Brian, in Michigan you don’t have to ask anyone to begin homeschooling. You might want to check with a lawyer about your situation in that regard.
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| you’re simply refusing to acknowledge it because of your want for governmetal control of education… |
This is utter & complete Bullsh*t. The government does control education.
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| i can’t wait to have children and not send them to government schools!.. |
Won’t you have to stop live in a van before that happens?
Brian - I’m sorry to hear about your son but he shouldn’t have had a knife at school, and he should have known so. My son gets into trouble for singing rap songs, and my wife and I are working on that, but he knows not to have a knife, etc.
My 2 cents…
The problem today is that teachers are expected to help raise the children as well 
THAT is complete & total BS. My dad was a teacher, later principal and later vice supertindent all for almost 40 years. Now he works for the dept of corrections in education, educating kids who have gone the wrong way. My mom taught from 1958-1998. My wife leaves at 8 am and is usually home by 6:30 or 7:00. Both of my sisters are teachers. One high school, one college. The gov does control public ed but they sure don’t give a #### bit of money to it. Each year my wife has to budget $1000-$1500 of our money to buy school supplies. Does she get it back, NNNOOOOO. Do you want to know how it is in small town VA. My wife was working on a project with her elementary students and ran out of ink in the printer, she ran to the office to see if they had one and was told that she really only gets one a year. ONE A YEAR 
to last the whole school year. The supertendant happened to be there when this was taking place and had the balls to actually look her in the face and say to her “maybe you have been printing too much”. It all boils down to lack of respect! I drank some beers on my senior art trip and was expelled for 3 days. My parents said “suck it up, you know better than that”!
Brian
I’m sorry this happened to your son and your family but he really should have known better. The whole world has gone completley and utterly mad since 9/11
Hi Brian,
I’m sorry about your current situation both for you and your son.
Something smells fishy about this whole situation. Why would someone look in your sons locker for a 2" pocket knife? Is the administration suspicious of your son’s behavior? Was there a fight pending? Something is wrong here.
I have been a teacher (in both public and private schools "currently private) for going on 32 years. If your son was truely blindsided in this incident, get a lawyer immediately. Go way over the head of the person who made the expulsion decision and have the charges removed. I find it hard to believe that this “pocket knife incident” is a lone problem in the administrators’ eyes. Something else must be going on. And how come he was charged with a 3rd degree felony if this was truely just an accident?
Find out what the administrators believed when they rifled through his backpack. If this really is just an accident, then get the ACLU involved. Your son is 15 years old with a 3rd degree felony on his record?
Something is fishy here…
Mike
PS.
I currently teach at a $35,000/year private school and I can tell you that there are just as high a percentage of idiot teachers here as there are at the public schools in the area.
Private schools are not the answer. Properly trained, supported and paid teachers are the answer. Also a reduction of kickbacks among politicians would help.
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| Private schools are not the answer. Properly trained, supported and paid teachers are the answer. Also a reduction of kickbacks among politicians would help. |
THIS I can agree with 100%. The corruption and “good ol’ boys network” in the school systems in our area is atrocious. Some very good, extremely qualified teachers are routinely passed over to hire Billy-Bob’s nephew’s wife despite her barely passing her teaching certification. This goes on routinely here. It is very sad indeed.
TG
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| Properly trained, supported and paid teachers are the answer. |
Hear, Hear.
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| I currently teach at a $35,000/year private school and I can tell you that there are just as high a percentage of idiot teachers here as there are at the public schools in the area. |
please tell me the name of this school so that i can avoid it when researching institutions for my children…
isaac
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| I currently teach at a $35,000/year private school and I can tell you that there are just as high a percentage of idiot teachers here as there are at the public schools in the area. |
My wife also teaches at a private school also, and while the there are some great teachers there (she’s one of the them), the teachers are underpaid & some of them probably want to go to public school when they get enough experience.
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| please tell me the name of this school so that i can avoid it when researching institutions for my children… isaac |
I guess you don’t get it issac. The school I teach at could be any and all private schools. I won’t tell you the name ( I think you can figure out why), but I will tell you that a large percentage of the students that graduate from here go to “Ivy League” schools like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, William and Mary, Swarthmore… etc. You see, the one reason to send your kid to a private school is that schools connections with very good colleges.
Soul has it right with the poor pay to teachers. The turnover here is terrible. The public schools in the area start at 50% higher pay than this school. Added to that is the fact that the teachers here are required to coach at least 2 sports and serve on no less than 2 commitees.
Can you spell b…u…r…n…o…u…t ?
issac, try not to blame the teachers in public schools for the current education problems. That would be like blaming the cardiac doctor that is working inside your chest for the fact that a huge percentage of people in the US don’t have health insurance. The problems are partly due to societal views, politics, lies and lieing statistics, ignorance, graft and political spinning.
