[CA renter]

[quote=joec]

Wow, a post I actually agree with CAR on…

The problem with the situation if the USA were to become a true democracy is would I even want to live here or would it even be safe?

Having a pure democracy in concept sounds nice and ideal, but that’s only assuming the people setting it up are of fair minded thought.

There are probably more lazy/violent annoying people in the world and if the majority had their say, it will not be a world/government you even want to be in or have any part of.

I sorta succumb to the belief that it’s pretty much impossible to appease everyone and not in my lifetime, but in the future, there maybe some other revolution in the US, but I’ll be long dead and decayed by then…

Even if you were to kick out all the politicians like in Iceland, there is no proof that the new government will be any better. My wild guess is this Iceland thing will be a major flop.

And the US is probably far more diverse in ethnic makeup and political view and general household mindset…[/quote]

Funny. You could replace the word “politicians” with “teachers” and then you’d be agreeing with me on the teacher tenure thread, too. 😉

[CA renter]

Here’s the script for Inside Job, a movie about the financial crisis. They talk about Iceland in the first few pages. A good read, and a good movie.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/insidejob_screenplay.pdf

[CA renter]

And did you see anything about these protests in the MSM? This was in 2008, well before the OWS protests.

————-

But, hey, look over there! I think Miley Cyrus is twerking with a bear!!! Like, OMG!!!

[CA renter]

When you protest in an attempt to reform the banking/finance system in the U.S., you will be labeled a “domestic terrorist,” and dealt with accordingly.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

[CA renter]

Not only Iceland, but the MSM in the US has largely disregarded many of the protests in Europe and around the world.

What happened in Iceland is exactly what people in the US were trying to do with the *original* Tea Party before its attention was diverted away from banking and turned to healthcare reform — thrown into the ring during the financial crisis by the complicit “left wing” of the Two Party system — and twisted into another “right wing” arm of the same, corrupt Two Party system.

It’s also what people were trying to accomplish with the *original* Occupy Wall Street movement before that was twisted into “Occupy Everywhere” and the focus was shifted away from banking/finance to helping poor people and deadbeat squatters stay in homes they never had any rights to, among many other “left wing” bullet points put out by the corrupt Two Party system like immigration reform, the anti-war movement, etc. (which might all be noble in their own right, but should never have been a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement).

The government had a very strong hand in diluting these movements and redirecting the energy to more “safe” topics that are well managed by the PTB and their MSM lapdogs.

Remember how the original OWS movement was totally unable to get any airtime initially, even though thousands of people were marching through the streets?

And precious little was said about the HUGE numbers of people who were calling, faxing, and writing letters to lawmakers, strongly opposing any bank bailouts. And TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We are still paying for these bailouts today in many ways, especially in the artificially low interest rates and the devaluation of the dollar which further impoverish savers, workers, and the elderly; while the wealthiest asset owners continue to see their wealth increase dramatically due to the artificially high asset prices that have resulted from all of this manipulation.

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali]
But if kids are working on their own through content at their own pace then you don’t need to put 30 kids in a room with 1 aide. You could take 100 of the kids that this type of teaching works really well for and put then in a room without the disruptive kids. You could put disruptive kids in isolation or in smaller groups. You’re not forced to commit to this 30 people in a room dynamic.

The biggest problem I have with the education system is there has been absolutely 0 improvement in efficiency or effectiveness with the technological advancements we’ve made over the years. In my opinion I think there would have been some improvements if the School Districts weren’t so resistant to change. A private company that resistant to change would have failed by now, but because it’s public and supported by tax dollars they don’t have to change. That is where the biggest problem lies. Tenure is just one of the numerous barriers that protect the school district from having to change.

Say something that’s been fairly successful like the Preuss school. Naysayers want to dismiss those results because they don’t have to deal with the challenges that exist in poorer neighborhood schools. But maybe that’s exactly what the public schools should be doing. Take the smart kids in the poor schools and put them together with good teachers and accelerate their learning process rather than just teaching to the middle with disruptive kids causing problems for everybody. Segregate the students not by race, color or background but by IQ or desire to learn.[/quote]

[Edited to delete duplicate portion of response. -CAR]

As for the bolded part of your quote, guess what the schools/classrooms would look like if we segregated by IQ? It would be segregated by race, color, and background/SES. That is why we legally cannot track students by IQ…and why teachers have to teach to the middle of the class. It is against the law to track by IQ.

