3/2/2010 5:19:38 PM
can you edit that so it makes more sense? i'm a bit unsure of the point you are trying to make.also, i am not against neighborhood schools. you should be able to go to school where you live and the discrepancies between schools shouldn't be so huge. there is something fundamentally wrong with the system of schools, not just in this county but the country as a whole.
3/2/2010 5:24:47 PM
none of this would be a problem if everyone had the same salary as determined by the government.
3/2/2010 6:02:01 PM
board votes 5-4 in favor of ending diversity policy in wake county. final vote will be taken at next board meeting. http://www.wral.com/news/education/story/7145122/
3/2/2010 9:49:05 PM
twoozles, what don't you understand?We move kids around a bit so the schools stays balanced, and in that way, we minimize those "huge discrepancies" between schools. It's weird that you mention the county with respect to the whole country--in fact, Wake Co. is much better off than the rest of the country. Giving up on the diversity policy and moving to neighborhood schools will only destroy that distinction.On a separate note, I think one of the things that is so difficult about this issue is that we wanna be open-minded and sort of descriptive cultural relativists all the time. There comes a point though where we all need to admit that poverty really, really, really fucking sucks. I mean, nobody wants to be condescending or be too uppity about knowing what's best for a neighborhood or a group of people, but I also can't straight up ignore reality and the way things have gone over and over and over again all across the country.I can't look at a low-income neighborhood in Raleigh and say with a straight face, "Oh yeah, a neighborhood school is going to work out great here. It will attract the best teachers from all around the country. The parents will be closer to the school so they'll definitely get involved (and the neighborhood is going to magically have money to donate to all the parent-run fundraisers for the school), and the people are going to have something that's theirs, and they're gonna take so much pride in it and finally form that wonderful community-feeling that we like to pretend they already have. And I would just absolutely love to send my kid to school here. This neighborhood and its school are gonna be great!"If I were able to say all that with a straight face, then I'd be denying the truth about poverty: it fucking sucks.
3/3/2010 3:07:56 AM
But the unfortunate reality is that most people who are pushing for neighborhood schools are only concerned for their kids, and everyone else can go jump in a lake. This is especially true for affluent parents. If kids in other school districts were failing MISERABLY after this happens, as long as it didn't bleed over into neighboring areas, I really believe they wouldn't care at all.On the one hand, I understand them and can empathize with their desire to get their offspring as many advantages as possible, but on the other, if this is how society behaves, then we will all suffer. In the end, a wider gap between the rich and the poor creates instability within a society. Think of the phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats". At its fundamental root, I think that many arguments in our country today come down to the concept of what I want for me is most important (and screw everyone else) vs. what is best for a larger population. I think there's just a difference between looking at this kind of problem from the bottom as a receiver of a service and the top as a provider.
3/3/2010 5:58:05 AM
3/3/2010 7:28:14 AM
Nobody's a strict egalitarian. I see you're having fun charging at windmills.
3/3/2010 7:31:24 AM
Right. Because I was talking about strict egalitarians. Wait. No I wasn't -- you said that.(Shut up.)
3/3/2010 7:55:09 AM
I'm for performance based pay for teachers
3/3/2010 9:12:23 AM
Step 1)Kill Diversity and "busing" so all the affluent kids go to the same schools.Step 2)Define performance as students' grades.Step 3)Give pay raises based on performance.Yep, I can see how that'll work well.
3/3/2010 9:26:37 AM
So you can get a $10,000 signing bonus to go to hard to staff (extremely poor) schools being a teacher in charlotte. I thought it was going to be easy to keep all schools staffed with excellent teachers . Can't wait for that here in wake county.http://www.cecr.ed.gov/initiatives/profiles/pdfs/CommunityTrainingandAssistanceCenter.pdf
3/3/2010 9:35:23 AM
I have a friend who's high up in the education system. They've told me that good teachers perform well for about the first 3 years, then they level out. Bad teachers are mediocre from the start. Once teachers get tenure, their performance stops improving.I think bonsues should be paid on some kind of economic multiplier. It could be based on something like whether they recieve subsidized lunch or a graduated scale for their parents property tax value or something. For example, take the classroom average on 2 or 3 standardized tests per year, multiply by some value for the classroom's economic situation and there's the teachers bonus. I don't know, there have to be ways to do it. The NCAE - North Carolina Association of Educators is strongly against performance based pay.
3/3/2010 11:11:09 AM
I do somewhat agree with performance based pay for educators. I've watched several teachers be completely lazy because they know they'd have to do something egregious (violence, sex w students, etc) to actually lose their jobs.
