How does a homeschooler change a lightbulb?

According to Grok friend Cathy, this makes it way around the homeschooling set – I just thought it was cute! First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life. Next, everyone … Read more

NEA – Get the Family and Religion OUT OF HERE!

You know, if these kinds of things keep happening, somebody’s gonna scratch the "Great" out of that tag line.  Heck, with this starting to be a pattern instead of a outlier, people are right to really start asking their local NEA union heads, their Superintendents, and their School Boards seriously hard questions.   I wrote here (concerning whose responsibility kids are in the daycare we owned):

Never did I think that we were that important to believe that we should or could supplant parents.

I also pointed out in that same post that there are teachers in Moultonboro, NH that "look down" upon the parents on the topic of attitudes; in fact, if I had been their boss, I would have pulled them aside after they had said what they did about their actual employers – the parents – to knock it  off:

…students are WAY ahead of the times, way ahead of parents on multiple issues especially when it comes to openness and sexuality…I disagree with having parent being allowed in.  I think that student are willing to talk about this because they have different views than their parents

And now, we know why – it seems that "Public Schools" teachers are going out of their way to teach their students differently than what their parents do on moral issues; we talked about this on Saturday’s show (emphasis mine) about what Diane Schnieder of both NEA (teachers union) and GLSEN (a militant pro-homosexual advocacy group whose founder, Ken Jennings, was Obama’ "Safe School" czar) gave as a talk at a UN conference:

Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia.  Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression.  She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.”  “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”

Kids, forget your parents and your God – you only have to listen to me!

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The Real Reason For Raising The Drop Out Age To 18?

I can tell you from long discussions about the various pathways to “graduation” that the goal is more geared toward getting kids through school on paper to make the numbers look good. Any reasonable path to that end is considered a win, but by any traditional standard it is anything but a public school success story.

The Cost of Defining “Adequate” In Merrimack NH

AppleA funny thing happened on the way to the ‘off-hand comment’ on the Merrimack TEA facebook page.  I was accused of not using "real and accurate data" and that my "rhetoric was not doing anyone any good."

Nothing surprising there I suppose but to stay on point–what was it I said that earned me such a response?

I announced that if you took the total Merrimack School budget and divided it by the total student enrollment that it cost more than  sending your kid to UNH.  This appears to have riled some people up.  In fact someone sent me a nice itemized list of the "costs" of sending your kid to UNH for a year just to prove I was wrong, and to justify how Merrimack’s cost per child wasn’t as much.

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Bedford School District Book Woes Re-ignite

Warning. Strong Sexual Content.

The Bedford Public School system is back in the news again.  Another book has popped up in the curriculum that is questioning the standards of the towns (cough-cough) educational experts. This time is it ‘Water For Elephants.”

This book appears to have some very interesting subject matter, which someone in the Bedford District finds suitable for students to read.  I’ll let you be the judge. (This is just a sample, and relates to the “warning” strong sexual content” portion.)

(Warning! By jumping to the conclusion of this post you accept all responsibility for the content you are about to read.)

 

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Don’t Say There Is No Place To Cut.

Privatize the public school system and shift the educators, staff, maintenance, and transportation and facility costs off the books, along with converting public benefits and pensions into the same kind of programs the rest of the private markets have, and you would see property tax rates plummet.

A Modest (Budget Cutting) Proposal

Public Sector Unions SuckThere are plenty of towns like mine trying to figure out where they can cut costs.  But every conversation seems to end at cutting education or safety services.  While I find it hard to believe that there is nothing else in a budget you can trim, I think I have come up with a reasonable compromise (if not just for the sake of our own rhetorical amusement) that can cut at least a little bit of money from the budget without affecting staffing or resources.

Any teacher, support staff, officer, firefighter or public employee who currently pays union dues will have the total amount of dues paid calculated and that amount removed from their respective department budgets (aka:paychecks).  This will do the one thing no one ever seems willing to do; include the unions in the burden of cost cutting.

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Nickel And Dimed Is Out

Once you get past the misleading headline from this morning’s Union Leader, ‘Nickel and Dimed’ Banned in Bedford, (it was not banned form Bedford, it was removed from the public school finance class curriculum) you will find that while the book is out, some of the stupidity remains.

