Quote:...social promotion is stupid. Why does it happen? Mostly because school administrators and school boards are afraid of lawsuits from greedy, ignorant parents who all think their little johnny is the next rocket scientist. And they'll raise holy [beeep] and sue if little johnny doesn't get all A's.
So your contention is that the admin and school board ORDERS YOU, the teachers, to give passing grades to your students even though the kids don't earn them? Seriously jeffo, you need to call Fox, CNN, NBC, ABC, etc. You are about to become an extremely wealthy whistle blower if you have any substantiation for those charges of what is probably criminally fraudulent behaviour.
Either that or you're just blowing smoke and, how did you put it? "Blame(ing) the other guy - it's the American way, right?"
Quote:How can Wisconsin kids be so dumb for so long but suddenly outdo almost everyone else on the day of the SAT test? Oh yeah, they cheat!
Let me try this once again. The ones who "suddenly outdo almost everyone else on the day of the SAT test" are ONLY the 12th graders who take the SATs. That subset does NOT include the the kids who have dropped out or just not taken the test. The "dumb" kids (your words) DIDN'T TAKE THE TEST.
Quote
o you dispute the fact that 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient” in reading
Quote:How does this compare to other states?
WI 4th graders are tied with WY, WA, and SD for 24th place, just above the national average.
WI 8th graders are in 30th place, right at the national average.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/sta...ur=WI&st=MN
Of course ALL the states' public ed systems rank abysmally in international comparisons.
Quote:They're my dollars. From my paycheck. Do you want to start dictating how a person should spend his own money now?
Before they were your dollars, they were taxpayer dollars, taken by threat of force whether I was willing or not (I wasn't).
I very much DO want to dictate where my tax dollars are spent, that's the whole point.
Have you ever voted for someone your union didn't support? If so, how did you feel about YOUR MONEY being given to a candidate opposing the one you supported?
Probably about the same as we non-public union taxpayers feel about having our tax dollars go to a system we don't support, and having the unions spend our tax dollars to elect candidates we don't support? In a very real sense, the public employee unions are engaged in a (currently legal) taxpayer money laundering scheme to funnel money to the Dems and other libs.
So apparently we can take it that you DON'T dispute these facts?
That WI HIGH SCHOOLS over all ranked 44th (and abysmally in international comparisons),
That 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient” in reading, and have not improved at all since 1998?
That during that same period WI had an increase in spending from $6546 (inflation adjusted) to $10,791 per pupil?
That government education nationally has more than doubled in cost-per-student (in real terms) since 1971 (the teachers union age)?
Given that you don't (or can't) dispute those facts, how can you justify the union position?
Quote:My political views are that regardless of party affiliation, government is too big, greedy, and intrusive.
Jeffo, total state expenditures nationwide exceeded $2.2 trillion last year, of which wages and benefits amounted to $1.1 trillion. Consequently, budgeting decisions related to at least 50 percent of all state budgets are driven by the wage provisions of civil service contracts and funding obligations for state workers’ health care and pension plans.
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/Tabl...p;LastYear=2008
WI does not publish detailed figures, but one would expect that they are worse than the national figures, WI being a mandatory union state.
Want to reduce the size and scope of government? Taking away the benefits that public employees have in excess of private industry is a start. That means curtailing the power of the public sector unions, as they are a prime driver of the costs.