ACF 2012 Presidential Election Poll

[HiGirlsRHot]

HiGirlsRHot wrote:

Rather than spending time debating this, I'd recommend watching Waiting for Superman. It is a Sundance winning documentary that follows families hoping to get into charter/private schools. It is really good movie and very educational. To me the most interesting thing is it that was directed not by some right wing guy, but by Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

You might want to watch "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman," which gives a critique of the first film.

You mean the film made by the teacher union, that has no film critic bothered to review, which has Rotten Tomatoes score of 45, (as opposed to 89 for Superman) and I can't even get on Netflix? That film?? I tried to watch it online but it was so bad that I gave up after 10 minute . Perhaps it is telling that the teacher union attempting to education the general public on education issues, put out a film which is so poor that it wouldn't get a passing grade at any film school.

Have you watched Waiting for Superman?

 

[Nordling]

HiGirlsRHot wrote:

Rather than spending time debating this, I'd recommend watching Waiting for Superman. It is a Sundance winning documentary that follows families hoping to get into charter/private schools. It is really good movie and very educational. To me the most interesting thing is it that was directed not by some right wing guy, but by Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

You might want to watch "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman," which gives a critique of the first film.

You mean the film made by the teacher union, that has no film critic bothered to review, which has Rotten Tomatoes score of 45, (as opposed to 89 for Superman) and I can't even get on Netflix? That film?? I tried to watch it online but it was so bad that I gave up after 10 minute . Perhaps it is telling that the teacher union attempting to education the general public on education issues, put out a film which is so poor that it wouldn't get a passing grade at any film school.

Have you watched Waiting for Superman?

"...to education the general public..."

Have you tried learning English?

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

Rather than spending time debating this, I'd recommend watching Waiting for Superman. It is a Sundance winning documentary that follows families hoping to get into charter/private schools. It is really good movie and very educational. To me the most interesting thing is it that was directed not by some right wing guy, but by Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

Oh man... he sounds totally unbiased and reputable... is he friends with the guy who directed Obama's America 2016? :lol:

Google is your friend. He is a self professed liberal Democrat, and according to Wiki the only guy to have directed 3 top grossing documentary.

In fact I just learned this about Guggenheim

He directed Barack Obama's biographical film, which aired during the Democratic National Convention, and Obama's infomercial,

Among the fans of the films fans include the President Education secretary Arnie Duncan.

So I doubt he is buddies with Dinesh D'Sousa (sp)

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

"...to education the general public..."

Have you tried learning English?

Do you want to have a discussion or just throw around cheap shots? It is a simple question. Have you watched the film?

 

[Nordling]

"...to education the general public..."

Have you tried learning English?

Do you want to have a discussion or just throw around cheap shots? It is a simple question. Have you watched the film?

Watched both. Superman had great production values, inconvenient had shitty production values. But what is it we really want to know?

Public schools are not doing well because they're poorly supported. Explain how a FOR PROFIT system can get the job done better than a non-profit system? The biggest problem in general is funding--how is tacking on MORE costs via profit going to fix a broken system?

Public schools have served us well until the fat cats decided they wanted to make everything a profit center and have done everything they can to destroy an existing, working system--then point and say, "see!? it doesn't work."

No, your propaganda film did not impress me.

 

[Jupiter551]

Public schools are not doing well because they're poorly supported. Explain how a FOR PROFIT system can get the job done better than a non-profit system? The biggest problem in general is funding--how is tacking on MORE costs via profit going to fix a broken system?

Public schools have served us well until the fat cats decided they wanted to make everything a profit center and have done everything they can to destroy an existing, working system--then point and say, "see!? it doesn't work."

No, your propaganda film did not impress me.

The only reason private schools have much better results (overall) is they have way more money, because the fees are really high. They attract the best teachers, the teachers often have more power to discipline the kids, the kids are likely to be less troublesome because they don't come from poor backgrounds (and all the stresses and family problems that poverty causes), in the case of middle class parents they often struggle to pay the fees so the kid gets 'motivated' by their expectations, and they have smaller class sizes because they limit their intake.

In three words, the reason private schools do much better across the board than public schools: money, money, money.

 

[Nordling]

Exactly. And, in fact, even with all those advantages, Charter Schools don't always do better than conventional public schools.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Educat...rter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools

 

[LadyLuna]

They attract the best teachers, the teachers often have more power to discipline the kids,

A lot of the teachers they attract are the really good ones who can't get certified because they can't handle more than 20 kids at a time to pass the student teaching.