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter]
It is ALWAYS about resources and the power we attain via control/ownership of those resources.[/quote]

You’re giving the war deciders too much credit for rational decision making.

Humans do all kinds of things for pride, braggadocio, revenge, hubris…

Vietnam. Texas cowboy pride on the part of Johnson.

Afghanistan. Revenge. Bush said “you fuck with use, I’ll blow your brains out.”

Iraq. Hubris. We are the biggest, baddest.
Texas cowboy pride on the part of Bush who listened to Cheney (who thought we could get the oil).

It’s not good to be led by trigger happy, gun toting, low education boys. As pawns, even knights, we stand a better chance with rational, intellectual leaders.[/quote]

Vietnam: Sea lanes and ports, agricultural resources, a foothold in Asia, an attempt to keep the “communist threat” (with whom we were competing for control of the world’s resources) at bay.

Afghanistan: Oil pipelines, metal and mineral deposits, also an attempt to keep those “damn commies” at bay.

Iraq: Oil and a foothold in the ME. Iraq has been a piece of the puzzle in WWI and WWI, as well.

http://historymedren.about.com/library/text/bltxtiraq9.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Iraqi_War

….

While I certainly agree that ego is involved where certain individuals are concerned (and isn’t greed largely driven by ego, as well?), I’m quite convinced that the elite of the world are in a constant battle for control of the world’s resources. The rest of us are pawns, and the stories we are told in the MSM are designed to make us think that we hold some sway in the world’s events — and that we can enjoy some of the “trickling down” of that wealth, too — so that we don’t revolt.

[CA renter]

[quote=UCGal]
I agree that students have different abilities to learn.

But with no metrics in place – teachers are not judged on whether the students learn anything. If there is a positive delta in what the student knows at the end of the year, vs what they knew at the beginning of the year – REGARDLESS of where they started – then the student made progress.

I have a friend with a child with significant learning disabilities. My friend has had to push hard to make sure that appropriate material is given to her son… Some of the teachers would just park him in a corner. My own experience is that a less than stellar teacher can stagnate the learning of a gifted student. Rather than giving more depth/breadth, or alternate material, to a student that has already mastered the grade level material – he was parked in the corner. My son ended up hating school because it was boring and unchallenging. (I changed schools after this. He totally changed his outlook after I got him out of that environment.)

If a program is developed where students are pushed to learn from where they are – to improve – then all students are learning. Right now the system is set to teach to the medium… and fails the kids at either end of the spectrum.

Obviously there could be factors put in for kids with 504s and/or IEPs so that the teacher is given a pass if the improvement is less for the kids with learning disabilities. But improvement and learning should absolutely be the end goal for every student. Not parking in a corner.[/quote]

Yes, all students should be making progress throughout the year, and it should be measurable progress, but the gifted child will learn perhaps 3-10 times (or more) what the learning disabled or low IQ student will learn in a given year, and this differential gets magnified as the years progress.

Many teachers would LOVE to track students by ability so that they wouldn’t have to “teach to the middle,” but as I’ve noted in the post above, that’s not legal, and some would argue that it’s also not moral or ethical. But even if we did track, the teachers would still have to teach to the middle of that classroom’s bell curve. The difference between someone with an IQ at the 99th percentile and someone with an IQ at the 99.9th percentile is HUGE. While a teacher could certainly make sure that the students have material that would enable them to progress at their own pace (at the 99th percentile and above, a lot of the learning would likely be self-directed), the actual teacher instruction would either be too advanced for those on the lower end, or boring for those at the top.

Ideally, every student could learn at his/her own individual pace, but that kind of learning might not be evident on a state test as some students might hyper-focus on one thing to the detriment of all of the other subjects, etc.

