the other thread -- let's keep this one on point with education), and I wholly reject the notion that most people would prefer to be on welfare.
Click to expand...

Milo I've had kids tell me they want to grow up to get welfare. Guess where they learned this mindset?
 
#81
#81
Scotty's Flat Top said:
It sounds preposterous to have an entire facet of society that is content with collecting welfare benefits, but trust me there truly is.. I am a social worker, my job is too counsel this "facet" of society and determine eligibility for government programs as well as be a liaison to community resources.. I have seen cases where people have turned down jobs so their benefits wouldn't be cut by as little ad a few dollars seen people who are at retirement age and have never worked a satin there life, seen people who have turned down $7000 in social security back payments so their food stamps wouldnt close. It happens, these people are real. If I weren't mobile I would start a thread and break it down even more.. Enough to make you truly question the intelligence of the people at the helm. You will stop talking about education reform and focus that energy on calling for welfare overhauls
Click to expand...

Seeing a serious Scotty post is weird.
 
#83
#83
lylsmorr said:
Milo I've had kids tell me they want to grow up to get welfare. Guess where they learned this mindset?
Click to expand...

Dude I have seen mothers bring their daughters in proud as peacock when they are old enough to get their own welfare case. Passing the torch so to speak
 
#84
#84
My wife teaches pre-k, so we are dealing with 4-5 year olds.

She had a little girl a couple of years ago who told her when they were talking about careers that she was gonna grow up to be a whore. Her momma was one, her grandmother was one and as soon as she was old enough she wanted to be one too. She didn't "want no job".

(she also had another little girl the year before who had experience in the trade. mom was a hooker and found she could make more money with less work with certain clients by letting her daughter take her place. hell is too good for that *****.)
 
Last edited:
#85
#85
milohimself said:
Except then welfare for them will run out at some point. Not that it's enough for anybody to actually live off of (I spent months debating this point with posters here, if you find it contentious I will dig up the other thread -- let's keep this one on point with education), and I wholly reject the notion that most people would prefer to be on welfare.
Click to expand...


My students average family income is 10,500 dollars.

We are at 90% free and reduced meals.
 
#86
#86
Volst53 said:
My students average family income is 10,500 dollars.

We are at 90% free and reduced meals.
Click to expand...

Yep. According to one kid who acts like a fool 99% of the time(no coincidence), why would I want to work when I can stay home and play video games for a living?
 
#88
#88
lylsmorr said:
Yep. According to one kid who acts like a fool 99% of the time(no coincidence), why would I want to work when I can stay home and play video games for a living?
Click to expand...

One of my students had a doctor to say he has a "back injury" but he is at the park playing basketball everyday after school. Everyone in his family is on the draw and his mom is already setting him up to get his when he gets out of school.

This kid also comes to school with 180 dollar north face jacket and all name brand stuff.
 
#89
#89
Scotty's Flat Top said:
It sounds preposterous to have an entire facet of society that is content with collecting welfare benefits, but trust me there truly is.. I am a social worker, my job is too counsel this "facet" of society and determine eligibility for government programs as well as be a liaison to community resources.. I have seen cases where people have turned down jobs so their benefits wouldn't be cut by as little as a few dollars seen people who are at retirement age and have never worked a day in their life, seen people who have turned down $7000 in social security back payments so their food stamps wouldnt close. It happens, these people are real. If I weren't mobile I would start a thread and break it down even more.. Enough to make you truly question the intelligence of the people at the helm. You will stop talking about education reform and focus that energy on calling for welfare overhauls
Click to expand...

I never said there weren't those kinds of people out there. I'm familiar with them. I've spent time in the offices of social workers, and done a term's worth of work with the sociology director at my university as part of my health studies education. I've talked to a number of people on various social benefits.

Hell, I'm actually on food stamps right now, because I've got a few terms left on my degree and the money I get left over from financial aid and supplemental income I get training and doing oil changes and brake jobs for my friends doesn't quite cut it on a month to month basis. That very program helps me feed myself. I also do a bit of vegetable gardening when it's seasonable to feed myself. But, food stamps helps me put food in my mouth.

What I am saying, is that every single experience I have had and every bit of research I have done write ups on (which now belong to Portland State University, I don't have them with me ATM) shows that social benefits is a fluid situation, that the vast majority of people on food stamps, TANF, etc. don't stay on it (although there is quite a bit of relapse after periods of up to a few years) and that people by and large don't want to be on social benefits forever.

Are there welfare queens out there? Yes. Are there people who game the system? Absolutely. Do those situations represent anything close to a majority of people on social benefits? Not even close, and I can provide any sort of empirical evidence you like that shows that is in fact the case.

PS, since you're in social work, the Dr. whom I did some work for has some excellent books on the subject. Look up Karen Seccombe on Amazon.
 
#90
#90
RespectTradition said:
My wife teaches pre-k, so we are dealing with 4-5 year olds.

She had a little girl a couple of years ago who told her when they were talking about careers that she was gonna grow up to be a whore. Her momma was one, her grandmother was one and as soon as she was old enough she wanted to be one too. She didn't "want no job".

(she also had another little girl the year before who had experience in the trade. mom was a hooker and found she could make more money with less work with certain clients by letting her daughter take her place. hell is too good for that *****.)
Click to expand...

That's a horrible situation. I remember the first time that hit home for me. There was a girl in my high school who was a pretty good student, had excellent grades in business and accounting classes, was in some AP stuff and was one of the better soccer players on a pretty competitive team.