They also tend to pay the teachers LESS than public school. I should know, I almost decided to try to teach at private schools when I couldn't pass the student teaching. Then I realized that I was born to tutor, but I can't tutor because I'm not certified as a teacher.

When I started camming, I loved the private setting. I love making one person happy at a time, then moving on to making the next person happy (after a bit of me-time). If it weren't for the std's/pregnancy/attachment issues/illegal thing, I'd probably be a prostitute.

 

[Nordling]

Another problem with modern education is that in both private and public schools, results are judged based on test scores. So how do teachers deal with a system built like that? They TEACH to the test rather than teaching how to learn.

 

[jackie_O]

"...to education the general public..."

Have you tried learning English?

Do you want to have a discussion or just throw around cheap shots? It is a simple question. Have you watched the film?

I have to say, regardless of who is right and who is wrong, I really hate to see this tactic. Dismissing someone because of typos is really the lowest form of debate.

 

[Nordling]

"...to education the general public..."

Have you tried learning English?

Do you want to have a discussion or just throw around cheap shots? It is a simple question. Have you watched the film?

I have to say, regardless of who is right and who is wrong, I really hate to see this tactic. Dismissing someone because of typos is really the lowest form of debate.

I apologize...but I found it ironic in a discussion about education and couldn't resist.

And I found his tactic of dismissing a film because of production values rather than content (he said he couldn't watch it) was pretty low too.

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

Watched both. Superman had great production values, inconvenient had shitty production values. But what is it we really want to know?

Public schools are not doing well because they're poorly supported. Explain how a FOR PROFIT system can get the job done better than a non-profit system? The biggest problem in general is funding--how is tacking on MORE costs via profit going to fix a broken system?

Public schools have served us well until the fat cats decided they wanted to make everything a profit center and have done everything they can to destroy an existing, working system--then point and say, "see!? it doesn't work."

No, your propaganda film did not impress me.

It isn't about the money. Yes it is a factor, but it isn't a big one. If you look at state spending per student vs educational scores you'll find very low correlation. Parochial schools do better than public schools despite spending less per student and paying their teacher less. Same thing is generally true with charter schools. One of the problems with the education system is the big growth in administrators. In Hawaii we have roughly a tripling in DOE employees in the last 20 year, despite a flat student enrollment and the same number of teachers. Private schools, and parochial schools have lower overhead and just get by with less administrators and layers of bureaucracy.

Public schools are not working, by any measure you want to use; graduation rates, comparison to international students, opinion of university professors, or NAEP. The Gates foundation has done a ton of research and state of our education system is grim. The Gates foundation is currently focused on getting great teachers in the classroom. Another structural problems of schools, is it is virtually impossible to fire teachers, Waiting for Superman had great examples. It is almost important to avoid having horrible teachers as it is to have great ones. The teacher union has a near stranglehold on many school districts. Private and Charter schools are free to fire the bad teachers and reward the great ones.

I am not sure what you have against making a profit, but it is pretty much irrelevant in discussing K12 education. Most of the charter schools are non profit, and the view that are for profit are either losing money or making very slim amount.


Anyway it is not my propaganda film, its made and endorsed by Democrats. So I don't understand the hostility to it.

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

The only reason private schools have much better results (overall) is they have way more money, because the fees are really high. They attract the best teachers, the teachers often have more power to discipline the kids, the kids are likely to be less troublesome because they don't come from poor backgrounds (and all the stresses and family problems that poverty causes), in the case of middle class parents they often struggle to pay the fees so the kid gets 'motivated' by their expectations, and they have smaller class sizes because they limit their intake.

In three words, the reason private schools do much better across the board than public schools: money, money, money.

That is pretty much a myth. http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/ has links to a fair amount of research. Here, the top two private schools, including the one the President went to, do spend a lot more money that average public school. However the 3rd best school is a parochial school and when I looked (all this is from several years ago) the cost was about $3,000/student less than school district. This is in state where student spending is the typically top 10 in the country and Hawaii students test scores are in the bottom 10.

There is an argument that private and charter schools attract more motivated parents. I believe the Gates Foundation has some research on this. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/overview.aspx

 

[Nordling]

I agree public schools aren't "working." I already said that. But it's not because they're public, it's because of the low value our politicians and even the public at large put on our educators and education in general. Obviously, if you don't have profit in the mix then it's going to be cheaper--everything else being equal. But that's not the case. Generally, private schools (check the CSM link above) do not do better than public schools.

