Thanks for the prior comments. Once again I see uninformed drivel from Mr. Know-It-All due to quotes being shown. I fail to comprehend how anyone could be so utterly ignorant to post such stuff (If he's effective at all, just imagine how much more effective he would be if he didn't hold his charges and their families in such low regard.) So let's analyze the above .... first, he questions if I'm effective. I hate to post my credentials but 3 degrees with a quantitative focus makes me a decent math person. 13 years adds to my effectiveness. Recognition by not just the school but the Superintendent of the district (this is the largest district in the state) must mean I'm doing something right. Sorry to toot my own horn. Next, how I supposedly have low regard for the kids and parents. Sadly, it appears as if Mr. Idiot has reading comprehension problems. I have repeatedly stated I don't fault the kids, rather their parents are the ones I hold responsible. And what the heck is so bad about expecting parents to be responsible if they bring kids into the world? Next, I guess he wants me to embrace drug dealers and commend them for their great career choice and what a wonderful example they're setting for their kids. Never mind that these thugs end up in jail and now the kid has an incarcerated father. Same with some of the others .. both mothers and fathers. Sorry Mr. Idiot but I won't cheer crackheads on as if they deserve an award for their great parenting skills while the kids bounce from one fleabag motel to another. Both the administrators and teachers recognize that the #1 issue is the problems that exist in the homes of these kids. We openly talk about it ... maybe 10% of the parents even come to parent-teacher conferences. Many parents can't help their kids with homework since they can't do some of it themselves. People want to say the inner city schools are providing a worse education for the high poverty kids. That's total BS! The spending per kid in high poverty schools is way above what middle class schools spend on their students. Why? Extra resources ... paid tutors, interventionists, smaller classes, and so on. Yet we see poor kids continue to fail in schools. They are being given an opportunity to learn. But when many of them go back home to a house/apartment/motel where there is little to no support, no real interest in any accomplishments and a general disinterest on the part of the parent t sets the kids up for failure.
How adolescent is it to put somebody on Ignore and then respond to them anyway by reading what they've written via second-hand quotes? Is this clown incapable of simply skipping what he doesn't want to read? Or is he so sensitive that he must provide himself with a semi-protective layer? Good grief.
Only in the South. . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teacher Turns Up Drunk And Pantsless On First Day: Cops: Lorie Ann Hill Don't worry about forgetting your homework; this teacher forgot her pants, witnesses said. Oklahoma schoolteacher Lorie Ann Hill, 49, was allegedly spotted drunk and without pants on her first day of work at Wagoner High School Monday, Fox 23 reported. âShe was found in a room kind of disoriented,â Police Chief Bob Haley told Tulsa World. âBy the time we got there she was in a room and wearing shorts.â Hill was hired by the school this year for a special education position, according to the Muskogee Phoenix. She allegedly admitted to drinking vodka before coming to work, and was charged with public intoxication.
The Question of Poverty and Character David Brooks' recent essay on "The Character Factory" would have us believe that "nearly every parent on earth operates on the assumption that character matters a lot to the life outcomes of their children" while "nearly every government anti-poverty program operates on the assumption that it doesn't." Assertions like that, coming in the wake of Paul Ryan's proposal to devolve more and more of such programs down to the state level where they can be more properly "personalized," raises a question of fundamental importance. Is poverty ultimately a matter of character? If it is, then anti-poverty programs need resetting, as David Brooks would have them reset, to focus more on the development of character than on the provision of material resources. If it is, then people like Paul Ryan are right: the propensity of liberals to treat the poor as victims of circumstances, rather than as the authors of their own fate, needs to be rethought. If poverty is ultimately a question of character, as the Brooks' essay would suggest, then poverty is genuinely something that can be solved by the poor themselves showing more of the effort and determination necessary to transform their circumstances. more . . .