FWIW, the reason we started homeschooling was because our “gifted” child was 2-3 grade levels above her class in certain areas, and at grade level in other areas, but the principal wouldn’t allow her to be in a pull-out program because they didn’t believe in it for students below third grade. The teacher was awesome and fully supportive, but the principal/school district had rules that prevented her from doing what was best for our child. The teacher was not able to spend the time specifically with our one child while she had 20+ students who, technically, needed more help; and I never held this against her because I could see what she was dealing with when I volunteered in the classroom. She helped me talk my DH into homeschooling at the parent-teacher conference.

[CA renter]

[quote=EconProf]Today’s copy of USA Today has some interesting data points about the status quo with existing tenure and unions in CA:
1. An average of 2.2 teachers a year are dismissed for unsatisfactory performance in a state where 275,000 teachers work.
2. A CA teacher has a better chance of being struck by lightning than being fired for incompetence.
3. A teacher in CA can gain what amounts to lifetime job protection in less than two years–the deadline for deciding whether to give tenure to new, probationary teachers. When layoffs occur, the newest teachers are the first to go, even if they are top performers. Seniority rules.
This is the status quo that union defenders have to answer for. Now that parents, employers, and the broader public is demanding change, I think that is a good thing. And I really don’t mind if rich people are among those advocating change. Let’s look at the merits of the arguments, not who is pushing for the needed reforms.[/quote]

You think that unions and teachers should be scrutinized, but the mega-millionaires and billionaires who are pushing the anti-union message shouldn’t be scrutinized? Oh, hell no! More than anything, we need to get the word out about who is behind the anti-union message and why they are pushing this message. And it has nothing at all to do with what’s right for students or taxpayers!

In this post, you acknowledge that the non-tenured teachers are more heavily concentrated in the poor and poorly-performing schools. Doesn’t this contradict your entire message about unions and tenure putting these students at a disadvantage? Wouldn’t those non-tenured teachers want to “work harder” in order to avoid being terminated?

So, again, I’m asking you: Where is the evidence; where are the statistics and data — taking into account IQ/SES/parental resources — that shows that teachers’ unions and/or tenure have a negative impact on student outcomes? Answer this question, and then we can continue with the conversation once we have more information.

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali]
But if kids are working on their own through content at their own pace then you don’t need to put 30 kids in a room with 1 aide. You could take 100 of the kids that this type of teaching works really well for and put then in a room without the disruptive kids. You could put disruptive kids in isolation or in smaller groups. You’re not forced to commit to this 30 people in a room dynamic.

The biggest problem I have with the education system is there has been absolutely 0 improvement in efficiency or effectiveness with the technological advancements we’ve made over the years. In my opinion I think there would have been some improvements if the School Districts weren’t so resistant to change. A private company that resistant to change would have failed by now, but because it’s public and supported by tax dollars they don’t have to change. That is where the biggest problem lies. Tenure is just one of the numerous barriers that protect the school district from having to change.

Say something that’s been fairly successful like the Preuss school. Naysayers want to dismiss those results because they don’t have to deal with the challenges that exist in poorer neighborhood schools. But maybe that’s exactly what the public schools should be doing. Take the smart kids in the poor schools and put them together with good teachers and accelerate their learning process rather than just teaching to the middle with disruptive kids causing problems for everybody. Segregate the students not by race, color or background but by IQ or desire to learn.[/quote]

Now for the other parts of your post, I have a personal example with my own three kids. We use an excellent online curriculum for the basics, and I still have to monitor them, explain things they still have difficulty understanding, and keep track of all of their work (even though much of it is online, we still need to make sure they are progressing at a decent rate). Though my kids are pretty well motivated, and we block out time for them every day (no phone, playdates, or other distractions during this time), it can still be a lot of work to keep them all on task throughout the day.

I would also argue that you are totally wrong about no improvements in efficiency or effectiveness with technology over the years. Most classrooms use technology to supplement lessons, and some use technology almost exclusively (usually charters, magnets, etc.).

Schools are constantly changing, but all too often, that change results in little to no improvement simply because you can’t change what’s coming into the schools. The student body is the #1 factor in how well or poorly a school will perform. You could pretty much put a group of highly gifted kids in a closet with a bunch of books, and they would come out well educated. Not so much for students with average or low IQs and no support at home.

