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DEL.ICIO.USPosing questions a start to fixing education woes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While briefing legislators on the work of the task force he heads that’s examining how Georgia funds public schools, former State Rep. Dean Alford of Conyers was asked: “Aren’t there three big problems with schools and if we fixed those, wouldn’t that solve all the ills?”
Yes, replied Alford, and that’s the problem — there are three, but they differ from one school to another.
Public education is Grady Hospital, an institution with an insatiable appetite for money, onion-skin layers of hidden agendas and turf-protecting special interests, and a hell-no-never resistance to actual change hidden in public rhetoric that hints at cooperation and a willingness to embrace it. The reality is that there will always be one more hurdle, one more excuse, one more plea for a new financial savior.
No wonder that, on Grady, the top-ranking member of the Georgia Senate, president pro-tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said in exasperation: “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it did go under. Maybe the phoenix that would rise in its place would be better than the hospital that’s there now.”
Nobody’s proposing to give up on public education. But one welcomed consequence of the shift in power under the Gold Dome is that on a number of fronts, the inquisitive minds of intelligent people are beginning to examine institutions and ask “what if?” questions.
Alford, incidentally, was a Democrat when he served in the General Assembly and may still be. I’ve never asked, nor does it matter. More important, he’s an engineer and a businessman, a Georgia Tech graduate and a former member of the state school board who’s devoted the past three years to a 23-member commission examining public education and the way we finance it.
Essentially what they’ve found is a model that doesn’t work for children, their parents, taxpayers at the state and local level, and local school boards and administrators. It’s a do-this, do-that compliance model. “The state told you what to do, and what was measured was whether you did it, not performance,” he said. “We found that to be an inefficient and an ineffective model built for a homogeneous population out there that does not exist.”
Nobody was happy. The solution, Alford and others concluded in visiting 106 local systems, was to develop a “partnership based on real clearly defined roles and responsibilities and real covenants.” Local systems, under a model the commission is expected to recommend, would be able to “buy” their way out of mandates by agreeing contractually to achieve specific results. An example is improving graduation rates. The national average is 69.9 percent; Georgia now stands at 56.1, third from the bottom. “At the end of the day, we have to get to a 90-plus percent graduation rate in this state,” Alford said.
“Systems, I am convinced, are not afraid of accountability,” he said. How much control the local boards exercise depends on how much responsibility for doing their jobs they’re willing to take. If they fail, they risk losing authority over nonperforming schools. My preference, but not a part of the commission’s expected recommendations, would be that parents be given the full state funding share to buy the services their children need from any competent and willing provider of education services.
Alford’s panel is also attempting to determine precisely how much a quality education should cost and what portion should be borne by locals and by the state. Now it’s about 55-45, state-local.
The public education and funding model does need to change. As Alford noted, the current system was designed for a homogenous world that no longer exists. Georgia has 180 school systems and three times that many critical problems with them. The solution is statewide standards and local control, with accountability and consequences, even down to the individual school level.
“To spin more money into a system that doesn’t work for both sides is a bad use of money,” Alford said. “We are spending 38.5 percent of the state budget on k-12 education. It is the most important economic development issue facing the state. We have to get it right.”
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Comments
By TW
October 13, 2007 8:09 AM | Link to this
Start with this – how come the public schools that sit in the middle of the expensive houses work just fine?
Strange isn’t it? Teaching quality is the same at the ‘failing school’, but the schools in lovely East Cobb just seem to do better than their sister schools on the south side of the county. Hmmmmmm.
Failing Schools?
Failing Country
There is no bigger indictment of the White man than the condition of those who are not.
Shame.
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 8:43 AM | Link to this
The problem with any educational system in Georgia is simply this - garbage in, garbage out.
Educating the children of ignorant superstitious child-abusing rednecks is a waste of time. Money would be better spent on orphanages and tubal ligations.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 8:46 AM | Link to this
“There is no bigger indictment of the White man than the condition of those who are not.”
I hear ya TW - it’s a shame so many of those inner city schools in this nation have students who think studying and doing good in school is “acting white.” But that’s just whitie’s fault too. We already knew that. But thanks for reminding us TW. You have done your good Al/Jesse lieral race baiting good deed of the day.
By Ms Understood
October 13, 2007 8:49 AM | Link to this
Kevin - the world is so much bigger than black and white now…we better come together…at my hospital, illegal Mexicans had 400 babies in September…and the government footed the bill for 92% of them….address the real issues…why this so called government is allowing this to happen.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 8:50 AM | Link to this
Whoops. Make that “liberal race baiting..*
Oh look, the liberal blog Satan is back, God’s Trash. Isn’t that special. What’s up slut? How’s your slut muther and sister? Tell those skanks hi for me.
By TW
October 13, 2007 8:52 AM | Link to this
Faux News Kevin - yeah, that’s it - they fail bacause they don’t want to act white. How convenient for you to take that approach - doesn’t cost you a dime that way. What a good Republican.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 8:57 AM | Link to this
“address the real issues…why this so called government is allowing this to happen.”
Well Miss Understood, I never let a cheap racist shot go by unmarked. Anyway, both political parties seem to not want to do anything about illegal Hispanic immigration [just call it what it is already!]. Neither wants to give up potential votes, but the Dems get more Hispanic votes anyway, so Republicans really have nothing to lose by taking it on. Bush, unfortunately, is a losing panderer.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 9:04 AM | Link to this
TW can’t handle the truth and pulls Fox News out of his a$$. Isn’t that just like a damned liberal? No wonder I don’t waste time with them “debating.” Jackasses.
Read up, TW. Does TW stand for Toilet Wipe? You’ve got something hanging on your lip, lib. Liberals HATE the truth.
