Video: ReasonTV At The "Save Our Schools" Rally

Via Insty.

There was a Save Our Schools rally in DC over the weekend. Reason TV was there and this was what they have.



I don't think any of those present were able to follow along with what Michelle Fields was asking. When asked about school choice they would fall back into the mantra of rich vs. poor and other class envy rhetoric.

Matt Damon had this to say in a follow up statement.

My other takeaway from this: Someone needs to kick the old guy doing the beatnik/drum circle/coffee house poetry rap onstage in the shins.

The Education Bubble Is Primed For Popping

When students shell out a six figure income for a low five figure job, something needs to give.

Glenn Reynolds weighs in.

A New York Times profile last week described Courtney Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University with nearly $100,000 in student loan debt -- debt that her degree in Religious and Women's Studies did not equip her to repay. Payments on the debt are about $700 per month, equivalent to a respectable house payment, and a major bite on her monthly income of $2,300 as a photographer's assistant earning an hourly wage.

And, unlike a bad mortgage on an underwater house, Munna can't simply walk away from her student loans, which cannot be expunged in a bankruptcy. She's stuck in a financial trap.

Some might say that she deserves it -- who borrows $100,000 to finance a degree in women's and religious studies that won't make you any money? She should have wised up, and others should learn from her mistake, instead of learning too late, as she did: "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back."

Four years, a degree that would pay off squat and a grand in debt. Just starting out in life.

Maybe Underwater Basket Weaving would have been a better choice.

Gov. Walker's Budget Ends Up With A Surplus

Smart budgeting ends up with extra money for the schools.

Imagine that. The sky didn't fall down in Wisconsin after all.

Cost savings from worker contributions to health care and retirement, taking effect today as part of the new collective bargaining laws, will swing the Kaukauna School District from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated $1.5 million surplus…. The district… plans to hire teachers and reduce class size.Let’s stop and think of all the protesters who carried signs asserting that their opposition to Scott Walker was for the children.

Video: LA Teacher Unions Playing It Fast And Loose With The Facts During Protest

Via Prof. Reynolds.

Quite a few hippies-- not the traditional type that was explored earlier-- present, selling out for 'The Man' (and by extension, themselves) and not the other way around.

Teachers frequently claim, for example, that California is in either 49th or 50th place among the 50 states in per-pupil spending. In fact, the Golden State is 31st in per-pupil spending.

Teachers also say the Golden State could solve its chronic budget shortfalls by raising tax rates on the rich. But California is already unusually dependent on taxes collected from high earners. This is why revenue collections can drop sharply during recession, while spending -- which has increased 37 percent since 2001 -- continues to grow at rates exceeding inflation and population growth.

Comment Of The Month

This was linked by the Blogfather a while ago and I had meant to highlight it at the time. I forgot about it until I was clearing out my bookmarks and stumbled across it.

I don't get tired of talking about this. My grandfather quit high school, joined the Army Air Force, fought in the Pacific theater in WWII, came home, married his high school sweetheart, and got his high school diploma. He didn't go to college. He could read, write, and do figures, though I doubt he knew anything about Foucault, or ever paid a grad student $500 to write a 10-page essay about it. He joined a large company, which quickly figured out he was intelligent, and they moved him into a clerk position. His wife never worked. He sired five children, all boys, bought a nice house in a small town, took vacation at a lake house, retired, moved to Florida, lived another 15 years, and died just shy of his 80th birthday of colon cancer.

Today, his job title instead of Clerk would be something like Managing Purchasing Coordinator. He would have a Master's degree in nothing in particular, probably from nowhere important, and have $50,000+ in student loans. His job today requires reading, writing, and doing figures, just like it did 50 years ago, but today he would have crippling student loans and 6 years of layaboutry.

Sometime during the last 50 years, our society went Full Retard about schooling. I've yet to see anyone explain why.

Be sure to read the article that this comment is responding to.

State Of Ohio To Mom, "Know Your Place"

Ohio mom arrested. All in an effort to get her children into a better school.

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district.

"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she said. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them."

Williams-Bolar decided four years ago to send her daughters to a highly ranked school in neighboring Copley-Fairlawn School District.

But it wasn't her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district's boundaries.

The school district accused Williams-Bolar of lying about her address, falsifying records and, when confronted, having her father file false court papers to get around the system.

Williams-Bolar said she did it to keep her children safe and that she lived part-time with her dad.

"When my home got broken into, I felt it was my duty to do something else," Williams-Bolar said.

I don't know why the city of Akron wanted to shackle Ms. Williams-Bolar to a failing school district just because of her address. All she wanted was freedom of choice for her children to get a better education. But she is being punished for trying to leave the plantation failing school district.

Yes, she lied but she was also being forced, by virtue of her address, to send her kids to a lousy school. This is where school vouchers would have helped save her jail time and possible, her career. Enabling her a real choice to send her kids to a better school.

Whitey Need Not Apply

Yes, this is rhetorical but why is it when minorities express interest in hiring people whose skin is a certain shade (Or, more accurately, not hiring people because of the shade of their skin) it's not considered racist?

If Chesterfield County [In Virginia] is going to offer a truly global education to its 58,000 or so students, the School Board and administration officials heard yesterday, it needs to do something about the wide gap in minority representation between students and teachers.

While 44 percent of the student body is nonwhite, only 13 percent of the teaching corps is, said Traci E. Teasley, the system's director of research and planning, during the board's quarterly work session. The immediate goal is 15 percent, with plans to top 20 percent in the long term.

"What gets monitored, gets done," Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome told the board, explaining the impetus behind including minority hiring among the five "Key Success Measures" for the school year.

The four other areas involve standardized test scores and student attendance.

The issue has been a priority for Matoaca representative U. Omarh Rajah, a one-time county teacher who became the board's first elected minority member when he unseated incumbent Thomas J. Doland in 2007.

So much of this is political correctness more than anything. And bonehead thinking.

If the school system really wanted to offer a 'global education', simply hiring minorities won't do it. To start with, minorities won't be able to offer the global perspective. Not if the teacher has live their entire life here in the US.

What happens when the Chesterfield school system can't find enough qualified candidates to hire? Do they buckle down and hire the white people? Or relax their standards to allow more 'preferred' teachers in to work? For the alter of Political Correctness, no wall is too high to make sure the right quotas will be filled. Of course standards will be relaxed.

What's more important? Making sure there are enough of the right kind of teachers or the quality of your children's education?

Hire the best teacher for the job. Regardless of skin color. At least that's how I understood Martin Luther King.

The New Michigan College Plan

Step 1: Cruise through high school and barely pass.

Step 2: Take as many remedial classes freshman year of college.

Step 3: Sue the Michigan education system to help cover tuition.

Reasons To Home School, Number # 923

You won't be hindered by the other slackers in your class.*



Obviously, Wayne Allyn Root is very proud of his daughter.

*It does beg the question; if you are first in your class, are you also last?