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali][quote=CA renter]
Also, you’re underestimating how important classroom management is, especially if students are going to be working on their own. An aide will not be able to deal with all of the questions and situations that will arise in the classroom, especially if students are left to their own devices.[/quote]

But if kids are working on their own through content at their own pace then you don’t need to put 30 kids in a room with 1 aide. You could take 100 of the kids that this type of teaching works really well for and put then in a room without the disruptive kids. You could put disruptive kids in isolation or in smaller groups. You’re not forced to commit to this 30 people in a room dynamic.

The biggest problem I have with the education system is there has been absolutely 0 improvement in efficiency or effectiveness with the technological advancements we’ve made over the years. In my opinion I think there would have been some improvements if the School Districts weren’t so resistant to change. A private company that resistant to change would have failed by now, but because it’s public and supported by tax dollars they don’t have to change. That is where the biggest problem lies. Tenure is just one of the numerous barriers that protect the school district from having to change.

Say something that’s been fairly successful like the Preuss school. Naysayers want to dismiss those results because they don’t have to deal with the challenges that exist in poorer neighborhood schools. But maybe that’s exactly what the public schools should be doing. Take the smart kids in the poor schools and put them together with good teachers and accelerate their learning process rather than just teaching to the middle with disruptive kids causing problems for everybody. Segregate the students not by race, color or background but by IQ or desire to learn.[/quote]

We’ve discussed the Preuss example (and other related issues) here:

[quote=CA renter]As to the rest of your post, you’re still working from the assumption that it’s the **teachers** who are failing these students, when those who are familiar with education will tell you that it’s the **students** and **parents** who are failing themselves. Sticking a private school where a public school once was — and educating the same population there — will not likely yield better results. As a matter of fact, because of a private school’s inability to meet the needs of special ed and higher-needs students, they would likely perform worse than the public school that was replaced.

Regarding Preuss, it’s the third requirement that explains why they do well. The first two simply mean that they accept the **highest performing students with the most dedicated parents** from low-income families where the parents don’t have college degrees. The students need a teacher’s recommendation from their previous school, and, “student applicants must demonstrate high motivation and potential to attend an academically competitive university or college,” which most likely means they have a better-than-average I.Q.

You cannot compare Preuss with a typical public school in a low-income neighborhood. They are not even close. Preuss enjoys the benefits of having VERY wealthy, private donors, in addition to the typical funds given to public or charter schools. They also have use of the UCSD campus and many of the university’s ammenities (there’s a cost component there), and UCSD students who provide FREE tutoring to these students — we use tutors for our kids, and I can assure you, it is EXTREMELY expensive. They have top-of-the-line classrooms, technology, sports facilities/equipment, and materials. Do you have any idea what all of that costs? I can assure you, their program costs more than twice what the typical public school costs.

As I’ve mentioned before, you have to consider ALL sources of income when comparing what schools spend on students. With traditional public schools, most of those income sources and costs are public information; there is very little private money, compared to what private (or special charter) schools get. Read the bottom of the piece linked here, to see how much things cost, and how they are trying to get PRIVATE funding to provide these things. It’s nice when you’re a high-profile component of a very wealthy community, with nice, wealthy people who want to “do good” in their communities. How many rich people are willing to consistently donate millions of dollars to support a single school in the gang-infested parts of the inner city?

Here is a small sampling of what Preuss offers (regular public schools can’t even begin to offer all of this, or the state would have been broke decades ago):

The Tutoring Program
To give its students extra academic help with its challenging curriculum, the Preuss School also conducts a tutoring program in partnership with the University. The program employs two different groups of tutors. One is enrolled in a class through UCSD’s Teacher Education Program; the class awards credit for a certain number of hours of tutoring per month. The other is made up of UCSD student volunteers from Thurgood Marshall College. Through these avenues, the Preuss School typically has 150-200 tutors available to help assist students at any given time.
Counseling Program
The Preuss School’s counseling staff plays a central role in the school, seeing to it that those students who are lagging behind get academic help as soon as possible and providing guidance in the college selection and application process. Students living in poverty often confront many difficult issues that call for support beyond regular school counseling, however. To help them, UCSD professor Peter Gourevitch established an endowed fund in memory of his late wife, Lisa Hirschman, a teacher and psychologist. The Hirschman Fund enables two psychotherapists and an intern to work with Preuss School students, providing them with the psychosocial services they need to overcome the problems they face.