Read on, stinky butt:
“Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” —Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004
By Redneck Convert
October 13, 2007 9:06 AM | Link to this
Well, got my PBR and plenty of fried pork skins and I’m ready for the Dawgs big game against Vanderbilt. Jim Earl and Joe Bill will be over about noon and we’ll watch some of the worthless teams till 6 o’clock or so. My wide screen is working just fine. I just hope we don’t get another beat-down like last week against Tennessee. If the coach can keep enough players out of jail we ought to do fine.
Like I said before, I don’t see why we got to worry about schools here in GA. I never made it out of 5th grade and it never hurt me none. Let the kids attend till they are 16 and then let them go to work to get their own pickup and trailer.
The problem we got right now is the schools make it too tough on the kids. They got to learn about the gullet and the gizzard and then try the awful multiplying tables at the same time. When all the kids want to do is play football or cheerlead and get school over with so they can use their chainsaw and 4-wheelers. And just when they think they are finished for the year along comes the state with a big test they got to pass.
I don’t see why we can’t go back to the way school use to be. I remember poor Larry Burns that couldn’t learn nothing but kept getting sent on to the next grade each year. The teachers sent him out to sweep the hallways during class and he was very happy. At the end of 12 years he was a High School Graduate and probly knowed more than most GA students do now. The teachers was so happy to see him leave they took up a collection for him and high-fived each other.
Anyway, that’s the way we fix the schools. Just send the kids on to the next grade instead of holding them back and making them take tests and such. They will sort theirselfs out. The dumber ones will go on to be state legislaters and big car dealers that yell at you on TV at the top of their lungs, and the smart ones will have to go to work and be poor or teachers.
Anyway, if people want their kids to learn all kind of book learning they need to send them up North. Us Southreners don’t hold with that kind of stuff. Mark my words, it will be the same 100 years from now. People will still be moaning about how dumb the school kids are here. It tells me all I need to know that it took a legislater 3 years of study to figure out the schools ain’t working. Heck, I could of told him that if he had of just drove up here to the trailer.
Go Dawgs!
By Mack
October 13, 2007 9:08 AM | Link to this
Students are the usual suspects in a lineup of society’s two way mirror, a teacher. Teachers speak, constrained by arbitrary curriculum. Students step forward and repeat the words born at the crime scene of jury-nullified text books. Educators deliberate a student’s future with the same sentencing criteria used during the Inquisition. Some career paths are less taken because they’re mined no-mans-land in the holy war on science.
Funding education is as simple as building more bible schools. Support the troops.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 9:09 AM | Link to this
Here’s a good read for anyone who’s not too cowardly like TW to address what “acting white” is in this nation.
Instead of tackling the tougher problems, just do what shallow simpleton libs like TW, Jesse, and Al do: blame white people and Fox News for everything. Oh yeah, and calling for the firing of people who say “nappy ho” is an easy problem to fix too! To hell with the REAL problems, folks.
By TW
October 13, 2007 9:14 AM | Link to this
Gee…Faux News Kevin knows how to cherry pick…imagine that? Not only that, but he has furthered himself from having to spend a dime to fix anything…brilliant…brilliant Republican!
What does your two-chambered frog heart of a brain make of this, Kevin -
Klan membership down - NRA membership up?
Use of the ‘N’ word down - use of the term ‘racebating’ up?
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 9:17 AM | Link to this
“Just send the kids on to the next grade instead of holding them back and making them take tests and such. They will sort theirselfs out.”
The lib Redneck parody clown has it right! The only problem here is, it’s liberals and the Dem-supporting American Federation of Teachers in our schools that find it more important to move a kid on to the next grade level so his self esteem won’t get hurt. I mean, let’s get real here. There are teachers that don’t give out grades anymore because they might hurt a kid’s feelings.
Liberalism is the problem here. But, that’s why caring parents send their kids to private schools. Get ‘em the hell out of those gestapo public indoctrination camps.
By Kevin
October 13, 2007 9:21 AM | Link to this
Now Toilet Wipe dwindles down to the NRA and the “N” word and whatnot. Like where did that come from? You just can’t reason with lower life forms like that. Don’t waste your time. That typing corpse just thinks more money solves everything.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 9:26 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. The mantra of all socialists is, “it did not work because the wrong person was running it.” Socialism has failed in every venue. Why anyone would continue to believe it is the ideal way to deliver education tests the imagination. Vouchers would be a partial step toward introducing free market changes - I don’t understand why the socialists won’t consider that half-change, unless this is really some game to preserve government majesty.
Special note to Redneck, if I had any continuing relations with my alma mater I would ask them to take it easy on your team today. Regrettably, they are on their own against the mighty commodores.
By TW
October 13, 2007 9:26 AM | Link to this
Aw, c’mon Kevin…don’t be so easy…have faith in your snake oil…
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 9:26 AM | Link to this
Long before there ever was a Department of Education, Georgia schools were the bottom of the barrel, turning out a state full of violent racist superstitious illiterates. Spending money trying to educate the poor pitiful souls that are born to redneck parents is like throwing money in the street.
Take children from people like Kevin and put them in orphanages- feed Kevin saltpeter or castrate him, to save another generation from his stupid inbred genes.
Clean up the trash, America.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 9:28 AM | Link to this
Apologies Kevin, my post says almost exactly what you said better @ 9:17.
By Stop Signs
October 13, 2007 9:29 AM | Link to this
Teachers themselves are the problem because they’re human. I can remember just two inspiring teachers when I attended grades 1-12. Most of my teachers were obsessed only with style. Many had that thousand-mile stare, shell shocked by unrequited love. Teachers are human.
We get jaded and numbed by the vicissitudes of our individual love stories. If only we had read that letter, if only we had not walked into that bar, if only…..
Heartbroken, we ignore our obligations to inspire, to instruct, and to pass on that which could have made us great if only. If only.
Instead we bury that which makes us unique and our irrelevence becomes etched in stone.
By UGA Bound
October 13, 2007 9:39 AM | Link to this
Jbmlaw is the only one publicizing socialism. Ann Coulter is the only one mentioning Marxism. Rush Limbaugh is the only one creating liberal criteria.
