Hell, look at the business end of California. California loves to drive big business out of the state with their crazy taxes. Which ofcourse leaves less to tax and less income for the state. This state is so fucked up, it's just sad.

But here's a thought hon. Get your child into a home schooling group. Meaning, a group of moms form a group and will takes turns each week at their house. I've sat in on one of these and it surely impressive. They get all the materials from the state, plus lots of private companies send them all kinds of workboards. Then each month, the group will get together 5 other groups for testing, sports, or whatever. Most are on the CORE standard.

It's a bit different route to go, but worth some research. It certainly wasn't what i thought it would be.

:2 cents:

I have a few questions about vouchers. So if I understand this correctly this would attach a dollar amount to a kid and the parent could send the kid to any school they wanted. Whatever school the kid goes to gets the money correct? So in theory this makes schools compete over students and the money they get for them. Here is are my questions:

1. If a school currently gets $7000 per kid from the government and the voucher will attach the same amount to the kid only allowing the kid to go wherever they want, how will this change much? The schools will not be getting any more money than the are now. They have a maximum number of students they can handle and chances are they are already near that number now so their budgets won't increase. So if the school do not manage themselves better it won't matter where the kids come from.

2. A very good school could, in theory, manage itself very well and make it a competition to get into it. They could then pick and choose their students and it would help all the students that go there because (hopefully) they will have picked the best of the kids. This is a nice idea, but then what it does is funnels the other kids all off on another school. So instead of the kids that aren't as bright being mixed in around the school district, they will all be in one school and chances are that school and all of the students there will suffer. Now competition says they will work hard to attract students, but if the dollar amount is the same no matter if the student gets D's or A's what would be their motivation?

3. There are problems with the voucher system that are geographical in nature. The town I live in has two middle schools. Parents could pick one over of the other, but there is only one high school. So if they want to send their kid to another high school they are going to have to transport them there. The next closest high school is about 15 miles away. There are about 4-5 others though within about 20 miles. If a student has no way of getting to one of those schools they are stuck here and if they end up stuck in a shithole school then they lose due to no fault of their own.

4. You could end up with some schools that are worse off with this. Say you have a town that has 5 middle schools in it. They are all in an area where the kids can take a bus or easily get there. 3 of those schools work hard and turn things around and become good schools that fill up fast. There are many students who will now be forced to go to one of the other schools simply because there is no room for them at the good schools. If those other schools are not run as well those students could suffer. To me it would seem to be a better solution to take charge of all of the schools and work hard to make all of them good so you got a good education no matter which one you went to.

One other thought. One of the things that helps determine the value of a home is the school district. I know people who have paid more money for a similar house just because it was in an area with good schools. That will not be the case anymore and it could effect the value of homes. Also just because you move to the nice neighborhood it doesn't mean your kid will get into the better school. That school could fill up and you are left having to figure out how to transport your kids to another town so they can go to a school that is not as good.

Anyway, just a few voucher based questions.

I love it when you social Darwinists get together.

You know, I'm pretty happy to pay to educate the next generation, the last generation paid for me to get an education, so it seems like a pretty fair social contract to me.

Personally I'd rather pay for kids to get better educated than the local cops to get some more toys. I really like seeing my tax dollars at work when some douchebag cop is writing speeding tickets clad in mil spec body armor riding in a cruiser with more electronics than 70's era aircraft carrier.

Harsh, a water donation? I guess they call it whatever they want. If they need money, they need money. But it's high time for transparency. The parents should be able to ask for audit reports for the school and/or local school district to see where the money is being spent.

I agree 100%. I would love to see some of the school board people justify how they are making 100K a year while only making it to about half of the school board meetings and never implementing any policies that seem to have a positive effect. I would also love to see exactly how that money is spent and where it goes

Kane with vouchers the money is attached to the student. It also allows them to attend any school. Can be anything from a private, to religious, to state ran, to a for profit school. There would be very little to stop small schools from opening. Also would hopefully allow for specialized high schools, where the focus of the school is one career/educational path.
In essence it would be a full reboot. No real union control. Schools compete for the students and money. Some schools may insist on extra money to attend them and the parents could use the voucher as a credit. No inflated school boards, administrators, etc. Market should then determine who survives.

I like the idea of smaller schools being able to open and focus on their students. I still wonder if there would be enough of these types of schools to cover all the students that are out there. I have always said that one of the reasons private school work is because they are not dealing with the massive amounts of students that the public schools do. Maybe vouchers would help change the system for the better, but I fear that they would cause there to be either very good schools or very bad schools and we would end up with a bunch of kids that get very poor educations simply because of where they live.

