Messages

1

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: "Obamacare"

« on: February 28, 2017, 07:57:47 PM »

Must have had a really shitty plan through work.

None of the poors on obamacare can even begin to afford the $6000-12,000 annual deductible. It's a terrible high deductible plan that used to cost like $85 p/mo, that these poor souls have to pay several hundred a month for.

Not all people on Obamacare are poors.  I'm certainly not, and my deductible is $1,000.  Also, my former shitty plan was through a school district, so probably not the greatest.

If you're not poor, why do feel entitled to taxpayer dollars to pay for your insurance?

Are you effing kidding me?  No taxpayer dollars pay for my insurance.  I purchased a plan on the exchange when I resigned from my job and receive NO subsidies.  Quit being a jackass. 

2

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: "Obamacare"

« on: February 23, 2017, 06:13:31 PM »

Must have had a really shitty plan through work.

None of the poors on obamacare can even begin to afford the $6000-12,000 annual deductible. It's a terrible high deductible plan that used to cost like $85 p/mo, that these poor souls have to pay several hundred a month for.

Not all people on Obamacare are poors.  I'm certainly not, and my deductible is $1,000.  Also, my former shitty plan was through a school district, so probably not the greatest. 

3

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: "Obamacare"

« on: February 23, 2017, 06:09:19 PM »

Well crap if it works for you must work for errrrbody.

Never claimed it did.

4

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: "Obamacare"

« on: February 23, 2017, 07:56:45 AM »

Repealing obamacare would be cheaper, source the cbo 7 years ago, common sense.

Obamacare sucks balls, source the last 4 general elections and everyone on it who has actually tried to go to the doctor.

I have Obamacare and have had no problems.  I see the same doctor I did when I had coverage through my job. 

5

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: Teachers: they are really great

« on: August 16, 2015, 09:36:16 PM »

Basing teacher evals on parent requests is a terrible idea.  I live in the neighborhood around my school, and the teachers who my neighbors think are fantastic are often some of the worst.  Just because you are friendly doesn't mean you are a superior teacher. 

There is NO realistic way to evaluate teachers and apply those evals to salary...too many variables that teachers cannot control.

6

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: Men Matter!!!

« on: August 05, 2015, 09:27:56 AM »

Yeah!  Some day, white men will have the same amount of respect and privilege that the rest of society enjoys. 






Until then...enjoy your time at the top.

7

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 04:59:17 PM »

I can't speak for higher grades, but I've got a child in 1st grade public school and they seem to spend a disappointingly small amount of time on fundamentals. They did waste a good 20 or so hours over the past few weeks rehearsing for a really awful music performance that most of the kids appeared to have cared less about.

Besides the evidence that math skills are improved by music exposure, I'm going to assume that your kid doesn't spend this much time on music practice during the entire school year.  Special circumstances do come up in life.

My son is in 1st grade as well.  His day:
8:30-9:10 Phonics and Calendar (math based)
9:10-9:30 Recess
9:30-10:30 Reading groups
10:30-11:00 Whole group reading
11:00-11:25 Lunch
11:25-12:00 Writing
12:00-12:20 Recess
12:20-1:30 Math
1:30-2:30 Specials (PE, Music, Library, Computer/Guidance)
2:30-3:20 Social Studies/Science

tl;dr  A ton of fundamentals

8

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 04:50:10 PM »

Well it's free for poors, and people that aren't poor can obviously afford it, so I don't think cost is at issue.

A family of 4 can't make more than $24,000 to qualify for Head Start. 

9

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 09:28:58 AM »

Is a parent who can't afford pre school a "shitty parent"?

In most cases, probably so. If you don't earn enough money to send a kid to preschool, you could just work a little bit harder to either get a better job or a second job.

Ah, so spend even less time with your child?  Preschool is expensive.

10

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 08:55:16 AM »

I think our schools could probably get by with a quite a bit less money - they should focus more on the fundamentals, consolidate, and shed a lot of redundant administrative positions. Schools are susceptible to the same bloat as any other government-funded bureaucracy.

Focus MORE on fundamentals?!  Nearly the entire school day is spent on reading, writing, and math instruction. 

11

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 08:51:13 AM »

If parenting is the most important factor, how do rich kids at elite boarding schools always do so well away from their parents?

They have likely had a lot of enrichment opportunities, preschool, parents who read to them when they are young, etc. 

12

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 06, 2015, 01:43:45 AM »

Something drastic needs to be done with public schools, because they are failing and more and more money has done nothing to help. Sam has his approach. The establishment will obviously fight to the death to protect their entitlement (status quo). How anyone is surprised by this, I don't know.

Dear God, do people have any idea what even goes on in schools before spouting the "failing" comments?  Please give me specific examples of how exactly our Kansas schools are failing.  The expectations on these kids are sky high...MUCH HIGHER than when I was in school.  The stakes are sky high as well.  I just get so sick of people who have no education or child development background proclaiming the schools, teachers, and students to be failures. 

Have you read studies about how skewed the data is when comparing our ed data to that of other countries?  Poverty is the number one factor in determining at-risk students. For a little light reading on the subject, check this out.

http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

13

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 10:45:51 AM »

Also, just set a base level of funding for each school, and let the schools and teachers decide how best to use them. If the schools suck, the PTAs or whatever can pressure the school to do better. No more statewide or nation wide standards, because those suck. No more politicians forcing agendas to students.