Found that hot-button issue yet?
Revelations describes a more believable being.
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 9:50 AM | Link to this
The rants and ravings of jbmlaw-tftt, Wooten, and the rest of his klanners cannot explain Georgia’s tragic unmitigated history of violent superstitious stupidity.
Let’s face it, any institution - education, governmental, legal, domestic - that develops within a diseased racist violent superstitious group of people is doomed to reflect the stupidity and disease of its forebearers.
Trash will always beget trash, unless something truly drastic is done to disrupt the cycle.
By CNN word
October 13, 2007 10:03 AM | Link to this
Advertising works because it references culture. SAT’s and IQ tests fail because they reference culture. White students can deduce correct answers based on the culturally-derived syntactical justaposition of the words and phrases in the IQ and SAT questions themselves. These enunciated vestiges of slavery, shining so brightly in contract law, constraining nearly all spontaneous social intercourse, and fastening our inherited racial attitudes, serve to placate the entrenched educational resource allocation networks.
This impedes reform.
By @@
October 13, 2007 10:10 AM | Link to this
I laughed when I saw Alford’s use of the word homogenous Jim. I was immediately reminded of Miss Muffet eating her curds & whey.
I’m soooo thankful that I work in a private school. I think every teacher would benefit from working with autistic children whose abilities to learn cover a wide spectrum. The only common link among them are their behavior disorders. Once the behaviors are dealt with, the kids are free to meet the goals that are set.
Even kids with disabilities have a need to compete. The high achievers serve as role models for the kids whose abilities are limited.
Those who think that children with disabilities have nothing to offer couldn’t be more wrong. They have taught me more than a typical child ever could.
By Moral Czar
October 13, 2007 10:13 AM | Link to this
People are not trash. Garbage is trash. Does every comment you litter this blog with have to contain the word trash? Your mind is a rubbled dreg.
By smoking mullet
October 13, 2007 10:14 AM | Link to this
UGA bound (I’m so sorry) sayeth:
Jbmlaw is the only one publicizing socialism.
Ann Coulter is the only one mentioning Marxism.
Revelations describes a more believable being.
Oh really? Destroying private health care for government run free health care for all paid for by those who pay taxes is not socialism? Taking $5,000 from those who pay taxes and redistribute it to kids is not socialism? Let’s look at Marxism now. A heavily progressive income tax is not mentioned in the Communist Manifesto? Taking people’s property away after they die and not allowing them to pass it on to their heirs is not in the Communist Manifesto?
UGA Bound, an stupid ignorant piece of left wing pinko trash like you will fit right in at UGA.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 10:14 AM | Link to this
Quote of the day, not particuarly a recent one: “it never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.”
Who said it?
By Dusty
October 13, 2007 10:16 AM | Link to this
God Hates Trash,
I suspect that you hate just about everybody. No love in your heart, buddy, for any skin color.
Surprisingly enough, considering what people tell us about Georgia education, our state sends some amazing people to Washington. Out of the South have come founders of the country and more recently Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and many others that excel. If you throw in Virginia and Texas, we have swamped the Capitol with intelligent citizens. (Even the ever eccentric Cynthia McKinney is well educated!)
Of course you will come up with the hate mantra and and name some bigots which can be found almost anywhere if you are looking for them.
Georgia’s education may show flaws but the character is always there. Sorry you don’t see it. I doubt that you are “from” the South.
By Tax Payer - Angry
October 13, 2007 10:31 AM | Link to this
Public schools in Georgia, ney in all of America are run first for the benefit and convenience of the SCHOOL SYSTEM, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS, THEN FOR THE BENEFIT AND CONVENIENCE OF TEACHERS. Students are just the raw material (raw sewage?) being processed in the school (plant). Never forget that the public school system is first and foremost a jobs programs for all the politically connected suits in administration, and the politically connected teachers in the classroom, secondly as a baby sitting service for parents, and last as a way of keeping excess labor off the market until it turns 18, or perferable 22 or older. END TAXPAYER FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION IN GEORGIA, MAKE THE PARENTS PAY FOR THE EDUCATION OF THEIR OWN CHILDREN. Then costs will come under control, and parents will demand the children work to learn, and the lazy teachers work to teach. No more lesson plans created by the teacher in her first year on the job, still being used on the day the lazy had retires on her unearned taxpayer paid retirement.
By Craig17
October 13, 2007 10:32 AM | Link to this
That Trash troll barked that something ‘truly drastic needs to be done’. I wonder what it means? Eradicating all conservatives?
Please refrain from feeding the dog by responding to it’s ankle nipping here people. Just pray it will be reincarnated and pay for the hate by being a dog in a Puerto Rican ghetto.
By @@
October 13, 2007 10:35 AM | Link to this
The quote jbmlaw cites is from Clarence Thomas who frequently quotes Frederick Douglas.
“If the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 10:36 AM | Link to this
Dear UGA Bound, my policy is to not attack undeveloped minds. Enjoy your time at UGA, the real world awaits. If you have time for a single diversion, I would urge you to wade through “Atlas Shrugged.” Tough, long, read. When my younger son was in the eighth grade, I gave him a copy and told him there was a $100 bill at the end of the book. He not only collected his money, but he quotes the book 10 years later.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 10:41 AM | Link to this
No fair @@, my query was not posed for anyone with a brain. (Just kidding.) I am yet amazed at the otherwise intelligent people who do not appreciate the genius of Justice Thomas. As is the case with my hero, Thomas Sowell (did you read his series on Justice Thomas this week?), he says more with fewer words than any since Justice Holmes.
By UGA Bound
October 13, 2007 10:42 AM | Link to this
And your hate isn’t taken word4word from the preamble to “Mein Pet Kampf”, which happened to be the book W was reading on 911 to the assembly of hitler youth in that elementary school?