3/3/2010 1:42:27 PM
watched "stossel" on fBN the other day and it had some real good points. especially linking the $ to the kid instead of the school.
3/3/2010 1:44:46 PM
FuhCtious, who are you talking to?twoozles, what is your position exactly?
3/3/2010 3:33:42 PM
Undecided - I've got stake in the issues from various positions.
3/3/2010 4:12:03 PM
sorry to double post, but did not see this earlier:
3/3/2010 7:17:58 PM
when’s the next board meeting?
3/3/2010 7:19:57 PM
I was just commenting based on what you had to say, BridgetSPK. Not really talking to anyone, just my own thoughts.
3/3/2010 7:23:20 PM
^^I think march 23[Edited on March 3, 2010 at 8:09 PM. Reason : ]
3/3/2010 8:08:37 PM
^^I totally agree with your thoughts, by the way. It's tough to assert that though because so many people will get all defensive and sanctimonious about how they really do care about all the students...but then add that they just don't like the diversity policy. There's no way for us to prove that they're actually being selfish and short-sighted.
3/3/2010 11:58:35 PM
3/4/2010 12:33:27 AM
3/4/2010 2:40:50 AM
3/4/2010 7:31:49 AM
3/4/2010 7:56:27 AM
http://bluenc.com/wake-school-board-chair-ron-margiotta-calls-parents-who-disagree-him-animals
3/4/2010 3:42:28 PM
He didn't call "parents who disagree with him" animals.He was talking about the crowd that kept interrupting the dude that was talking.
3/4/2010 5:07:31 PM
You can watch the whole video on WRAL. And if you know Margiotta at all, you know he is saying it about people who support the diversity policy.The school board just sat there blank-faced while people pleaded with them not to scrap the policy. Goldman said she wasn't sure yet and needed more research, and then just a few days later, she and Tedesco co-authored the proposition to eliminate concerns for diversity. Just like that! Margiotta, by the way, is fucking 70+ years-old. He did not attend college. He does not have children in the Wake County public school system. The guy should not be determining shit about our schools.
3/4/2010 5:33:32 PM
I did watch it on WRAL. I had to to find out what the context of the comment was.Yeah, they were supporters of the diversity policy. But he said it because they were disrupting the meeting, not because they opposed the new plan. It's a difference.
3/4/2010 6:00:45 PM
leave it to Supplanter to twist words.
3/4/2010 6:43:03 PM
^^^
3/4/2010 7:00:57 PM
3/4/2010 7:48:03 PM
^ I would think all that info would be public domain. You would just have to take the current school district maps and compare it to income level maps, etc.I think the way these guys got voted in is they were thrown a lot of money by certain organizations that are against the current bussing policy for whatever reason. The election was during an off year, so not many people showed up (only 4.5% ). Now all the parents who didn't bother showing up to the election are going, "Whoa, wait a second! You want to do what now?!?!" and that's why you're getting the freak out. They were caught with their pants down. I hope this whole thing serves as a lesson that local elections are just as important, if not more so, to show up to than presidential elections.[Edited on March 4, 2010 at 9:29 PM. Reason : s]
3/4/2010 9:28:45 PM
As long as schools are funded properly, fairly, and evenly based on the needs of the students why bus??? Bussing is stupid, in this day and age totally unnecessary. Maybe in the 60's there was a reason but in modern day america there is not longer "the man," one could say that holds a certain group of people back.
3/4/2010 9:49:58 PM
3/4/2010 9:55:56 PM
^^ because, contrary to popular belief, money doesn't solve every problems.Humans, being squishy and moist the way we are, can sometimes be affected by things that AREN'T money.. imagine that!?!??[Edited on March 4, 2010 at 9:57 PM. Reason : ]
3/4/2010 9:57:11 PM
Apparently worrying about things like, oh I dunno...reading, writing, and arithmetic is old fashioned and so 20th century.Schools should be test tubes for failed social experiments. I like how some think that the white, err sorry the "benefactors who come from a stable household" will rub off on some of these students, that blacks, err whoops "poor" students can't be successful in school unless they sit across from a white per...err ahem, my bad, a "richer." The racist, whoops, the "classist" undertones here are quite disturbing.Neighborhood pride? Pfffft, up yours poor parents! We know better by sending little Juanita all the way across the county with Nigel Stuffington. Get her little ass up at 4:30am, who needs sleep, we need to force these people together! Maybe through some kind of osmosis things will change! It could happen!The problem is that the same people have run our education system into the ground and had little or no motivation to change it for decades, in spite of the woe is our schools BS they've been touting since before electricity. Now we finally have people who, GASP, would rather try something other than the failures of the status quo. Screw Del Burns. He's simply a part of the problem, and works at the discretion of the School Board, not the other way around. He isn't bigger than the will of the voters. It is fun to see all the loons that have come out of the woodwork since the shift on the School Board. They'll do more for the cause of the Wake County School Board than the School Board ever could.