This is pure opinion but I put much more value into dedication than money, but you need a base level of monetary support in order to allow good teachers to even be in any system. When you have a reactionary government who'd rather spend money on guns and other military crap than our greatest resource (the next generation), you won't see good results no matter what system you have.

Also, education should be handled by educators, not by financiers and business. Education is a much a part of the Commons as the Military--I totally oppose any move to profit systems.

 

[Jupiter551]

The only reason private schools have much better results (overall) is they have way more money, because the fees are really high. They attract the best teachers, the teachers often have more power to discipline the kids, the kids are likely to be less troublesome because they don't come from poor backgrounds (and all the stresses and family problems that poverty causes), in the case of middle class parents they often struggle to pay the fees so the kid gets 'motivated' by their expectations, and they have smaller class sizes because they limit their intake.

In three words, the reason private schools do much better across the board than public schools: money, money, money.

That is pretty much a myth. http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/ has links to a fair amount of research. Here, the top two private schools, including the one the President went to, do spend a lot more money that average public school. However the 3rd best school is a parochial school and when I looked (all this is from several years ago) the cost was about $3,000/student less than school district. This is in state where student spending is the typically top 10 in the country and Hawaii students test scores are in the bottom 10.

There is an argument that private and charter schools attract more motivated parents. I believe the Gates Foundation has some research on this. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/overview.aspx

You're talking about cost, I'm talking about price.

 

[Jupiter551]

If you privatise the public education system you simply get the public education system, privatised lol. Besides, what are you suggesting, charging every parent for tuition? What about those that can't/won't pay? The whole point of public education, which is one of the most basic cornerstones of a modern society, is that all kids should get the opportunity of an education regardless of where they come from or how much money they have.

Now, the fact that wealthier parents have the option of sending their kids to private school is another matter entirely, but you seem to be operating on the principle that non-government schools are better because they're non-government, but to look at it that way is skewed because those schools exist, and parents pay the fees, to BE different from non-government schools.

I don't know if I put that as clearly as I could have but take this metaphor for instance. One could look at German cars and go hmm, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Opal...wow German cars are obviously better on average than Korean cars, therefore we should have all Korean cars manufactured by Germans. Well German cars aren't better by default - they're better (and this is an example, I'm not arguing that they ARE better or not) because they're marketed toward people who can afford to pay more for a car, so more time is spent on each car, more money is spent on testing...and so forth. If you simply built a factory in Germany and expected it to roll out 5000 Hyundais per day that could compete with a Merc or a BMW, you'd get a rude shock.

 

[Nordling]

Watched both. Superman had great production values, inconvenient had shitty production values. But what is it we really want to know?

Public schools are not doing well because they're poorly supported. Explain how a FOR PROFIT system can get the job done better than a non-profit system? The biggest problem in general is funding--how is tacking on MORE costs via profit going to fix a broken system?

Public schools have served us well until the fat cats decided they wanted to make everything a profit center and have done everything they can to destroy an existing, working system--then point and say, "see!? it doesn't work."

No, your propaganda film did not impress me.

It isn't about the money. Yes it is a factor, but it isn't a big one. If you look at state spending per student vs educational scores you'll find very low correlation. Parochial schools do better than public schools despite spending less per student and paying their teacher less. Same thing is generally true with charter schools. One of the problems with the education system is the big growth in administrators. In Hawaii we have roughly a tripling in DOE employees in the last 20 year, despite a flat student enrollment and the same number of teachers. Private schools, and parochial schools have lower overhead and just get by with less administrators and layers of bureaucracy.

Public schools are not working, by any measure you want to use; graduation rates, comparison to international students, opinion of university professors, or NAEP. The Gates foundation has done a ton of research and state of our education system is grim. The Gates foundation is currently focused on getting great teachers in the classroom. Another structural problems of schools, is it is virtually impossible to fire teachers, Waiting for Superman had great examples. It is almost important to avoid having horrible teachers as it is to have great ones. The teacher union has a near stranglehold on many school districts. Private and Charter schools are free to fire the bad teachers and reward the great ones.

I am not sure what you have against making a profit, but it is pretty much irrelevant in discussing K12 education. Most of the charter schools are non profit, and the view that are for profit are either losing money or making very slim amount.


Anyway it is not my propaganda film, its made and endorsed by Democrats. So I don't understand the hostility to it.

I'm not hostile to it, like I said, it has decent production values. I just don't think it has any answers...any more than the film I suggested as a counter. Bad ideas are bad ideas, I don't care if they're spread by Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians or the Tooth Fairy. My contention is that the system is broken because it's was broken on purpose. Creating a variation on it based on a semi-private paradigm is very much a lure, IMHO. The solution is to find out what element of the system that once created the best education system in the world is now gone...then resurrect it.