There’s no place in this country for haters. Please migrate. Yes, Hillary’s plan calls for one free airline ticket to deutchland for every hater.
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 10:44 AM | Link to this
My position and those of the Wooten-klanners are not as far apart as one might think.
Liberalism and government intervention in various forms has served to perpetuate and enable the diseased culture of the American south, starting with Lincoln’s Civil War.
Freeing the slaves saved southron whites from the inevitable slave uprisings that would have resulted in their much deserved slaughter. Certainly the rot of slavery would have eventually fallen from its own weight. If the CSA had gone its own way, it would have probably become another Haiti, given the apalling lack of education in the southern states.
The failures of Reconstruction are well known - the southron white maintained his sense of privilege on top of a diseased and disgusting society based on violence and rape. Southern blacks were killed and worked to death with the same impunity of the slave years. Bringing the southron white back under the cover of Old Glory gave them an undeserved veneer of respectability.
Later, millionaires like Rockefeller helped to end the plagues of rickets and ringworm that helped keep the redneck population in check. FDR’s New Deal brought billions of dollars in federal spending to the degenerates that lived in Appalachia and the Tennessee River Valley/Swamp. Welfare kept many many southerners in food. People that would have starved, or forced to find productive work, stayed mired in the filth of their shacks and reproduced, causing still another generation of poverty and superstition.
Thus, the superstitious hatefilled animalistic heart of the southerner was perpetuated and even strengthened by liberalism.
Money we spend on educating southerners would be better spent on orphanages and forced sterilization.
By RW-(the original)
October 13, 2007 10:51 AM | Link to this
jbmlaw,
Good advice on your recommended wading list. Can you believe Atlas Shrugged is 50 years old this year?
Some things are just timeless I guess.
By AmVet
October 13, 2007 10:56 AM | Link to this
I am often amused by those “scholars” here who blame the evil, subversive liberals for the failings of public education.
YET, it is well documented that the most “liberal” states - those in the Northeast and upper Midwest, for example - always crank out the most educated, capable students in the country, per capita.
And the states most identified with the GOP and this so called conservatism - all of the states in the deep south, for example - are always at the very bottom of any legitimate scale regarding educational performance and overall aptitude and intelligence.
Those are the long standing facts and they are irrefutable.
I know from personal experience, that generally, in those NE and MW states, education is prized. It is heavily stressed at the family level and kids are expected to perform at a high academic standard. Sometimes very high standards.
In a great deal of the South, and other bastions of non-progress, education is, in many cases, something to be suffered through and given lip service. And it has always been accepted here that an enormous percentage of students will “pass” high school but read and function at an eighth grade level or less.
Stupid is as stupid does. And then they procreate.
Politics won’t solve the problem.
Only when families again start putting education first and everything else second will this change. And only when parents require Johnny, Susie, DeShawn and Lakesha to give 100% to put up academically or shut up will Georgia crawl off the virtual bottom of the list.
But then that would require personal responsibility wouldn’t it? And apparently a great deal of the country, doesn’t much care for the taste of that.
They would rather blame the “system”.
By Glenn Gilbert
October 13, 2007 10:57 AM | Link to this
“Tax-payer Angry”, you’re right about the sinister confusion as to which group constitutes the actual clientele of the school system. But I wish you’d give the common schooling ideal another look. Democracy’s also a taskmaster.
I’m warming to your peckerwood satire, “Redneck Convert”. It’s better than I’d thought. Are you perhaps the alter ego of Jim Wooten, like Garth Brooks in Chris Gaines mode, playing dress-up for fun? If you are really Jim, then may I ask what you make of Mr. Alford’s claim that the “system doesn’t work for both sides”? What sides? Who chose sides? Whose side is Alford on? What’s this talk about “roles and responsibilities and clear covenants”? Who gets to assign the roles and responsibilities? Who would be the parties to a covenant, and what would each party owe to the other(s)? On what planet does he expect ever to see 90% attendance in urban public schools? Show me his spaceship.
By Tax Payer - Angry
October 13, 2007 10:58 AM | Link to this
JMB, you idiot, Atlas Shrugged is not a hard read - I read it for pleasure in high school, on my own, as my teachers were too dumb to recommend reading material of any type other than the bible. The 900 Days was another good read, it told me that war is for idiots and their ilk. Did you know that at Leningrad, after the Germans had been driven away, Ivan used six year old girls to walk thru the mine fields, feeling for mines? Many died, but the mine fields were cleared. Do you know why Ivan used six year old girls, and not soldiers, or six year old boys? Did not think so.
By Dusty
October 13, 2007 10:59 AM | Link to this
Poor old God Hates Trash,
still in the slavery of hate from 150 years ago and trying to rationalize it. But bigotry cannot be wrapped in any form and made to look “pretty”. You are a sad case, GHT, a relic from the past still mewling with maudlin moans of a tragic and lost mindset.
Best wishes, sad one, you need all the help you can get.
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 11:01 AM | Link to this
The amoeba-like brain that is Dusty’s correctly determined that “you ain’t from around here”.
God, what trash you are, you silly superstitious kkklown.
By UGA Bound
October 13, 2007 11:15 AM | Link to this
jbmlaw, are you suggesting that taxpayers are jesus’s who should deny their crosses and hoard the productive achievements gleaned by virtue of their own innate advantages?
Individual success can only come at the expense of the masses from whose sheer existence drips the resources which get hoarded by self-aggranding entrepreneurs.
You must be so proud of yourself. Enjoy your porcelain veneers, for there will be gnashing of teeth when the first become the last.
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 11:17 AM | Link to this
Alas, AmVet, we shouldn’t blame the poor children. Many of them are hampered by genetics - generations of inbreeding and random couplings on the part of southerners result in difficult hurdles for many of these children to climb, irrespective of the degenerate environments of their so-called ‘family life’ - which is often nothing but sitting around a filthy mobile home nervously watching television eating Dominos pizza and chitos waiting for their drunken parents to beat them or have sex with them, or both. Doubly damned, these children have no real future, only perpetuating the horrors of their upbringing.