3/4/2010 10:51:55 PM
What sucks even worse is when pesky little things like facts get in the way. It seems as if the old Wake County School Board way of doing things was to spread around the poor minorities in order to mask their poor academic performaces rather than dealing with them. Busing was merely a tool for covering their own asses.http://www.wral.com/news/education/story/6785755/
3/4/2010 11:27:28 PM
^ did you even read that report? It's glowing for WCPSSand why do you think you, the person who holds Jesse Helms as his personal hero, have any credibility on this issue? it's OBVIOUS which side of the aisle you're going to stand on... whichever one is the worst for blacks.and those are 2 different reports too btwWake County has routinely been in the top 10 of school systems state wide in SAT scores, and generally outperforms school districts with similar demographic makeups, when it comes to SAT scores.Wake County is generally one of the better schools in the state when it comes to EOC scores too.To call it a failure is just plain delusional from the data i've seen.[Edited on March 4, 2010 at 11:48 PM. Reason : ]
3/4/2010 11:37:35 PM
Because, moron, you're the biggest race baiter of them all. What makes you think you have any credibility to begin with? I like how you, some anonymous supposed student whose mommy and daddy is putting him through school and has sheltered him from real life is all of a sudden an expert because he went to a few NOW rallies and took a sociology class. The fact of the matter is that people like you have tried to keep blacks poor by keeping them in impossible situations in order to keep them dependent on the Democratic Party for support. Keep 'em poor, keep 'em ignorant, keep 'em on the thought plantation. God forbid that a black parent can walk their own child to school. I supported Jesse Helms because he was for lower taxes and less government. You harp on shit that happened over 50 years ago. Did he burn crosses and recruit for the klan like Democratic Senator Robert Byrd did?Where were you when liberals in the soap box have disparaged blacks when they haven't towed the democratic party line, hmmmm? Since we're talking about credibility and all. [Edited on March 5, 2010 at 12:00 AM. Reason : ]
3/4/2010 11:49:43 PM
And why are the scores top 10? What good is that doing for our minority students, who are completely moved around in order to cover up their low test scores?
3/4/2010 11:55:42 PM
^ like I said... YOU Didn't actually read the study. You picked a single line that you like, then you're using it to mischaracterize what the study says.First, I LOL at your copy-and-pasting a single, mischaracterized, and irrelevant quote multiple times in this thread, I guess in your virtual attempt at "shouting" instead of honestly trying to understand what amounts to be a very important and complex issue.Secondly, that report is a response to this one: http://www.wcpss.net/evaluation-research/reports/2009/0911evaas_index.pdf3rd: The SAS report doesn't actually say anything they WCPSS is doing anything wrong. And I don't think "hidden flaw" means what you think it means.4th: It's not a "hidden flaw" if the correction was intentionally put in there. It's obviously there for the purpose of getting a general measure of the schools performance, with the understanding that work continues to be done on low-income students5th: it makes no sense to compare WCPSS to all schools, when the issue at hand is the bussing and diversity policy (this is not the fault of WCPSS or SAS, because those reports weren't generated for this issue-- it's racist idiots desperately grabbing at whatever they can to support their racist views that's bringing it to the forefront)6th: the SAS model (or EVAAS system) is generally more positive than WCPSS's own internal model.The WRAL report has its place, but considering that they actually specifically put that correction in there, the conclusion that it's done to obfuscate the issue is illogical.
3/5/2010 12:13:48 AM
3/5/2010 12:15:56 AM
3/5/2010 12:57:34 AM
^^^Unfortunately for you, I did read the SAS report. The 1st part deals directly with criticism levied with regards to minority students falling behind. Busing masks this problem. The whole point of the wral piece was to highlight that fact, hence why it was written. It has its place, as you say, because of its revelence to the matter.
3/5/2010 1:41:20 AM
3/5/2010 8:08:52 AM
3/5/2010 8:40:50 AM
3/5/2010 3:14:28 PM
3/5/2010 7:09:45 PM