Am I Turning Conservative?

Nah.

My experience as well. The south is just much friendlier it seems. Nashville was unreal. St Louis is a fucking sewer.

I think when the right gets wonky they kinda just want to preserve their way own way of life, and usually put profits above all else. I can at least understand some of their craziness and why they do it.

when the left goes batshit woooboy they don’t make any goddamn sense at all. all logic goes out the window.

I was listening to the radio in Florida and they did a story on why it seems all of the crazy news stories come from Florida. Apparently there is the term Florida Man to describe a crazy that is particular to Florida.

Maybe saying the tourists suck was harsh and I was a tourist but, the number of obese people in one place was astounding. I like Florida itself but next time I plan on avoiding central Florida. I went to the gulf coast once and I liked it a lot more than the Orlando area. My sister lives in the Miami area so that’s where I plan to go next time.

I think 7 of the top 20 schools in the US are IDEA Public Schools that are all charter schools almost exclusively serving poor, minority students. Vouchers lead to competition. Students win.

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Me too. One of my brothers lives in a cool little town on the beach on the gulf side, but I have family in Boca and Miami too.

I much prefer the cool little gulf town.

A little digging shows that idea schools are not what they seem.

So 7 schools in the whole US? That makes me feel better. I’m not say all public schools will be top schools but we certainly shouldn’t have as many bottom feeders as we do, especially in the south. The last I checked when my kids were in school my home state(Texas) was ranked 47th of 50! That’s embarrassing when you look at how much money Texas spends on high school football stadiums! Texas is a rich state and should be ashamed.

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Would you happen to have any info on these? With a number of teacher friends and a mom in the daycare system it’d be an interesting read

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https://www.ideapublicschools.org/news-events/idea-high-schools-ranked-top-1-of-high-schools-in-the-nation

I taught at the first one the first year it opened. Amazing Teach For America workers started it.

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47th by what metric?
Spending per student, test scores, prepared for college?

In all fairness, having millions of students that are illiterate in English helps drag down scores. Insane that immigrants in the system are not pulled out of regular class, to immerse them in a strictly English immersion program. Instead many roll along for years in bilingual instruction.

But agree that the state is doing a very poor job overall.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I love football. I played. My dad was a coach. It’s all I knew growing up. My son plays in a $72,000,000 high school stadium. It’s an abomination. His high school is VERY rigorous and I’m very happy with the education he is receiving, but half the schools in the district are not nearly up to par in academics. That’s part of why I support charter schools and the competition they bring.

This is pretty accurate.

I did a road trip once when my friend was going to Florida State. We went from Miami all the way up

Miami has the hottest women, mainly because of all the mix of latin and all that. Once you get up to around West Palm (trump’s area) you start to notice what the rest of Florida will be about but its not until you hit that Orlando area that you REALLy see it.

It’s like all of a sudden everyone is obese lol. Fucking hilarious. I remember stopping at a supermarket there and almost every other person was a fat fuck. I couldn’t believe it. I never seen anything like it, and maybe nothing close to it since.

Then you get to Jacksonville and it is straight up Alabama in Florida. The girls are nice, despite being racist and all.

The west coast of Florida is a lot more chill. Why is that? seems like everything west coast is chill regardless of where you are… something about that Atlantic Ocean

What did you do with students who told you to fuck off?

It should be noted that most of the good news about charter schools comes from charter schools. They are far from immune from things like fudging test scores, making up stats and covering up discipline issues. The people who run those schools make a lot of money compared to their public school counterparts and that provides a lot of incentive to lie.

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Looks like they have improved to 33 since my last kid graduated in 2011 but it’s still nothing to be proud of.
The biggest problem to me is teacher pay. It’s amazing how low it is especially compared to football coaches. Which is more important to your child’s future?

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We did this on here not too long ago. Increasingly violent may be true but still far from the violence on the other side.

I would be curious to see demographics. Do they let everyone in? How many kids with IEP’s? Percentage of free/reduced in the area? College preparatory is throwing me off. Are they saying that and taking lots of kids who are 15 and read at a third grade level? Considering the first one I clicked on said 100 percent of our kids are college bound I would think the answer is no. Also see that most seem to have an application process which also makes me think no.

Edit: looked around some more. Selection process and wiki says they pick and choose. You can’t graduate if you aren’t going to college. It does seem like they definitely try and serve impoverished areas which is a huge kudos. However picking kids is picking kids. And if I’m rich and have cognitive challenges it seems like I might not get in. And same if I’m poor.

I’m not trying to belittle nor say they aren’t great schools. And thank you for your time spent working with our kids.

And they work when you pick your clientele. Give me the top 1% of an area and I’ll kill test scores at my school. Most of these places make it real hard to get in if you have an IEP and have a long history of discriminating against those that do.

You want to see test scores increase get rid of half the kids at 8th grade who don’t meet a placement test at your school. As someone who has worked in education the last 12 years a lot of what goes into a schools overall success is who they have (if you define success by scores which imo is an awful way to do it).

And like you said huge incentives to fudge stuff around if that’s the way you get looked at. We can get anybody’s kid to graduate if we simply skip the rigor and requirements

It is a lottery to get in (my niece has been trying for 3 years to get in). Every kid IS college bound. The school I taught at was 98% Hispanic with 93% on free or reduced lunches. The number of kids on IEPs tends to be a little higher than the statewide average. Most of the kids lived in cinder block houses in the colonias. Their parents didn’t want them picking onions in the 100 degree Texas heat like they were. Watch this video of college signing day and see how many are first generation college students: https://www.ideapublicschools.org/csd2019

It can be done if you take the bureaucracy out of the school system and focus on what is important. It can be done if teachers are held accountable. It can be done if you don’t make excuses for the kids.

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