I have nothing against profit--for iPods, Chevies, or cheeseburgers. I don't want profit within a mile of education or the military. They are Commons.

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

You're talking about cost, I'm talking about price.

Ok the discussion has wandered off from the original point which school vouchers, to movies and charter schools, and yes part of that is my fault.

The issue should be about cost. In particular how do we get the best education for our children for a fixed number of tax dollars.

One voucher system that has proven to be effective, as the CSmonitor article acknowledges, involves charter schools. This system involves giving voucher equal to the state+local student spending to poor parent in areas with failing schools. Then allowing the parent the choice of keeping his kid in the existing school, or using the voucher to attend a charter school. The charter school (which is a public school) receives exactly as much money as the traditional school. Most charter schools are not for profit a few are for profit. The data has shown that for urban schools this voucher system produces a better education at the same cost to tax payers. Which is what I said in my first post.

The second type of voucher is giving low and middle income family a subsidy, in the form of a voucher, to attend traditional private schools (again these are mostly non profit and many of them parochial). In most case these voucher are for roughly 1/2 the per pupil public education. cost (e.g school district spend 10K/pupil the voucher would be 5k). The parent gives the voucher the private school and the tuition cost is reduced by $5,000. Now tuition costs for private schools vary widely in some case they are much higher than public school cost, in other case much lower. In most case the vouchers aren't enough to cover tuition for most private schools, with the exception of some parochial schools where the tuition is low. So many parents would end up with having to pay money for their kids education. The education results of private schools also varies, but on average students who attend private schools do better academically than public school students on most measures.

I am not aware of the research on this type of voucher system. But conceptually it should reduce cost to taxpayers, but shifting the cost to parents who are willing to pay money for private school tuition. For instance, in Hawaii if we were magically able to clone the 3rd best (academically) high school which is a parochial school we save money and raise test score. The tuition for the school is $3,000/year less than the we spent per pupil now. Simply eliminate all public schools and give the tax money we spend on education to the school. :-D Now obviously you can't do that and nobody is proposing eliminating public schools, just looking for ways to make our education system better.

 

[a0Crinna]

guyyssss when you vote please please think about the entire world...i bet romney would start a ww3!!!! :?

 

[Mirra]

It isn't about the money. Yes it is a factor, but it isn't a big one. If you look at state spending per student vs educational scores you'll find very low correlation. Parochial schools do better than public schools despite spending less per student and paying their teacher less. Same thing is generally true with charter schools. One of the problems with the education system is the big growth in administrators. In Hawaii we have roughly a tripling in DOE employees in the last 20 year, despite a flat student enrollment and the same number of teachers. Private schools, and parochial schools have lower overhead and just get by with less administrators and layers of bureaucracy.

Well I'll agree with you there. My mother is a teacher and in the 20ish years she's been doing it, she seems to get less and less support from her administrators, bloating bureaucracy in the district office, and increasing amounts of paper work that she is expected to do for "accountability purposes" without any extra planning time to account for this extra work. There is definitely something wrong with the system and we definitely need to fix it. Leaner administration staff for many school and much of the bureaucracy of the school districts removed. That said, they NEED to be funded properly.

I'm not sure what kind of cuts to K-12 happened during the budget slashing from 2007-2009 but I know the university I work for lost about 1.5 million per year in state funding. Approximately 5% of our money each year comes directly from the state yet we're considered a state university. It's rather hilarious.

 

[Bocefish]

Now these are funny...



Democrat of the year! :lol:

http://now.msn.com/estelle-carson-democ ... t_fbmsnnow

Bin Laden donates to Obama :lol:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-accept ... donations/

 

[Bocefish]

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

 

[Jupiter551]

Bin Laden donates to Obama :lol:

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-accept ... donations/

Neat, so they set up a fake donation, pretended to be from pakistan but then lied their way through entering US addresses and phone numbers and then falsely declared they were US citizens and what...they're supposed to get their information checked personally and then rejected over $15? They *accepted* the terms of an agreement stating they were a United States citizen - the only ones breaking any laws (if they were not US citizens) would be WND.

<---Wtf, is the US still using windows 95 or something?

 

[Zoomer]

One VERY important thing to remember in public vs private schools.

At least in the UK


Private schools choose who they accept.

Public (state) schools have no such luxury.