You spend money on showing public school teachers how to be better teachers and you will have better teachers…period. You take away money for classroom supplies and the teachers and students suffer. Just because a township was able to get decent money for a nice building does not make that money wasted. SOmetimes the government and it’s people can only see as far as it’s nose when it comes to funding. Sometimes society thinks if a system needs help you should cut it’s funding and spend it elsewhere. If we continue to lower funding for public education, this society will spend the money later in other ways; larger prisons, public welfare and halfway houses.
So issac, you go ahead and waste your money on an expensive private school. Show your kid how it is to be a privilaged snob. Hide them from reality and diversity. Maybe they will grow up to feel like the world owes them something like so many private school kids feel. And in the process, you will have weakened the one system that strives for equality among those that attend, the one system that brings all people of every race and religion together; the public school system.
just $.02 more…
Mike
I have gone through all the politeness, nice dress, etc. A couple weeks after this happened my son and I met with the superintendet and his remark that sticks in my mind “we have to make an example of somebody”. This was there first involvement with a student having a knife at school. Then he said somthing to the effect of “we’ll remove this incident from his record pending the outcome of the Court”
I feel so bad for my son that I’m not ‘Street Smart’.
The last voting time in our county the school ran an ad in the newspaper asking for more money so they could hire better teachers. So, has it come down to if you or I get paid more we’ll be better people? DrGuitar, are you better than me because by my choice I only make $16,000yr?(please don’t answer that)
I’m one of them guys that knows almost every thing about anything. I’ve had personal conversations with over 24,000 people to this point in my life. Most have unknowingly learned me more than they themselves could remember. Yep, we’re off on a tangent here but what the heck. I’ve learned I would rather help for free as long as I can keep a roof over my family’s heads and have food on the table. I’ve managed to graduate 3 boys from this school system already. This is my last child and the school system is giving me a bunch of crap. Sure, often a teacher would make a complaint about runing out of ink or paper or anything(that the school would no longer provide) in one of my childs classes. That always bothered me because if you have complaining teachers, you get, complaining students. So, I would aquire the needed items and send them to school with my child for his class. Now maybe this was a bad thing for me to do because the other teachers that had run out of something got jealous and would sooner or later come back to me with the question as to what makes my child so special where he can bring to school whatever his teachers need to conduct class. I would mention something about my dislike for whiners. Well, I guess they can’t flunk me so they’ll take it out on my last child.
I’ve had a run in with some unruly childern in our neighbor hood picking on some kids smaller and younger. I just had simple adult conversation with them and they straightened their ack up and have now become liked by others. If our tearchers were childern then all would be good. For the minds eye of a child is willing to continue to learn while at the same time understanding the responsabilities of their paticular station in life at any certain moment in time.
Brian Ralph Mead
Lattitude NOT Attitude
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| issac, try not to blame the teachers in public schools for the current education problems. |
i don’t blame the teachers only, i blame parents and administrators as well… and i soundly concede that the “best” government school can be “better” than the “worst” private school… but a government school is still an appendage of the government… my personal outlook is that it is best to reduce governmental intervention in American lives and to realign ourselves with a sense of personal responsibility…
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| …waste your money on an expensive private school. Show your kid how it is to be a privilaged snob. Hide them from reality and diversity. Maybe they will grow up to feel like the world owes them something like so many private school kids feel. |
as a fellow (former) educator, i’m saddened by how you view your own students… of course you realize that you’re participating in the perpetuation of that which you loathe?..
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| Can you spell b…u…r…n…o…u…t ? |
i’ve worked in both a government education position, and am now working in the private sector… i work far longer hours than i ever did while teaching… so i feel this is hardly the case… maybe the “burnouts” simply have little interest in their chosen profession… i guess there is a reason for the “good enough for government work” phrase…
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| …a large percentage of the students that graduate from here go to “Ivy League” schools like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, William and Mary, Swarthmore… etc. You see, the one reason to send your kid to a private school is that schools connections with very good colleges. |
and this is a bad thing?.. in fact, this would be one of the reasons that i would consider a school worthy… it sounds as if you wouldn’t want your own children going to any of these schools that you consider to be “very good colleges”… this is something i would hope that my children will want and will work towards…
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| the one system that strives for equality among those that attend, the one system that brings all people of every [blah blah blah blah]. |
rhetoric… nothing more…
isaac
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| Quote …waste your money on an expensive private school. Show your kid how it is to be a privilaged snob. Hide them from reality and diversity. Maybe they will grow up to feel like the world owes them something like so many private school kids feel. as a fellow (former) educator, i’m saddened by how you view your own students… of course you realize that you’re participating in the perpetuation of that which you loathe?.. |
Fact is issac, I do not participate in teaching students to be ego-centric goofoffs. Every student I come in contact with is taught to be responsible. It is usually their wealthy parents that teaches them that they can have whatever they wish. And, whether you are willing to admit this or not, it is a overwhelming percentage of children from wealthy families that attend private schools.
