Daily outrages

[sigma7]

Got porn? You probably do. Actually, how can you not?

Also, the brain trust on the Kansas Board of Education takes another bold step back into the Dark Ages: They hired Bob Corkins of Lawrence, a conservative activist with no educational background who lobbied against school funding, to be education commissioner at a salary of $140,000 plus benefits.

Moderates on the board protested the hiring, saying Corkins’ experience as the sole employee of two conservative think tanks was not suited to leading a $3 billion public school system of more than 400,000 students.

And his ticket to improving Kansas schools? Competition. *headdesk* How are kids ever going to adjust to the lives many people have planned for them unless we begin showing them now who really runs the country?

That does it. The birds are going to be home-schooled. No riding the teeny-tiny school bus for them.

Comments

[erica-roo.livejournal.com]

Dear lord. I think I'll move to Wisconsin if I have children. They have good schools up there.

[beeform]

That does it. The birds are going to be home-schooled. No riding the teeny-tiny school bus for them.

Where they can take courses like "Cuttlebone: Art Medium or Nutritional Supplement?" or "Millet 101" or "The Art of Gliding: How to Fall Without Looking Silly"

[opheliasclone.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they'll have textbooks like Preening For Dummies and Polly Wants a Racially Sensitive, Thinly Baked Bread Product.

You'll make great teachers. :-)

[beeform]

And they would write papers with titles like "Does the Early Bird Really Get the Worm?" and "Why Birds of a Feather Flock Together."

[opheliasclone.livejournal.com]

And "To Kill a Mockingbird: Not the Novel Birds Expected."

[beeform]

THAT was very funny! :-)

I think at some point we'll need to have you do a web conference guest lecture.

[opheliasclone.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm game. :-)

You may want to avoid politics, though. I'm too much of a chicken hawk. The other birds might not concur.

(hunt and peck. ha!)

[beeform]

How about writing-related: "Turning your Chicken Scratches into Something Great"

or, technology-related: "Technology: It's for the Birds"

or, diversity-related: "Embracing Your Inner Cat" (assisted by your kitties, of course!)

[beeform]

And typing?

Taught using the old "hunt and peck" method, of course!

[aota.livejournal.com]

Makes me glad to live were I do. How can the Kansas Board of Education get away with stuff like this? Were can I get a job at pays $140,000 and the freedom to be an asshole.

[bishop282.livejournal.com]

The competition idea sounds good. I hope it gets implemented, let the free market forces go to work.

We've decided to keep our children, when we have them, out of government schools and home-school them.

[rewil.livejournal.com]

Free-market forces might help in the areas of the state with population centers, but I'd worry about the 2A and 1A schools in rural areas. (Of course, the way the population out there is skewing now, children are becoming less of a factor out there.)

I grew up in a northwestern Kansas town with a population of just over 2,000. My senior class, which was one of the largest ones in recent times, was 64 kids. School consolidation has already taken out several of the neighboring towns' schools, so that total included Oberlin, plus kids from Norcator, Jennings, Kanona, Herndon and all the farms ... there's basically one school per county in a lot of these areas.

It's the equivalent of buying groceries in Selden now — pay about twice the average retail for bananas at Karl's Kash Store, or drive 20 miles to Hoxie or 40 miles to the Dillons and Wal-Mart in Colby.

It's difficult already to run a school on the funding you get now for having less than 300 kids in the entire high school. How do you divide that population into two or more schools and reap any benefits from healthy free-market competition? (Home and virtual schooling's fine — but what do you do for band? Scholar's bowl? Class plays?)

It's not something I'm ever going to have to worry about myself — I'm never again going to live somewhere where you have to drive 100 miles just to get to a bookstore (Amazon.com doesn't cut it.).

But if it's in the state's interest to see that what people are out there now stay — and I should think it would be — it's got to maintain a baseline standard for the entire state.

[bishop282.livejournal.com]

My home town's population was around 300 and I graduated from a class of 9. Therefore, you could be valedictorian and not in the top 10% at the same time. News from my parents is that there is probably one or two years left of the school. It's sad to watch a town die.

I agree that vouchers probably won't work in the rural areas. The market can't support two products, but I'd like to see it tried in the larger cities. It appears that continuing to throw more money at the problem is not improving schools. Spread the money around and find the best product.

My wife's been researching home schooling and has found places where families band together for the group activities like band, plays, etc. Others use the government school's resources using the fact that they still pay taxes to support the school so they want to use parts of it.