I had heard the spot in the little downtown section of the town I grew up in, near the station for the train to Hillsboro, was where that sort of 'action' was happening. Apparently the key was to look for a girl with her right pant leg rolled up. I went down there when I was 15 to see if it was true, and it was -- there was a girl I didn't recognize who had her right pant leg rolled up, talked to a guy in his car for a few minutes then hopped in. A year later I saw the aforementioned girl near the train station, pant leg rolled up. It was incredibly tragic.

And to make that a 'family tradition' of sorts is just horrid. There's no other word for it. It's beyond tragic, but when you combine a broken home with the kind of easy money that prostitution or even stripping can bring in, the slope becomes pretty slippery. Gotta pray for those people.
 
#91
#91
milohimself said:
That's a horrible situation. I remember the first time that hit home for me. There was a girl in my high school who was a pretty good student, had excellent grades in business and accounting classes, was in some AP stuff and was one of the better soccer players on a pretty competitive team.

I had heard the spot in the little downtown section of the town I grew up in, near the station for the train to Hillsboro, was where that sort of 'action' was happening. Apparently the key was to look for a girl with her right pant leg rolled up. I went down there when I was 15 to see if it was true, and it was -- there was a girl I didn't recognize who had her right pant leg rolled up, talked to a guy in his car for a few minutes then hopped in. A year later I saw the aforementioned girl near the train station, pant leg rolled up. It was incredibly tragic.

And to make that a 'family tradition' of sorts is just horrid. There's no other word for it. It's beyond tragic, but when you combine a broken home with the kind of easy money that prostitution or even stripping can bring in, the slope becomes pretty slippery. Gotta pray for those people.
Click to expand...

I am willing to pray for those caught in such a situation. The mom who puts her kid in it though, makes me really want to discard my pacifism.

I remember back in my wilder days there was this girl in my art appreciation class that I thought was rather cute. Some friends and I took another friend to the Classic Cat in Nashville for his 18th birthday. To my surprise she walked out on stage and proceeded to strip. Wow. She was hotter naked. Anyway, as she is working the floor, she gets to my table and recognizes me. She gets all weird looking and just walks back to the dressing room. The next day she is waiting outside class and catches me before I go in. We talked for a minute and she begged me not to tell anyone. She offered to give me a wonderful afternoon of fun if I would just promise not to tell anyone. I did the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in life and told her no, that I wouldn't tell anyone and she didn't have to do anything to buy my silence. She would probably have been awesome... oh, well.
 
#92
#92
Damn. The Zonetards would have strung you up for passing up the surest thing in recorded history. Good decision, though. I know first hand that getting mixed up with a stripper only ends badly.
 
#93
#93
Rule # 17 - If you're single, you never turn down some strange. Never. Even gay guys know this.
 
#95
#95
In all sincerity, it is truly sad to see how some "parents" are raising today's youth. If you're going to spread your damn legs then it's your responsibility to take care of the kid. Or give him/her up for adoption. Don't keep the kid for a check then treat them like shat.

ETA - I say this because in my early weeks on the job, I overheard a kid(13 years old) say he wanted to be a drug dealer. That was his life's goal. To be the biggest drug dealer in a town of less than 3,000.
 
Last edited:
#96
#96
lylsmorr said:
In all sincerity, it is truly sad to see how some "parents" are raising today's youth. If you're going to spread your damn legs then it's your responsibility to take care of the kid. Or give him/her up for adoption. Don't keep the kid for a check then treat them like shat.

ETA - I say this because in my early weeks on the job, I overheard a kid(13 years old) say he wanted to be a drug dealer. That was his life's goal. To be the biggest drug dealer in a town of less than 3,000.
Click to expand...

At least his goals aren't to be a middle-of-the-pack dealer.
My wife has very similar stories, and she's a kindergarten teacher. I've known her since she was a 10th grader, and even then, she talked about how it was her dream to be an elementary school teacher in a lower-income area. Now, she hates it because of the way things are in this state. She really is one of the good ones. She's received major local or regional honors for her performance three of her seven years as a teacher. Still, she's having to deal with this state-of-fear mentality being pushed all across the state for teachers. She had to fill out 40 pages of performance review nonsense earlier this year, and I believe she has to do it again this semester. They aren't just picking out the poor teachers and helping them get better. They're making the talented teachers hate the career too.
I see very little that benefits the students in Haslam's attack on TN teachers.
 
#97
#97
milohimself said:
It has been tested, I referenced Chile and turning education over to the private market when the Chicago Boys went in. Schools became more efficient, but the gains in education outcomes compared to previous standing and the rest of the region and the world were somewhere between negligible and non-existent.

That would be fine if our only issue was that we were spending too much on schools, which is true, but the larger issue at work here is that the achievement gap needs to be narrowed greatly as well as providing better educational outcomes across all classes. A fully privatized system is in direct conflict with that.
Click to expand...

The Chilean project had its flaws. Yeah, they allowed for a voucher system, but government wouldn't allow for tuition to be charged on top of the voucher. This restricts competition, and tainted the results. The results may just simply be telling us one-size-fits-all education doesn't really work in the private sector either. I say, "duh".

I'm looking through some analysis on Chile and it all seems to be favorable towards your point of view, but I can't seem to find basic information. I've basically only found that after 15 years, public schools were outperforming the private according to their metrics. I want to know how the schools are performing in relation to what it was like before the voucher program. One of the theories supported by voucher advocates is that introducing competition will significantly improve public schools. With a voucher program they still get more money per student on average, so they have an advantage over private schools in that sense.

My stance doesn't really come from data and studies, just logic and reason. I just can't believe in the notion that people are better off with fewer choices. I don't know how that could be possible.
 
Last edited:
#98
#98
Obama has apparently lifted the NCLB requirements from TN and nine other states. Just heard that news.
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top