I do think the system needs to be cleansed. It is so bloated and full of garbage that money just gets lost in the system and nobody seems to be able to explain where it goes.

what the heck is wrong with drinking water out of the tap ?

are you in India ?

Ideally though if you end up with some bad schools, someone or company would step in to put out a better school that showed positive results. People would be motivated by money.
There still is a small chance there could be certain areas with schools that are not as good. This can always happen. Though currently if you live in a bad district you are fucked anyways right now unless you move. Just hopefully there would be enough smaller schools and people wanting to run a good business (school) that it would fill any gaps.

I do know we have a whole slew of charter schools up here. Next to none is union. Many are in older rented churches, previously closed schools, and some even in older shopping centers. Some of these schools only have room for 20-30 students max. The way they are paid is a bit different than vouchers. Yet most of the ones up here have been getting rave reviews. They also have been stable with the financial issues, with only one having any worries about layoff's (which they fixed in a way no union would ever allow).

from what country are you, !!!!!!!

Yeah we will probably home school our kid. I can't stand institutions.

Not sure if many share my feelings but I always am very suspect of home schooling. Kids often just turn out weird and honestly knowing many people - they are not smart enough to teach kids much of anything. Almost always seems like the parents that are demanding and supportive enough over their kids educations, end up with kids that excelled in the schools already - sort of look how many Asian and Indian families can get perfect educations from even bad schools.

When I was in high school I had some neighbors that were homeschooled. They were nice and incredibly smart... but sort of odd. Their dad was sort of an authoritarian type and they fell right under his commands. Was very strange to be 16 and know other people my age that more or less worshiped their parents, LOL.

I don't know if that's across the board or not... but I definitely don't think it's healthy for parents to be around there tween/teen kids that much and vice versa. For the very small kids, "maybe" it's okay... but you would really need to push the social group aspect so they can meet other kids.

Is your ICQ broke?

I have to agree. I think a lot of parents can handle basic stuff, but not a lot of the other stuff. I consider my mom to be a pretty smart woman, but I know she could have never taught me what I learned in my high school chemistry and biology classes.

that is pretty weird

Hey Adult Broker when waas the last time you even saw your kid?
Did she come to visit when you were being treated for " exhaustion/flu/ cocaine overdose" in phoenix?



Times must be tough that you c an't afford $4- perhaps you should stop doing blow?
You are a disgrace to single moms evrywhere.

Happy Mothers Day

PS You pay homeowners taxes????

Bahahahaha on which house?

Tuller?

Maple?

Tennesse PL?

They are all rentals- you are a liar.

Looks like you have moved a few times in the last few years...


What r u running from???

PS yes, I know your real name and know all about you....

Keep making these silly posts, you will only open yourself up for more scrutinee

where r u running????????

little bastards

Working from new laptops right now which I am slowly adding programs too. I was needing to get a lot of work done without much interruption so I have not installed it yet and been doing strictly email/gtalk/aim (cause gtalk and aim work together). Need to see if I can get icq to work with it since icq/aim are compatible and same company.

Seems strange to have not addressed the water fountain issue.

Please, please, please don't come back in here and tell us you're upset over a water fee, AND you have a problem with your kid drinking tap water... Please.

Next, it's a request. Why don't you say no? You should ask to be added to their "do not call" list perhaps, that will really piss them off!

You know, you could just say no.

This is the single most uninformed assumption made about home schooling.

Its actually one of the top myths people fall prey to when they are not familiar with homeschooled children.

too many studies have been done to prove the opposite: homeschool;ed children are often more social and better at social events etc...

http://ezinearticles.com/?Homeschool...ling&id=200297

http://www.heav.org/basicinfo/specialneeds/myths.html

http://www.pregnancy.org/article/rid...ooled-children

they call them myths for a reason

and another:

http://school.familyeducation.com/ho...ons/56224.html

the tests are simple: they take large groups of kids, put them together and see who is more social and handles it better.... guess what? Home schooled kids talk better, control themselves m0ore, have better social skills all around... read up on the tests not spread myths.

Wow ... 3rd world public health system, 3rd world education system (and thats being generous) ... great to live in the US eh ? :)

Well unless you have money..

I could go on lol

http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/digit...wyttenbach.pdf

homeschooled children score better in "self control, responsibility, cooperation" etc...

k though, Im done, gotta write out some long emails now and get some work done before play7 time today, its the weekend guys! have fun!

You have two options:

1) Move out of California or at the very least the area you are in. Find a better school that fits the needs of your family.

2) Lose the kid.

This about sums it up. Take for example the DC voucher program. Most of the private schools were charging HALF what the public schools were charging per student. The private schools had way higher test scores at HALF the cost.