Lube Job Redux

It’s been fun to watch the Soap Opera unfold after AIDS Services got caught up in a kerfuffle over ‘sex kits’ distributed at Monadnock High School. Everyone went into CYA mode as what seemed like a perfectly normal activity for progreeive thinkers, hiding behind the AIDS quilt to advocate irresponsible underage sex, met the reality of public outrage.

Lube Job

In a front page story from the Wednesday Union Leader the group AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region has run into trouble.   After a presentation at a local High School they offered ‘safe sex kits’ to students.  The distribution approved by the school’s administration stopped after learning that flavored lubricant and candy were included with the condoms that are—dare I say traditionally?—handed out.  Neither parents nor administrators were pleased by the message that “flavored lubricant” sends to 14-year olds.

The money shot, I’m sorry quote, comes from Monadnock School Board member Bruce Barlow.

“You can’t hand something like that to a 14-year-old boy and expect him to respond to it as an adult would.”

Seventy-thousand years of human history passed us by and somehow we missed this until now?

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“Food for Thought”

Yeah, our politicians and educators are homing in on the important item: Food for Thought Commenting on yesterday’s NRO editorial about first lunch lady Michelle Obama, Corner fan John, a local teacher, e-mails “A sample menu item for NYC public schools in January: ‘Mediterranean Roasted Chicken, Whole Grain Rotini with Fresh Herbs, Ellie Krieger’s Tri-Color … Read more

When you hear the Educational-Industrial Complex saying that we don’t spend enough money…

…and that’s why our kids test so badly, I just shake my head.  How much do they want?  Really?

Educational spending internationally

And ask them – where are the better results for that larger amount of money?  You are supposed to be providing a service – educating our children.  It is obvious that the service is lacking – but costing us more.

So, why should we give you more?  We should be giving you less until we see positive trending results – without the excuses.  We are #2 in expenditures – certainly not #2 in results…

(H/T: Big Government)

Think I’m kidding – it is behavior like this that does NOTHING to educate – merely line the pockets of the Robber Barons of Public Education:

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What Would We Do Without Studies Like These?

Riding in on the heels of the UNH/Hirshberg cow fart research we have other news from the research front of which is just begging to be made fun.

Someone has discovered that oral sex is a gateway drug to intercourse among teenagers. A three-year study determined that teens who have oral sex are more likely to have intercourse than teens who do not. And if you ask the Baptists they will tell you that intercourse leads to dancing, or was that the other way around?

“I see most of the health policies out there and guidelines for preventive services talking about sex generally, but they do not specify oral sex. That is an important distinction because teens don’t consider oral sex to be sex, and many are not aware of the risks involved,” Halpern-Felsher said.

So oral sex leads to intercourse and intercourse leads to unwanted pregnancy.  Who is surprised?  The experts, of course.

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Our Superintendent, Dr. DiMinico, had something to say about this:

Once the elite high school in Washington, D.C., Dunbar High is out of control, reports the Washington Post. Nearly half the senior class is not on track to graduate, more than 100 students are taking courses they’ve already passed and the campus is growing increasingly unsafe. Oh Wait!  He DIDN’T!  Mea Culpa!  That was actually … Read more

How About Some Irony?

The Bedford school board has announced staff and program cuts to address problems with the next school budget. They are looking to trim $750,000.00 off the bottom line, $200,000.00 of which–it has been proposed–will come from eliminating full time teaching positions.

For Quite Some Time

For quite some time more than a few of us out here in the private sector have been paying into our own retirement plans–if we can–for years.  After the Housing bubble burst many of us began reducing the amount we contributed as a lousy economy consumed opportunities, wage growth and jobs–our neighbors jobs or even our own. 

Companies, small businesses in particular, that were once able to provide some benefits and 401K matching dollars shifted gears, re-directing that revenue (if they had it) to keeping the business afloat so they could pay enough remaining core employees to keep the company "a company"–with desks, paperclips, sticky-notes, and a space to keep them in.  We paid for our own retirement plans, owners and managers paid for theirs, took pay cuts, employees took pay cuts, millions accepted reduced hours, part time status, or were overcome by the recession and had to be let go.