By Dusty
October 13, 2007 11:17 AM | Link to this
Glen Gilbert @ 10:57,
Awww come on..puhleeze!! You didn’t think for one minute that Redneck Convert was for REAL, did you? He’s the biggest liberal undercover (satire) agent in these parts. Captain Freedom is another one, if not the same.
For entertainment, they try. I suspect the “beer truck” is parked in a gated subdivision of many mansions next to the golf course.
But enjoy the “putdown” as produced by amateur comedians of political propaganda. Southerners in particular enjoy it as it shows the mindset of a “funny” liberal who would betray his mother for party points.
By Zell's Bells
October 13, 2007 11:24 AM | Link to this
Amvet starts his manifesto-length uniblogger-wannabe disertation-style treatise like he’s writing for his PHD, and then he quotes Forest Gump.
Where do we get such men?
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 11:27 AM | Link to this
Poor UGA Bound, I am merely suggesting that theft remains theft, whether the money is taken by a gun, or by a majority vote of the parasites over the producers.
By @@
October 13, 2007 11:28 AM | Link to this
jbmlaw:
Oops! Sorry for the delay, taking delivery from the postman.
I read a two-part series by Sowell on Thomas at JWR. Is that the one you’re talking about?
In it Sowell had this to say:
His memoir tells us more. Born in material poverty beyond anything experienced even by people on welfare today, Clarence Thomas was raised with an abundance of discipline and character-building that would pay off in later life.
*Those conclusions were probably more firmly grasped because they were his own, rather than something he read by somebody else.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste reading the progressive meanderings of people like Sharpton, Jackson and other Democrat elitists dont’cha think?
I have a dream jbmlaw and it is invested in ALL of mankind.
Radical….I know.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 11:29 AM | Link to this
Dear TaxPayer @ 10:58, you are correct that Atlas is not a tough read for a normal conservative, but my comments were addressed to one without benefit of intellectual development.
By JK
October 13, 2007 11:33 AM | Link to this
Once again Mr. Wooten pretends to care about the sorry state of education in Georgia, when all he really cares about is that HE not be taxed to pay for it. You used more paragraphs than usual today, Mr. Wooten, but the level to which you actually care about education and the future of Georgia’s aggregate IQ is still obvious.
Why not just say what you really mean in good ol’ Georgia dumbed-down terminology: “Public school doesn’t work, and I want my tax money back! Wah wah wah!”
By Larry
October 13, 2007 11:35 AM | Link to this
UGA bound: That’s the most succint review of Atlas Shrugged I’ve ever read. Should Jesus have taken up the sword and used his divine powers for himself and the Jews? Perhaps that why people do suffer injustices: they get exposed to the Jesus story early and often. Sacrifice for others. Dont complain. Just go along. Jesus might have come down from that cross if someone showed him a copy of Atlas, eh?
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 11:38 AM | Link to this
Dear AmVet @ 10:56, in magnifying the academic accomplishments of the public schools of Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston-Chelsea, and Bedford-Stuy, you confuse me with alternate arguments. Do we conservatives blame “evil, subversive liberals for the failings of public education” (i.e., the traditional socialist explanation for failure - the wrong people were running it) or do we “blame the ‘system?’” I know I blame the system, not those running it, but perhaps you are offering an argument unfamiliar to me?
Dear RW @ 10:51, agree, and I always suspect Atlas is not on the reading list of the government schools. I once toyed with buying a stock of the books, to give one to each member of my sons’ 12th grade classes - ultimately did not, I decided most of the kids would not be sufficiently motivated to read it.
By Glenn Gilbert
October 13, 2007 11:42 AM | Link to this
“jmblaw”, compulsory, mass, state-operated schooling is not necessarily socialistic, but it is quintessentially, almost definitively, liberal. Contrary to your assertion, vouchers would not change the means of delivery, only the structure of finance and, one would hope, the quality of delivery within the existing means. There’s a problem with turning education loose on the open market, though, and I’m sure Dr. Sowell must have discussed the problem with his late friend Prof. Friedman. The market tends to find ways (e.g. through consolidation) to manipulate the market so as to inflate demand for a given service artificially (e.g. via marketing) and then deliberately under-supply it, to drive up price. Some economists, including Sowell’s Stanford colleague J.P. Dupuy, call this phenomenon “scarcification”, and it would be terrible were it to be visited upon American education. The false premise of educational economics is that the means of education are scarce.
BTW, since when was Holmes given to efficient prose? If you like to dispense with the flowery & poetical, try Black, or Frankfurter or Scalia.
By time for the kill sick yanKKKee trash truth
October 13, 2007 11:45 AM | Link to this
I see the yanKKKee child rapist godKILLthistrashNOW/rednekkks NAMBLA has been bailed after a long time in sex offenders seclusion in VT.
All its pent up anti-southern bile is now being puked up as hysterically as ever. yanKKKee vermin like this sick and twisted retarded son of leper colony w hore needs to be put to sleep like rabid dogs are and tossed in a lime pit!!
By AmVet
October 13, 2007 11:46 AM | Link to this
Notwithstanding the erudite nature of that 11:24, the poster, apparently with a mouse in his pocket, does not discount one fact or assertion.
And doesn’t this typify those on the lunatic fringe who do nothing but attack the messenger and add zilch of substance to the discourse?
GHT, it is true that the South has it’s unique challenges. And a deep seated inferiority complex and an amazing distrust of progress and change are parts of that equation.
And there is little doubt, IMHO, that this condition has been exacerbated by Dixie’s recent lurching to the political far right.
This self defeating mentality that this is the way we’ve always done it here and, this is the way we will continue to do it, is very alive and well. Results be damned.
All the time cutting off their noses to spite their faces simply in order to disagree with the educated demon liberals.