Mutual Benefits
The benefits of the relationship between the school and UCSD are extensive and reciprocal. For example, University students volunteer at the Preuss School as tutors and mentors, and many have found the experience so rewarding that they are now considering careers in teaching. Preuss School students do internships on campus with UCSD faculty to gain experience in fields that interest them and also interact with professors when they are researching senior papers. At the same time, UCSD mathematics faculty have been turning to the school to help determine how students best learn the subject, and social sciences faculty have been examining the academic performance of Preuss School students compared with that of peers who were not selected by the lottery. Preuss School teachers have received training at the University, and students in UCSD’s teacher education program observe classes at the school. UCSD undergraduates serve as tutors for students and interns for teachers. Engineering faculty help with the school’s robotics teams.

Shared Resources
Access to such outstanding University resources as its library, athletic fields and San Diego Supercomputer Center translates into unprecedented opportunities for students and teachers. As one example, in 2003, the school dedicated a visualization center that will provide a virtual reality gateway to the world, eventually enabling students to interact in real time with images stored thousands of miles away, such as a fly-over of the surface of Mars and navigating deep inside a human cell. The center, part of the National Science Foundation’s OptiPuter project, has brought together the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (a partnership between UCSD and UCI) and the Visualization Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Connected to a high-performance network, it will permit students to work collaboratively with University faculty and graduate students on research projects.

http://www.sarahlifton.com/pdf/case_statements/Preuss_School_case.pdf
—————————–

From that same link, some possible evidence that “old, tenured teachers” are NOT the problem:

Master Teachers/Teacher Supplements
While the teachers at the Preuss School are dedicated, enthusiastic and innovative, a high percentage are comparatively new to the field. The school’s limited funds for personnel have hampered its ability to attract more experienced teachers, who command higher salaries. As a consequence, the younger teachers on the faculty, who could benefit from mentoring by the most experienced, highest-caliber teachers, lack access to this important resource for career development.

To address this need, one of the Preuss School’s highest priorities is to generate private support for teacher salary supplements and/or hiring bonuses in order to add more veteran teachers to the faculty. Specifically, the school is seeking funds to hire teacher leaders in all the core subject areas, including a literacy chair, who will be responsible for mentoring other teachers in the area of literacy.
In addition, the school is seeking contributions to implement a formal resident scholar program, providing release time for UCSD professors to work with the Preuss School faculty in their subject areas to ensure that curriculum and content are state of the art and preparing students properly for college.
[/quote]

http://piggington.com/comment/reply/15118/189839?quote=1#comment-form

[CA renter]

Over-leveraging and increasing bets when markets are already high is almost always going to end in a bad way.

Thanks for sharing, HLS, and glad you’re able to pop in now and again. I always enjoy your input.

[CA renter]

Wow, what prompted you to move to Texas, desmond?

Cool videos. Are those turkey vultures in the second videos or?

[CA renter]

[quote=scaredyclassic]frog and toad, though friends, will not generally get you high. it’s a very speciifc toad. don’t just go randomly sucking on amphibians…

but seriously, while drugs harm some, they may provide deep insigts and lasting changes that benefit others. on balance, psychedlic mushrooms, LSDand all hallucinogenic toads should be legal.[/quote]

Not sure if they should be legal, per se, but I think the world would be a better place if more/most people were to experience mind-expanding drugs at least once or twice in their lives. It really can be life-altering, and in a very positive way, IMO.

[CA renter]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=moneymaker]Has anyone ever licked the back of a toad to get high?[/quote]

My ex wife kissed me. She didn’t get high, but eventually she did get sick.[/quote]

Funny! 🙂

[Author]

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