On-topic: More BS in the Granola State

He may have integrity, but he's pretty far off base on a lot of the issues. About the best thing I can say for him as a potential governor is that he'd be at least a little better than Davis.

Reply to
RayDunakin
Loading thread data ...

And so are we. I'm glad that both of your Patriots came back safe and sound. Thank your kids for me and tell them that we appreciate what they've done for us.

Mark Simpson NAR 71503 Level II God Bless our peacekeepers (like Randy's kids)

Reply to
Mark Simpson

Jerry,

Midnight Basketball is an outreach to gang bangers, dope dealers, and wannabes. Few of them would be interested in going to a rocketry program, and the ones that would.... Let's just say they'd find "interesting" uses for the motors.

The idea, Jerry, is to *reduce* crime.

Zooty

Reply to
zoot

Tower, all right. Just not made of ivory.

Zooty

Reply to
zoot

Thanks Mark, I appreciate your support, prayers and good thoughts and the support of many others here on rmr. We were indeed blessed that they both saw a lot of action but came home safe and sound. They both are restricted as to what they can say at this time, other than for the huge amount of social benefits they saw going to the Iraqi's and Afghani's. Food and medicine being the main thrust. Unlike most of the people there, neither of them was able to have their own email, due in part to location, as well as assignment.

Our son did call me one Friday afternoon in April on my cell phone. He said, "Dad! I know where the middle of no where is!" He was using a satellite phone about 200 miles from the nearest town. The next time he called was about noon on the 4th of July, to say he was back at his base. He only got to talk about 1 minute because there were so many others waiting to call their families. We had a good 4th.

My daughter came back the middle of July. She managed to get back ahead of her unit and her trip took her through Australia on her way to San Diego. She saw the same things with food and medical aid. She said the smiles on the peoples faces when they see an American flag or Marine uniform is very humbling.

They are both glad they went, they are both headed back after the first of the year and they want to go. They both say the stuff you hear from the media about soldiers complaining about being there for so long, is for the most part crap or some politician trying to drum up votes using the war efforts to do it. I'll remember that the next time I vote.

Randy

Reply to
Randy

Groan,

(Dana veers wildly off topic). If private schools truly had to compete with public schools they'ed close their doors in a month.

1). Public schools have to take ALL STUDENTS. When a quadrapalegic ADHD kid shows up at St. Von Braun's (rocketry content) ancient 3 story non ADA compliant school they MUST build elevators, and hire full time assistants for little quaddy.

2). When an extra 1000 students show up at Exclusive Acadamy you MUST build enough (ADA compliant) space, and hire enough staff to accomodate the growth. Repeat for three years. Lump it when they all dash off to another school system the 4th year.

3). No student under 14 can EVER be expelled for disruptiveness, or attitude, or performance. You have to hire extra staff to deal with them. You can't even get into most of the "top tier" private schools around here without passing an exam. One thing which hurts the test performance of the IPS schools is the fact that the cream has been skimmed off and sent to private schools.

4). Don't even think about indroctinating Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu kids at your parrochial school. Will your church keep subsidising your school if it is prevented from recruiting?

I've seen what teachers make. My trash man does better. I was in the Wichita schools when they started busing the inter city kids out to the (mostly) white suburbs. That didn't help their educational experience and it certainly didn't help mine. I've come to believe that a student's performance in school is a far stronger function of the home they come from then the school they go to.

My son goes to a new public school in a suburb of Indy. I run the dad's club there. At our first meeting, the fact that the library did not have books yet (ordered but not delivered or shelved yet) was absolutly unsat and was our highest priority. Once the books were delivered (45 boxes on 3 pallets). We spent a Monday night distributing and shelving these books. The library was in business the next morning. We put about 45 man yours into that Library that night. Loads of local parents volunteer at the school.

Those men were a good sample from the parents of that school. The education of their children was a very high priority for them. (I also noticed that only 1 of the 35 families on the dad's club list had a hyphenated family name or a mismatch between the father and the child). The ethnic diversity of the dads club matches that for the school.