It is a significant difference when it comes to, for example, behaviour. You don't have to accept the kid that's been kicked out of 3 schools already and has convictions for petty theft/drugs. Sending such miscreants to a decent private school can also really turn that kid around, as others won't be encouraged to join their bad behaviour, and they may also tend towards the "norm" behaviour wise (and actually behave/work).

 

[Jupiter551]

One VERY important thing to remember in public vs private schools.

At least in the UK


Private schools choose who they accept.

Public (state) schools have no such luxury.

It is a significant difference when it comes to, for example, behaviour. You don't have to accept the kid that's been kicked out of 3 schools already and has convictions for petty theft/drugs. Sending such miscreants to a decent private school can also really turn that kid around, as others won't be encouraged to join their bad behaviour, and they may also tend towards the "norm" behaviour wise (and actually behave/work).

Yes and private schools often are authorised by parents to punish kids in ways that government run schools aren't. Which is good in responsible hands, child abuse in irresponsible ones.

 

[Kradek]

Same as with the chart for the word thread, chart of post counts, threshold for EveryoneElse on this one is 10 I believe.

 

[Anonymous]

:lol:

 

[morment]

Just saw this today:

 

[LadyLuna]

On Public schools:

issue #1- class size. 30-50 kids, 1 teacher.

issue #2- parental backing. Many parents don't care about their children's education. They belittle the teacher in front of the kid, don't give the kid time to do the homework, and encourage the kid to ignore the teachers.

issue #3- parental backing. Many parents want their kid to do well, but blame the teacher when their kid does poorly. I kid you not, when I was student teacher there was a girl in Honors Pre-Calculus who got a C in Algebra 2. Why was she in a class she had no chance of passing? Because her mother said she belonged there.

issue #4- cookie cutter classrooms. Every Honors Pre-Calculus class in that school was required to be teaching the same page of the textbook on the same day, because the parents got mad if their kid wasn't progressing as fast as the kid in the other class.

issue #5- standardized testing. Teachers are teaching the kids how to take the test, not how to learn, not how to reason.

issue #6- Union backing. It's nearly impossible to fire the bad teachers.

issue #7- cookie cutter teachers. Every teacher is supposed to be able to teach every classroom of their subject/grade. But it takes a different skill set to deal with different types of classrooms. There's:
-kids don't care, parents don't care, bad school atmosphere
-kids don't care, parents don't care, good school atmosphere
-kids care, parents don't care, bad school atmosphere
-kids care, parents don't care, good school atmosphere
-kids don't care, parents care, bad school atmosphere
-kids don't care, parents care, good school atmosphere
-kids care, parents care, bad school atmosphere
-kids care, parents care, good school atmosphere

It takes one skill set to deal with kids who care too much, a different to deal with kids who don't care at all. It takes one skill set to deal with parents who care, another to deal with parents who don't care, and a third to deal with parents who are undermining the teachers every chance they get. It takes different skill sets to deal with different school atmospheres, and different skill sets to deal with different communities. But here's the kicker- when a teacher finds what sort of school she fits best with, there's no guarantee that she'll be placed there. (for the record, I deal best with a good school atmosphere in a bad neighborhood, and kids who actually care about learning but are fighting the odds to get their education)

issue #8- not enough time. A long time ago, textbook authors were contacted by teachers. The teachers would finish the textbook a couple weeks before the end of the school year, and wanted the textbook authors to put more material in. Textbook authors complied, with material that would give the students of the faster classrooms a headstart on the next class they would take.

Sometime later, parents started getting a say in what the teachers were teaching. Parents noticed that a lot of teachers weren't finishing the textbook. They didn't know that the textbooks weren't designed to be finished in one year- they were designed to let teachers pick and choose which aspects of the subject they felt the most comfortable teaching. The administrators also didn't know this. The teachers knew, but no one would listen to the teachers. They figured the teachers were just making excuses. So now, the teachers were required to teach the entire textbook- a textbook that had been designed to be impossible to teach in one year.

---

Until the parents actually care about the kid's education, but stop trying to make every kid meet genius-level requirements in every subject; until the teachers realize that teaching to the test leaves their students far behind; until the teachers aren't required to teach every topic in every book; until the teachers are matched to the schools they can teach well in; until the students are matched to the teachers they will learn well under... we cannot fix this system.

 

[Jupiter551]

Same as with the chart for the word thread, chart of post counts, threshold for EveryoneElse on this one is 10 I believe.

What I learned from this is Boce, Jup & Nord should get a room! :3some:

err no, if you look closely Boce and Nordling have about the same number so they get a room, then I share a room with "everyone else"