Bam. I just fixed schools.

CaseClosed.WC08.gif

So how exactly would the PTA determine if the school was not doing a good enough job?  Would they all agree on what their children should be learning at a given grade level? 

14

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 10:35:22 AM »

Speaking of teacher evaluations linked to test scores...

I am a part time school counselor.  My evaluation is partially based on the assessment scores of our 3rd and 4th graders.  I don't even get to work with those grade levels b/c of my part time status (my job description is ridiculous, but that is a different story).

15

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 10:32:45 AM »

What incentive is there to change then?

Actually, the incentive to change (because of teacher evals linked to testing, NCLB, etc.) has sucked the creativity right out of teaching.  It is more difficult to implement new ideas, because the kids are constantly either testing or preparing for testing.

The best time of the year is after assessments are over.  For that month or so, even though summer was approaching and the kids were ready to be out of school, my students would always learn a lot.  Hands on history and science projects, career fairs (complete with resume writing, interviewing, skills application), math projects that applied to the real world....we all loved it.

16

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 09:57:30 AM »

I would imagine a lot of them don't.

Seriously?

17

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 09:56:30 AM »

Scenario A:  Mrs. CNS gets fed up with the public school system and decides to start a charter school.  Because she is a teacher and knows a lot about child development, she structures her school appropriately and frees the kids from the pressures of testing, etc.  She makes a good profit and the kids benefit from her passion for teaching.  She pays her teachers appropriately and supports them by making sure that they have the materials that they need.

Scenario B:  Large for-profit charter school company rakes in big bucks.  The teacher turnover rate is really high because the pay isn't great and they are expected to be available to students and parents almost constantly.  Therefore, the teachers are pretty inexperienced because they either burnout or move on.   

I'm totally fine with scenario A.  Unfortunately, I think that those types of charters are the exception, not the norm. 

18

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 04, 2015, 09:36:28 AM »

Because teachers don't have good ideas? 

19

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 03, 2015, 11:06:40 PM »

Don't they rely on the "voucher system"

No.  Vouchers are taxpayers money mainly used to send kids to private schools, which is ridiculous in my opinion.  Private schools aren't held accountable at all for what they teach.  Charter schools are public schools that aren't held to the same standards as the districts are...they have to meet the criteria stated in their charter instead.

If charter schools weren't big cash cows for the for-profit companies (and even for the non-profit companies via tax breaks), I might feel differently about them.  As a public school teacher, there are a lot of things that I wish were not part of our education system, the biggest being high stakes testing.   

The data on charter schools shows that as a whole, they don't really perform much better than public schools.  A clarification of an earlier post:  they have to take everybody or do a lottery for acceptance.  However, they can weed out the lower performing students in a multitude of ways whereas public schools have to accept and KEEP all students.

20

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 03, 2015, 07:37:30 PM »

Everything that Brownback, the Koch bros, and the Kansas Policy Institute try to do involving education is a push toward charter schools. 

21

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: February 03, 2015, 04:46:56 PM »

“Let’s spend that two years writing a finance formula that gets money to the classroom, and I’d like it to have some incentives tied with performance,” Brownback said Friday. “Are the kids reading at the fourth-grade level when they get to fourth grade? When you leave high school, are you either ready to go to college or go to work?

“I’d rather you’d be both, ready to do both, but are you? And we want to pay that you will be, and if you’re not, then you should be penalized for it because that’s what you’re supposed to get done.”

 

Ah, yes.  Performance based funding ranks right up there with evaluating teachers based on their students' performance.  Clearly, Blue Valley deserves more money than KCK, because their students perform better on assessments.  How can anyone think this is appropriate by any stretch of the imagination?!?

22

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: January 25, 2015, 09:20:31 PM »

I went to elementary school in the 80's and learned math using all these concepts without having to circle numbers blue, use my crayon as a ruler or complete disjointed and incoherent word problems.

I don't know what they mean by "straight memorization", but that is not something that's been taught in my lifetime.

Unless you are like 12 years old, I am pretty sure you used a lot of memorization in early math classes.  Multiplication tables, algorithms, etc.  You also obviously have a good number sense and were able to apply it to higher level math concepts.  A lot of kids struggle with it.  The way that they teach math now helps to develop that number sense at younger ages so that it can be built upon.

Now seriously, what is this "circle numbers blue" nonsense?  Grade level? 

23

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: January 25, 2015, 10:19:22 AM »

You know, maybe if more parents had a better understanding of math concepts and number sense, they wouldn't freak out when their first graders come home with "common core math".  The freak outs kind of prove the point that rote memorization methods from the past don't really teach mathematical reasoning. 

24

The New Joe Montgomery Birther Pit / Re: State of the State - case closed, money is bad for schools

« on: January 24, 2015, 10:13:24 AM »

Common core is standards, not curriculum.  Districts choose which curriculum they want that will teach the standards. 

The math concepts are not new.  The curricula that we used in both KCK and Ottawa used the same type of constructivist methods to allow kids to develop a better number sense...so much better than the memorization that we used back in the day.

25

Jerome Tang Coaches Kansas State Basketball / Re: the cat hand signal is so stupid

« on: January 17, 2015, 03:49:35 PM »

Blowjobs all around...