So they continue to ill-prepare yet another generation for the challenges ahead.
By Tax Payer - Angry
October 13, 2007 11:46 AM | Link to this
Actually GodHatesTrash, inbreading is how helpful genetic mutations were amplified in the population. In the small groups of people living 100,000 plus years ago, everyone in the small tribe was related to everyone else. Negative mutations died out quickly, as mother nature eliminated the weak. Useful mutations were amplified since for inbread groups, both the mother and the father would soon be carrying the same mutation. Of the so called negative mutations, some were a mixed blessing, bestowing say a resistance to diseases like malaria, but at a cost of a blood disorder. Do not knock inbreading, they have accomplished much, just look at the University of Alabama football program. Who woulda thunk that inbreed bunch of cross eyed muties coulda won so many National titles?
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 11:47 AM | Link to this
Jb-tfft. your hero Thomas Sowell puts the blame on inner city schools and culture squarely where it belongs - on the vicious stupid American redneck. The ancestral home of urban black culture is the slave plantation, not Africa.
Read your copy of Black Rednecks, White Liberals again. The first part.
Trash.
By Glenn Gilbert
October 13, 2007 11:49 AM | Link to this
Dusty, Dusty.
By Larry
October 13, 2007 11:59 AM | Link to this
Jbmlaw’s book report on “atlas shrugged” exposes everything a teacher would need to keep him back a grade.
Judging any act as a theft would require more volumes of print than has yet been written or than ever could be written. Who is the thief? Who presumes to judge? Who is the victim? The answers to those questions appear obvious if one is considering the armed robbery of a bank, unless the masked men with shotguns are ex-employees who were legally deleted from a pension plan they earned over a 35 year career.
Or the armed mob who dares to steal food from entrenched food vendors who poisoned their children as punishment for shoplifting apples.
Or the starving population who trespass and steals booty from a royal family cowering behind palace walls after that population ordains themselves as having the right to self govern and the right to correct a system that fails to feed them.
Armed theft? How about how you hack every thought you’ve ever blogged, jbmlaw, armed only with envy.
Or, if you meant that Atlas Shrugged was a good read on the beach where you can impress babes in bikinis, who’s kisses should be stolen, then I humbly apologize for my shortcoming which you so aptly described as lacking the benefits of intellectual developement. I withdraw well chastized, sir, and yield the floor. (and the beach).
By jm
October 13, 2007 12:06 PM | Link to this
well, if Georgia improved its education system, what would it do with the massive prison system it has been building the last 20 years? Georgia, top ten in prison population, bottom ten in education.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:06 PM | Link to this
Dear Glenn @ 11:42, thanks for your argument, but I think I suffer a disconnect. I reserve the term “liberal” for its classical definition, not the post WW2 b*******. Thus I cannot imagine how you can call a government school education “liberal” but not “socialistic.”
Quite the contrary to your affirmation, no rational economist has any qualms about “turning the market loose” on education. The greatest problem out there is the absence of market input. I realize there is a body of thought that says consumers are not intelligent enough to make rational decisions, and only the overseers can make those decisions - that body of thought is called “socialism.”
By Cataclysm
October 13, 2007 12:06 PM | Link to this
This blog is dumb as hell. Luckovich needs to keep his going through the weekend. With all the so-called education you morons allegedly have, you should start your own blog instead of freeloading off of Wooten’s.
By AmVet
October 13, 2007 12:08 PM | Link to this
Good morning counselor.
Notwithstanding your attempts to cherry pick the worst of the worst as illustrative of an entire region, unfortunately, I would not be the slightest bit surprised if the districts you mentioned, Bedford-Sty, DC, etc, are still ahead of the average of the schools in the Deep South.
And doesn’t that truly illustrate the depth of the problem here?
Superior education is simply a matter of priorities, and apparently here in Georgia, there are quite a few in front of it.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:12 PM | Link to this
Also Glenn, evidently you read Holmes differently than I. I don’t recall a single opinion longer than two pages.
Dear Larry @ 11:59, “theft” is not hard to define. That is any act depriving a rightful owner of his property. Unless you subcribe to that theory that “all wealth belongs to the government, save that which it allows its citizens to borrow,” your ambivalence is not well founded.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:15 PM | Link to this
Dear Am Vet @ 12:08, as you seemingly acknowledge that your prior sweeping generality was overblown, I’ll ease back. I think you would agree with me that the South has a long history of rigid government control over the education process, dating to the period of slavery. I think that history of government control is the obvious causation for the disparity you allege. The solution is also apparent.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:16 PM | Link to this
ambulance chaser,
I am shocked, shocked that you did not want to shove the bible down their throats wingnut.
Here is a good book if they want to learn about our broken government thanks to your failed party.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:18 PM | Link to this
Note to all, my 12:06 bad word was a synonym for illigitimization, not anything scatalogical.
By Cataclysm
October 13, 2007 12:22 PM | Link to this
getalife,
You won’t be satisfied until you’re breaking down the gates of hell will you?
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:23 PM | Link to this
“Mayor begs residents to conserve water:
The commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management made a plea for conservation today because of the severe drought that has forced restrictions on 61 counties in north Georgia.”
Jim fails to write about the biggest problem facing GA.
I wonder where you will move when you run out.
Come to New Orleans, there is plenty water down here.
By Glenn Gilbert
October 13, 2007 12:24 PM | Link to this
jmblaw, I was indeed referring to classical liberalism, but at some point liberalism has to be counterposed to true conservativism grounded in pre-Enlightenment orthodoxy. I too despise socialism, not least because ideologically I happen to feel more at home in, say, the 12th century than in the 20th, or 21st. The scarcification phenomenon is real, and yes there are rational economists who have qualms about the prospect of watching that phenomenon play out in education. At 11:42 I named one of those distinguished economists, and I’ll name others if it suits you. Your inferences and implications notwithstanding, I don’t actual have a solution to the scarcification problem, except to say that it’s a construct resulting from the spurious assumption that education is necessarily a scarce commodity, or a commodity at all. I share your admiration for Dr. Sowell, a brilliant, brave and gentle man. And for Justice Thomas likewise. I’m simply saying that these economic factors are serious issues, worthy of the attentions of such people, and of such people as yourself.