The free market was proving to provide a better education at a lower cost. :thumbsup

So of course the logical thing for the dems and Obama to do is STOP the voucher program. :mad:

Fletch it may be a statistical myth. I pretensed it the way that I did because it was my opinion which was created by my experiences. The handful of home schooled kids I have met, only 1 seemed "normal".
Now I never declared them facts nor anything else so had no intention to spread any myths. I even asked if other people share my feelings or not.

I have only known thee home schooled kids in my life and I didn't know them until adulthood, but they all told me the same thing. The one thing they struggled with (and the three were all home school all the way through high school) was that when they got out into the world (one of them went college, one a trade school and the third just got a job) was that they had some trust issues. They tell me one of the problems with home schooling is that when your teachers are your parents (or people you know really well) there is no dealing with people who don't like you. When you go to regular school you will have people you don't like, teachers you don't like and people and teachers who don't like you and part of the process is learning how to deal with them because in life you will be encountering the same. When you are home schooled you might get in trouble, but in the end you know pretty much everyone that surrounds you loves you unconditionally so you never have to deal with people that really don't like you.

So these people told me they were having to learn how to deal with that type of drama and conflict resolution at 18 when most of us learn how to deal with it at 12.

Anyway, I'm sure that doesn't apply to every home schooled kid, but the three people I have known in my life that were fully home schooled all told me that.

Most home schooled kids I have encountered were socially inept. There is no way parents can teach interaction with their peers.

you ever had a kid in private school? They still beg for extra shit. Makes me want to tell them to give me the REAL tuition cost up front and stop nickel and diming me to death

My son used to play on a soccer team that was around 75% homeschooled kids. They had the same few that were odd, same that were exceptional, same that were average as any other school. The problem arises when you can't offer what the private or public systems can offer. I know for a fact I never could have taught my son the AP Calculus, AP Physics, etc. that he took as a senior. Heck, I'm pretty sure he passed me up academically around the 7th grade! And in that county, if you "exceeded" what the school could offer you, the district paid for you to attend college classes as well as providing transportation. The homeschooling parents I know always offered public or private school to their kids and usually by high school they would leave homeschooling.

Charter school was the best thing that happened to the county I lived in when my son was in school. All the money donated by the parents went to the school instead of the county - like it was previously. They also instituted a program where every Wed. the kids got out at noon. They could get tutored, participate in inschool clubs, or even take the time to go to the doctor/dentist/orthodontist so they didn't miss school. Plus at the beginning of the year the school sent home a letter that basically said "Donate $50 (or whatever it was) now and we'll never have another fund raiser all year". Best. Idea. Ever. About 90% of the mothers were SAHM so there was a lot of volunteering done there too. We had a lot of big wigs who sent their kids there instead of private school.

As far as private school, I went to one that is now $18K per year. That doesn't include food, sports, books (which are about the same price as college books), field trips, etc. We were always having bake sales or some other fund raiser. To this day I still get a letter and/or call every year to donate to the alumni fundraiser. Asking for money isn't public school specific.

As with all things, if you don't like it, change it. If you can't change it, change yourself and move to a different district/private or homeschool.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

i would think there is a strong connection between the personality type and lifestyle of the parents who would opt to home school their kids that has a larger impact on the child's development than being at school or not. i grew up in Alaska surrounded by weirdos where this was very common and usually the parents were total, anti social, socially retarded nut jobs to begin with.

personally, i would prefer my child had all the opportunities to socialize as any other children do. isolating a child from all other children and the general experience of school which is just as much about learning about people, to deal with people, with groups, with bullies, with girls/boys etc etc etc as anything else, to me is not the best choice. particularly in remote areas where school is their single greatest chance to interact with others, play sports etc.

if a building was engulfed in fire and people were running out of it... you'd be the one to run inside just to prove you could, that everyone is wrong and that the fire is just some harmless thing invented by the man to manipulate the masses

I would agree with that. All three of the people I know where home schooled came from very religious families that felt that public (and even private) school was too corrupt and evil for their kids.

I also have another friend who's wife tried to home school their daughter for a few years. They too were super religious and felt that God was lacking in the public school curriculum. After two years when she saw just how hard it was she gave up. In a funny moment I called up there one day to talk to them and the daughter, then a 6th grader, answered the phone. I asked her how she was doing and she says, "Great, I finally get to go back to real school!" It made me laugh.

I will send my son to public school when he's old enough, without a care in the world of how "good" the school is, what kind of neighborhood it's in, or what the demographics are. In life you'll have good and bad situations, and will have to learn from all of them. I want him to go to school with every kind of student, of every race and religion. I want him to be part of the public, not part of the private.

I'm much more scared of the things he'd encounter in a private school to be honest.

What ever happened to drinking fountains?