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| Quote Can you spell b…u…r…n…o…u…t ? i’ve worked in both a government education position, and am now working in the private sector… i work far longer hours than i ever did while teaching… so i feel this is hardly the case… maybe the “burnouts” simply have little interest in their chosen profession… i guess there is a reason for the “good enough for government work” phrase… |
Yet again you show your ignorance of the problem. I have to wonder if you ever taught in public or private schools. The full-time teachers at my school work between 70 to 90 hours a week. Never less than 70, often more than 90. This is the reason for the burnout. But since you didn’t experience this, you must have been one heck of a dedicated teacher. I would say that you are the reason your school sucked… (right back at ya).
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| Quote …a large percentage of the students that graduate from here go to “Ivy League” schools like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, William and Mary, Swarthmore… etc. You see, the one reason to send your kid to a private school is that schools connections with very good colleges. and this is a bad thing?.. in fact, this would be one of the reasons that i would consider a school worthy… it sounds as if you wouldn’t want your own children going to any of these schools that you consider to be “very good colleges”… this is something i would hope that my children will want and will work towards… |
This is yet another example of you trying to create a conflict where one does not exist so that you may sound knowledgable. The fact is that in that last quote, you neglected to notice that I stated…
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| You see, the one reason to send your kid to a private school is that schools connections with very good colleges. |
So I had already mentioned that this was the ONE REASON to send your kid to a private school with good connections. Of course this same advantage goes against your concept of affirmative action. Because kids from our school with the exact same grades/SAT scores are much more likely to get a spot in an elite school than a kid in public schools. Sort of a private-school/big-wealth affirmitive action program. Just think, my kid (if we decide to send him here) could beat your kid even if your kid is much more qualified. Sucks doesn’t it. But isn’t that what you want?
As far as rhetoric goes, the republican party is just now starting to come to terms with all that “global warming” rhetoric. At what point does the truth stop being rhetoric for you?
Mike
| Quote (DrGuitar @ June 22 2005,13:38) |
| So issac, you go ahead and waste your money on an expensive private school. Show your kid how it is to be a privilaged snob. Hide them from reality and diversity. Maybe they will grow up to feel like the world owes them something like so many private school kids feel. And in the process, you will have weakened the one system that strives for equality among those that attend, the one system that brings all people of every race and religion together; the public school system. |
I just cut the check for my step-kids to go to their school. To keep them out of public schools is worth every penny. And attitudes like this one cement my decision!!
How can you turn education into a class war?
#### Dr. Guitar, you made Mt. Dew come out my nose with that one!
i read all of that, and was preparing to respond, then finally reached the most offensive comment in the thread thus far:
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| As far as rhetoric goes, the republican party is just now… |
why do people continue to falsely accuse me of being a republican?.. i’ve already been through this earlier with the other mike… sheesh…
isaac
I could insert the “well, because you are right…” comment, you know, to be funny.
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| I just cut the check for my step-kids to go to their school. To keep them out of public schools is worth every penny. And attitudes like this one cement my decision!! |
Clarke - he’s right about this one. My kid’s go to the private school where my wife teaches & they associate with rich, priviledged brats. I don’t like it but it works out best of us to send them there. If I didn’t live in CA, I would probably send my kids to public school.
But hey, if you want them to turn out conversative/Republican like you, then you’re doing the right thing
I live in MN, which for years was considered a bastion of high quality public education…but the times have changed. Anything close to Minneapolis proper are pure shitholes and the average reading and math scores have done nothing but go downhill.
Funny, they don’t have that problem at outstate schools in MN though. Maybe I need to keep moving further out.
Are you sure? The stat’s I have on MN are that the schools do well on the composite NAEP scores, and the state spends above average per pupil for the country ($7000).
yes. we do. but the core Mpls scores are in the shitter. the outstate school scores prop up the urban districts.
The Minneapolis and Saint Paul school districts and a growing number of districts in inner-ring suburbs have a relatively high concentration of at-risk students who require additional resources to achieve the same level of proficiency. Examples include high concentrations of students in poverty, new immigrants learning English, and other students with special needs. It is a fact of life that children with these needs are more expensive to educate. In addition, the Minneapolis and Saint Paul school districts have a high concentration of “limited English proficiency” students due to immigration. These students require more services than other students and are therefore more costly to educate.
Average Scale Score, 8th grade basic testing
MINNEAPOLIS 616.7
STATE 644.4
The town I live in actually is at 661. Nothing to complain about I guess. And our daughter will have to go to the public HS eventually, so that is encouraging I guess