By Zells' Bells
October 13, 2007 12:25 PM | Link to this
“Amvet wants it, so he gets it. What we have here is a failure to communicate”. (since you like movie quotes so much)
Lets look at Amvet’s comment: He claims to be amused by partisan spin, and then becomes the stereotype of clerics who annoint themselves experts on Darwinian geo-sociological trends, using anecdotally-derived doctrine to confirm specious conclusions concerning our unique american penchant for being number one.
He violated about 377 of the 378 rules of debate. (He kept his hands in his pockets, so we cant be sure if he broke the last rule)
By time for the harsh but fair truth
October 13, 2007 12:25 PM | Link to this
presumably arsehole vet’s pathetic, groundlessly supercilious but yet normatively obtuse and deeply flawed analysis about “Dixie” includes the ‘antics’ of the professional black bigots/racial spoils leeches and hippety hop thugs who endlessly repeat their glaring failures socio-economically and politically in the counties/cities that they corruptly and (invariably) incompetently ‘control’??!!
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:26 PM | Link to this
Good morning getalife @ 12:16, see you’re sleeping in today. While I have a profound admiration for the truths in the Bible, I would not compel anyone to acquire any particular knowledge. I take it as a compliment that everyone I contact wishes to use my sources also, so I don’t have to shove anything down anyone’s throat.
While I have every confidence that Mr. Dean’s work is enjoyable fiction, I have issues with his character. I find Gordon Liddy a superior moral and intellectual force, certainly when compared to Mr. Dean.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:26 PM | Link to this
What I like most about New Orleans is all the stranded gay men here. I routinely invite them into my house and……well,you know the rest.
By RW-(the original)
October 13, 2007 12:28 PM | Link to this
I’m sure that if you measured government school performance by district rather than making believe some geographical area of the country does it all right while another does it all wrong you would see a differnet picture.
But even measuring dropout percentage by state doesn’t show you the “south bad everywhere else good” model Blowhard is spewing about as clearly as he would have you believe
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:30 PM | Link to this
cat,
I chose the righteous path and this blog is not the gates of hell.
However, many wingnuts here have chosen the wrong path and should repent.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:31 PM | Link to this
Dear Glenn @ 12:24, with all due respect you argue falsely. The validity of an argument does not hinge on the credentials of the one who argues; you could provide a list of 100 names, and that would not make your argument even slightly more persuasive.
Inference and deduction are certainly valid, and please use those all you wish to try to put some “there” in your argument. For now your affirmation is a naked postulate, and one contrary to my sense of reason. Give me some substance.
By Wootenduh
October 13, 2007 12:32 PM | Link to this
The Atlanta Urinal Constitution, in cooperation with Al Qaeda in Iraq, is pleased to bring you the following blessed news:
{{{{IRAQ DEVELOPMENTS- A bomb planted among toys in a cart left near a children’s playground in the religiously mixed city of Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of the capital, killed two people and wounded 17.-Urinal}}}}
Our brothers the terrorists keep targeting children, we keep blaming it on America.
~~~~~~
{{{{Rather than reducing the millions of gallons flowing from Lanier, as the governor had asked, the Corps says it is instead increasing it. According to the Corps, the other federal reservoirs on the Chattahoochee River are nearly depleted and can’t provide additional water to Florida for a small coal-fired power plant and two federally protected species of freshwater mussels.}}}}
Isn’t it funny that same libs who think they are direct descendants of pond scum are the first ones to protect some worthless mussel from any change in it’s environment?
Why don’t you pinkos coax your beloved mussel into growing some eyes and little flipper feets so that it can carry it’s as-s to where theres some water at?
Environmentalists suck.
~~~~~~
Duh Vent, see if you can spot the ones submitted by the Urinal Editorial Board:
{{{{Does anyone know how many Republican presidents or vice presidents have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?}}}}
Let’s see, the Republicans won the Civil War and freed the slaves, the single biggest event in American history outside of the Constitutional Conventions or Washington’s victory at Saratoga.
Ronald Reagan bled the Soviet Union to death and freed hundreds of million people from communism.
Jimmy Carter and al-Gore did, uh, what?
You libs are so full of crap, awarding yourselves with prizes and then bragging about it, geez, what wankers.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:34 PM | Link to this
I wish I had a nice long hard one to suck on. Will someone please f^ck me? I’ve had my rabies shots.
By Martinet
October 13, 2007 12:36 PM | Link to this
Glenn, you should not sacrifice substance for syntactical form. Use parallel constructs only when you’ve set an emotional tone.
But at least you didn’t troll. For that I thank you, sir, and now accept this humble reply: Scarcification refers to the way a the plumbing industry makes every single application unique to experience, so that no one can just jiggle the handle and stop the leak. Instead, he must rely on the expertise of a journeyman who himself was trained.
If there was any justice, we could all just look at faulty plumbing and know what to do. But go ahead, turn that valve, unscrew that joint. go ahead. make my day.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:37 PM | Link to this
cat,
I’d rather have a c*ck shoved down my throat than a bible.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:40 PM | Link to this
{{{{Does anyone know how many Republican presidents or vice presidents have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?}}}}
Like w and cheney would get it sore loser.
08 will be a major thumpin.
Got water?
Pray harder.
By AmVet
October 13, 2007 12:41 PM | Link to this
Counselor, call it sweeping generalizations if it makes you feel better.
I called it what it truly is - irrefutable facts.