I'm in the 6th or 7th generation of my family with post-secondary education. In some families, high school graduation is celebrated as a unique accomplishment. In my current generation, the least educated of us has only a bachelor's. Most have a Masters or above and about 1/4 are working on doctoral work or have completed it. Education is a family value. We do acnowledge HS graduation. But we don't throw a big bash like some do. Don't start partying , there's 6-9 more years of school left. The assumption that all the children will succeed in high school and at the batchelors level is an assumption. Our family will be very dissapointed if they don't.

(back to rocketry content) What's the best way to replace a burnt out shock cord on a Big Daddy?

Reply to
Dana Miller

Sounds like that's implementing his "right to a public education" the hard way... Wouldn't it be more practical to send a tutor to his home than to add elevators to an old building whose floorplan, structure, and wiring were never designed for them? (Or assign him to another school in the district with a newer and more wheelchair- accessible building, or set up a 2-way video link so he can participate in classes at the school from home...)

And then there's the question of whether the "sit still and shut up" environment of a conventional public school is _really_ where one wants to be sending a kid with ADHD...

Yet another reason (besides the "teaching to the test" issue) why measuring the "performance" of a school by its students' scores on government-specified Standardized Tests is silly.

-dave w

Reply to
David Weinshenker

Or bus him to a centralized schoold set up for handicapped and staffed to match like they do in Pomona/Claremont/LaVerne?

None of those things are allowable under the fixed, old, rules, mainly put in place by teacher lobbies to extract yet more tax dollars from property owners who do not use schools.

The standard set forth for students is all access, NOT ALL PUBLICLY FUNDED, PUBLICLY ADMINISTERED BY MORONS ACCESS.

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Irvine

These days that's all we han hope and wish for.

Reply to
Jerry Irvine

Thanks. You said that better than I would have.

I assume you built it stock. I've not built one. What's the mounting method?

Zooty

(I really should build another D motor Fat Boy)

Reply to
zoot

More practical, yes. But... If the parents want him in a public school for his social benefit, the school has to comply.

tim

Reply to
Tim

I've come to believe that a

BINGO!

I just did it the old fashioned way by taking a piece of cardboard and gluing it to the body tube with the cord tied to it. White glue should be plenty but yellow glue is better.

Here's a shot of mine.

formatting link

Reply to
Tim

Good teaching must follow this model: 1. Decide what it is you want the student to be able to do/know. 2. Design an assessment tool that can accurately measure the degree to which a student has mastered the desired goal. 3. Design a methodology through which the desired behaviors can be taught. Any time you switch the order of this model you get into trouble. This is the ONLY way focused learning takes place in a classroom. Now, serendipity plays a part in the process to be sure. The old, "the things I learned looking up other things" adage is true. However, unstructured learning is very difficult to measure and thus rarely satisfies the accountability demands of school boards and state education standards. The trouble I run into as a teacher is that everyone has a new method for me to implement that is absolutely guaranteed to get results. Often times, I find that the assessments are geared toward proving the methodology has merit rather than measuring the degree to which some educational goal had been reached. The reason for this is that curriculum developers get paid if their curriculum works. The rub comes in that "works" is often not tied to a needed skill but rather to a testable behavior. Add to that the labor involved in honest assessment and viola! you have the test driven curriculum and the scantron bubble sheet. At its best, this permits assessing only a shallow level of understanding and it allows for virtually no parallel or non-standard reasoning/logic. If we want serious education we need to be serious about education. No teacher should have more than 20 students a day..maximum. Every student should be writing and presenting every day in every subject. Hands should get dirty, one can't make an omelet without breaking eggs and dirtying dishes. Likewise, one can't learn History or English or mathematics in the abstract. The student has to actually apply the principles in real time to concrete situations. This means longer school days, more teachers, more school days and more field exercises. This costs money. Is it worth it? I think so but shoot, I'm a teacher.

Reply to
Reece Talley

Why would you replace a public school debachle with a private school one? Throw out the stupid rules that only divert money from what is really important in order to be PC.

See above comments. You don't fix a broken wheel by using a broken jack.

Not ALL private schools require admission tests.

