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Invisible Man wrote:

Strange Tales wrote:And Betsy DeVos is confirmed. Why go for rock bottom when you can break the bedrock on the way?

I generally don't take this shit too seriously (laughing at tyrants/bogeymen), but this one hurts. Kids shouldn't suffer because we are fucked-up morons who don't know how to manage ourselves.

And she's from Michigan! wheeeeeeeee

As a grand rapidian I get it. She's a deplorable religious nut but white people love her because school of choice means they can live in the neighborhoods about to be gentrified and not have to send their kids to school with all the poor/black/Latino kids. And they'll say things like: Crimson goes to preschool at a GR school that has strong ties to the DeVos family and it's amazing. I'm also glad that she's into school of choice. Any person that lives in a city (like a real city) and has little ones is lying when they say they're cool sending their babes to a dangerous school. Truth.

Quotes from facebook. Grand Rapids is a pretty small city. This person clearly sends their kid to a private, Christian school that the DeVos family has probably dumped a ton of money into.

Genuine question: is there a difference between public charter schools and private charter schools? I've been saying for years that I think our local system in this county of some normal public schools and some charter (which are disproportionately full of more affluent children) creates classism in our school system. Everyone tells me that it's different than what DeVo is supporting but I can't find anywhere that offers a real distinction. I think, as previously mentioned, it's a case of people pointing out a flaw and being enraged over something that they benefit from.

And I do get it, I'd love for my daughters to go to the local "Charter School of the Arts," where every kid learns violin and another instrument, has art class, all that junk that is completely absent from the other schools, but I don't want to be complicit in class struggle

yeah no fuck poor people they only need to be taught enough to line the factories that we don't have anymore.

You get what you pay for. Segregation. homogeneous class...when is the population control bill gonna hit?

I think public schools should only be allowed to spend a tiny portion of their funds on sports.
$20 says that if you did that, you'd see a notable positive change in public schools.

Keep in mind, I don't really know anything about "bad" public schools, though.
Considering that I went to school in a relatively affluent area (but not too affluent) that was also fairly multicultural with good funding means that I had good teachers, well funded classrooms, well funded arts programs, on top of extremely well funded sports programs.
My junior year (when I went to Senior High), the school I went to had just recently finished building a special building that had four large arts classrooms, four sizable classrooms for government/economics classes, and a gigantic classroom which was filled with rows of brand new macs that were used by graphic design and video editing classes.

jrfox92 wrote:I think public schools should only be allowed to spend a tiny portion of their funds on sports.
$20 says that if you did that, you'd see a notable positive change in public schools.

Why?

D.o.S. wrote:

jrfox92 wrote:I think public schools should only be allowed to spend a tiny portion of their funds on sports.
$20 says that if you did that, you'd see a notable positive change in public schools.

Why?

My experience: schools (at least, in Texas) spent a lot of money on sports.
They could have 15 year old text books but the sports teams would still have brand new equipment and they'd be planning on building a multi-million dollar sports stadium for the teams.

I'm going to ignore the easy joke about how if they had new textbooks they'd have to tear out all the pages about evolution (again) and no one has the time for that.

And instead I am going to ask you if you think schools should be allowed to spend money on what the communities see fit to be the most important aspects of their shared existence.

D.o.S. wrote:I'm going to ignore the easy joke about how if they had new textbooks they'd have to tear out all the pages about evolution (again) and no one has the time for that.

And instead I am going to ask you if you think schools should be allowed to spend money on what the communities see fit to be the most important aspects of their shared existence.

No need to make the joke, that's the DeVos Difference, man.

I should take this opportunity to point out that Mexican grizzlies are functionally extinct (and have been for the past 50 years).

idk if its just texas in your blood jr but you look familiar....anyway was brought up thankfully in a private school environment and when 8th grade hit, moved to public schools because the family money was pissed off...and from that I learned public schools=learn to deal with real life every day ass holes and social clicks...private=ya get what you pay for...an education. I see more church/religious centers with glorious buildings furnished with high end stuff, those fuckholes should contribute to having the public school not look like a rat hole...in fact from what Ive seen, rats take better care of their homes then the district teaching well rounded curriculum and contributing to helping students have a idea of what the future can be for them.....last day of being in those places was hilarious in retrospect ...."what are you going to do with your life lee?" - "I dont know" .... there was more times we watched a movie on a book in class then discuss the book outright...in which id roam the halls.

Shit is real. Just moved from Flint (predictably terrible schools) to Dexter, which is an affluent, almost entirely white hamlet a few miles west of Ann Arbor. Thought long and hard about what it meant almost entirely in terms of personal politics and public schools...looked at sending the babies to the remarkably diverse but failing schools my wife and I went to. Read studies indicating that the educational level of parents is a more accurate and consistent indicator of academic success than school rankings...still moved to the rich white town.

My experience is that academic success and perception of academic success are very different. For reasons still not clear, my parents pulled my brother and I from a top-10 school in the state to a lower third-school. Not hard to understand how friends from the old area got into better schools, have easier career paths, &c.

Long and obvious story short: we thought (and still think) being a parent is about sublimating your personal politics and giving kids every opportunity. It's one reason why we tend to get more conservative as we age (in the classical sense if not the contemporary one).

So now we just have periodic crises of conscience.

--a personal narrative of political ambiguity

Yeah I think that the networking aspect of privatized schooling is often overlooked because people want to pretend that where you wind up in the general "success" hierarchy still has to do with merit, rather than adequate competency and being able to shake the correct hands.

D.o.S. wrote:I'm going to ignore the easy joke about how if they had new textbooks they'd have to tear out all the pages about evolution (again) and no one has the time for that.

My last science teacher (who was my favourite) was/is a devout Christian and a strong believer in/proponent of evolution.

D.o.S. wrote:And instead I am going to ask you if you think schools should be allowed to spend money on what the communities see fit to be the most important aspects of their shared existence.

Yeah, I suppose.
But shouldn't that mean a more democratic approach to school spending, too?
Voting on every little thing, right?

so your saying the old "its not what you know, its who ya know" opening up a business is bout the same...location location location.