I know this p!sses off “conservatives”, the poorly educated and your garden variety neo-con, but it is undeniable that the most liberal areas of the nation produce an overly representative number of the brightest minds. And by any measurement completely dominate this field.
But then, you and I both know that out of the ten worst performing states in the union, the South has virtually ALL of them.
And of the top ten states, NONE are from the South.
Shoot the messenger if you must, but it does not change those incontrovertible facts.
Personal accountability, which used to be one of the hallmarks of conservatives, or the lack thereof, is the crux of the issue.
And as long as the apologists, black and white, conservative and liberal, continue to let those most responsible off the hook, there will be no fundamental change.
So forgive me, but I think your paranoia over “government controls” as being the primary cause of this enormous disparity is bunk.
The difference is IMHO primarily explained by people whose world view is strikingly different.
One set, those not so intransigently invested in the status quo, believe that education is THE answer to unlock the dreams of the future.
The other?
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:42 PM | Link to this
Dear Glenn, on re-reading your post maybe I misunderstood - do you argue that the notion of institutional education is inherently flawed? I can see that argument, but I fear I am still misreading your argument.
By Cataclysm
October 13, 2007 12:42 PM | Link to this
getalife,
You’re disgusting.
By AmVet
October 13, 2007 12:46 PM | Link to this
So yet another General with actual on the ground experience in this clusterf@ck of an invasion has damning things to say about this inept administration.
How many is that now?!!!
As Yogi Berra said, “Deja vu, all over again”.
A former commander of coalition forces in Iraq issued a harsh assessment of U.S. management of the war, saying that American political leaders cost American lives on the battlefield with their “lust for power.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, coalition commander in 2003 and 2004, called the Iraq war “a nightmare with no end in sight,” for which he said the Bush administration, the State Department and Congress all share blame.
Sanchez told a group of military reporters in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday that such dereliction of duty by a military officer would mean immediate dismissal or court martial, but the politicians have not been held accountable.
He said the Iraq war plan from the start was “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic,” and the administration has not provided the resources necessary for victory, which he said the military could never achieve on its own.
“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez pointed to what he said was “neglect and incompetence at the National Security Council level” which has put the U.S. military into “an intractable situation” in Iraq.
By jbmlaw
October 13, 2007 12:49 PM | Link to this
Dear AmVet @ 12:41, I will partially accept your premise. I think the larger population areas tend to be leftist, and I think the brighest immigrant populations - frankly disproportionately Asian and Jewish - tend to settle in the larger population areas, so your correlation is valid, even if your causation is weak.
I think you are also correct when you affirm that bright leftists, unemployable due to their selection of undergraduate courses, tend to drift into “education” and wind up teaching the “young skulls full of mush.”
Thus accepting the undeniable portion of your truths, short of executing all unemployable leftists who would otherwise drift into the field, how do you propose reform to ensure true education?
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:49 PM | Link to this
children,
Stop wanking.
fakelaw,
With your logic, you must not be a lazy Fred fan since he “played ball” with Nixon’s watergate crime.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 12:49 PM | Link to this
I was once raped by a pair of rats. I fell asleep on the floor after watching ‘Terms of Endearment’, when all of a sudden, I felt two little penises going in and out of my mouth and ear. Luckily, I got up and ran to the bathroom in time.
By getalife ♥
October 13, 2007 1:03 PM | Link to this
Give it a rest child.
Mike’s new toon is really good and think Sanchez is next on their pathetic hit list.
Attack the messenger and not the message works for the ignorant, gullible wingnuts but real Americans see it as disgusting and are sick of it.
They will vote dem.
By Martinet
October 13, 2007 1:03 PM | Link to this
JBMlaw’s 12:31 deserves a review. It’s easy to deduce that jbmlaws admires creative writing. He infers his own talent with very ambitious syntactical choices. Compound sentences are a hack’s worst enemy.
By Dusty
October 13, 2007 1:04 PM | Link to this
Now, folks, when you get through showing off your vocabularies, maybe you could write in the simpler forms of English, brilliant knowledge conveyed in prized condensation.
I love the lyric of words but the tune is somewhat garbled. Refrain, my friends, from displaying the higher points of your education for the adulation of the masses.
The display of knowledge in its shortest form is a gift not given to many.
By @@
October 13, 2007 1:07 PM | Link to this
Oh my AmVet, you leave me baffled. Given your propensity to dictate here and your disdain for all things conservative I’m left wondering how you would accomplish such a feat as the one you stated:
Only when ——>families again start putting education first and everything else second<—— will this change. And ——>only when parents require Johnny, Susie, DeShawn and Lakesha to give 100% to put up academically or shut up<—— will Georgia crawl off the virtual bottom of the list.
How would you accomplish that AmVet short of privatizing education? While you’re mulling it over, keep in mind that the U.S. government’s DOE was establiished to formulate funding programs and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.
Do you want to do away with the D.O.E. in Washington or do you think more money thrown at it would force families to motivate their children to learn?
Personally I can’t see how the latter would accomplish your objective and the former would leave you subject to being labeled a greedy, self-serving, conservative bigot.
I’m outta here for now, but please leave an explanation for your statement.
By Therese
October 13, 2007 1:09 PM | Link to this
Well said, Dusty. Bloggers should write as well as they are able, but to sacrifice content for form is wrong.
Just say it, my fellow commenters Just say it.
I think I can best illustrate my point here with this paradox from ancient Syria: If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone yell, “Timber”?
By GodHatesTrash
October 13, 2007 1:13 PM | Link to this
Folks, Dusty would like us to dumb things down for her.
Not surprising.
Dusty - let me be succinct with you.
You are trash.
Now stfu.
By getalife
October 13, 2007 1:16 PM | Link to this
MIA Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is concerned that the powers Vladimir Putin has amassed may undermine democracy in Russia:
“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.”
She is talking about Putin but has those cheney blinders on for our government.
Putin is laughing at her credibility.
This is the state of our State dept. It is a laughing stock.
By