If my church is paying for the school, I WANT them to recruit. If that's a deterrent for some, so be it. That's why they call it "School of CHOICE".

The average teacher in my district makes >$60k for 182 days of work. If your garbage man does better, let me know where I can apply. ;-) The problem with forced bussing was just that, it was "forced". f all schools were schools of choice, people could go where they wanted and not be "forced". All busing does is make the bussed school as bad as the first. I've been there, too. some deleted

I'd replace it with a LOC-type mount and tubular nylon. Elastic is for wastebands as Giant Leap advertises.

Mark Simpson NAR 71503 Level II God Bless our peacekeepers

Reply to
Mark Simpson

How many days do students attend school in your district?

FWIW, teachers here make half that and work an extra month.

tim

Reply to
Tim

Old rules created the educational leviathan that we have today. Why perpetuate that which doesn't work. For example, now all buses have to be wheelchair accessible. The modifications are expensive and eat valuable bus space. It is more cost-effective to send a car for the handicapped student...but that's not PC enough for bleeding-heart, mindless liberals that dominate the education field.

Mark Simpson NAR 71503 Level II God Bless our peacekeepers

Reply to
Mark Simpson

Don't forget continuing education. I spent $1,200 out of pocket again this summer for two classes and a conference. BTW, I have two under-graduate degrees, a BS and a BA, a Master's in American Studies, 60 additional units beyond that, two credentials in 5 subjects and a CLAD (California Language Development specialist) certification and the two courses I mentioned earlier now put me at 66 units beyond. I also make a little less than $50K and that includes 6 weeks of summer school. FWIW, I have 18 years experience in the classroom. My day begins at 7:45 and ends at 3:45 officially. unofficially, I tutor beginning at 7:00 AM and again at 3:45 until 4:30. On Fridays I teach an extra hour and forgo the tutoring. I then take home work and from 8:00 PM until 10:00 I grade papers and plan for the next day. I also work weekends at term end or if we have position papers assigned. Add to this a huge reading list (a least one new book every two weeks plus periodicals) and I'd say I earn my money. Two weeks out of every semester I pull lunch duty and have to either eat standing up and moving or skip lunch all together. I also run an after school club twice a month, take 60+ high school kids to DC on a study trip for a week, do parent and Back to School nights, plus supervise dances and sporting events. 182 days sounds great until one looks at what that really means. Oh, one more point. Students attend 182 days. We teachers have a minimum of 20 additional days added for training, administration, and pre and post year prep. Trust me mark, no body does this for the money or the time off. Both are a myth. You've got to love it and more importantly, you've got to love the kids.

Reply to
Reece Talley

Same here :(

Ted Novak TRA#5512

Reply to
the notorious t-e-d

I will buy into this concept on one condition.

That charter/private schools are not allowed to expel a student due to academic or behavioral issues.

Public schools always look bad on standardized tests because they have all the idiots taking the tests with the bright students. The private schools expel all the idiots, so all of their grades are consistantly higher. And behavorial problems? Can't expel junior for bringing a gun to school, the law forces the public schools to keep junior until he/she is 16. Suspended, maybe. But not expelled.

And people continue to wail against public schools.

My sons attend public schools that have been named as national schools of excellence. I will gladly place the top 50% of the students in these public schools and compare them to _any_ private school in my area (I went to those private schools, and I know they are good). The teachers are just as good, if not better (consider, if you are a good teacher, will you take $10,000 a year to teach at a private school, or #25-30,000 a year to teach at a public school. Most teachers, if given the choice, choose the latter), the facilities are top notch, and in both cases, there are parents at home who insist on raising their children with discipline.

Ask any teacher, public or private, and they will be almost unanimous > >

Reply to
Richard Hubbard

Not expel, transfer to a situation appropriate system or site.

Nobody is suggesting changing the "services offered" to the students, or firing teachers. Quite the opposite, teachers should be alowed a 10 hour per week work reduction and second persons brought in districtwide.

Paid for by a pay reduction and about 7 changes to state acquisition and management of achools.

I also propose they become privately owned and funded trusts and abandon the tax funding.

Reply to
Jerry Irvine

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.