At the same time various levels of government were handing out (or handed) billions and billions of dollars that did not exist, to prop up the public sector unions.  These unions, collective bargaining groups (emphasis on collective) were the primary benefactors of the past two years accumulation of debt.  Government rules favored them in opposition to all else and in contradiction to common sense, not just for cash handouts but the hand out of sparse jobs as well.  Even at the local level, the public sectors union handlers, who are really nothing more than fat cat capitalists selling shares in human flesh for a profit, in the from of a dues check each pay period, have fought against the tide to raise union salaries, benefits, and keep or create more jobs that must be paid for by the people going the opposite direction.

So the public sector unions, operating as nothing more than a private business, whose goal is to grow revenue, continued to do just that at taxpayers expense, all the while whining about private sector greed and malfeasance. We need to call them out for this. 

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The Illusion Of Zero Drop Outs

credit: ramblingrector.me

Governor Lynch is all about his success at reducing Drop Out rates in New Hampshire. That’s the number of high school age kids who leave school without graduation or achieving a recognized equivalent. He even has a goal. New Hampshire will have a zero percent drop out rate by 2012. And based on the available data, I think he will succeed, but not in reducing actual “drop outs” to zero.

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“The Professionals” vs the parents: “its instructional value outweighs its shortcomings.”

In our little town of Bedford, a controversy is brewing.  Recently parents of a high school student discovered a book had been assigned to their son in a Personal Finance class.  After reading the book, "Nickel and Dimed,…On Not Getting By In America!" the parents determined this book was not appropriate reading material for a 16 year old and wasn’t quality material one would expect to find in a Personal Finance class.
 
They went through the proper channels in an effort to either remove the book or remove parts of the book they found to be the most offensive.  Some of the most offensive parts to the book were: the profanity, references to Jesus and people of faith that readers would find offensive and instructions on how to clear your urine if you use drugs prior to applying for a job.
 
I think the average person expects a personal finance text to offer students information on banking, insurance, balancing a checkbook and other important financial matters that will face these kids as they move into adulthood.  What we found was, a book written by a social activist being used in  a Personal Finance class in an attempt to change the values, beliefs and attitudes of the students.
 
The book was brought to a review committee when the Administrators decided it was appropriate reading material.  The Committee listened to their concerns, read the book and decided the book is acceptable as instructional material because "its instructional value outweighs its shortcomings."
 
So what are we trying to teach students in Personal Finance?  Instructional value in what?  The author is an avowed Marxist pushing her own Socialist agenda on those who read her books.  Does Personal Finance now equal political indoctrination?  That certainly seems to be the instructional…

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You know who I blame for this?

As Ann Marie pointed out, bullying has become quite the topic in schools today thanks to a new law that purports to be the "fin du fin" of the issue – top down control from Concord with a strictly controlled law that does not allow for absolutely minimal "local control" over what happens in the schools.

Look, I can agree with sentiment.  I was bullied in high school – I was one of the nerds.  And contrary to today’s politically correct, pacifist education world, I solved the problem myself in a most incorrect fashion.  No, I didn’t knock the snot out of my main protagonist; rather, a head lock was turned into a full Nelson and then I simply kept squeezing until he dropped. And cried.  And cried some more.  He never bothered me again.  His friends left me alone, too. A mark was left on him, but not a physical one – it was unnecessary.  The point was made, learned, and kept

Is that THE solution as well?  No, and I willingly admit to such.  It worked for me and in that situation.  And I didn’t have to run to the Government (the teachers or the Administrators) to solve my problem, either. And I didn’t have to resort to perverting some base principles in doing so. I realize that today is a different time and place – at least that’s what others keep telling me.  However, they seem to have this great problem in answering my question: sure and indeed – but do we have to have basic principles changed?

Funny think, principles.  Often, base principles never changed – or shouldn’t be changed.  So, in the context of the above, add this from this article in the Concord Monitor on this.  Tell me, what’s wrong here?  And what is the two principle that these seem to advocate for (one obvious and one not-so-obvious)?

‘If someone writes something mean about you on Facebook, your mom might tell you not to look at it or to just turn off your computer. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt you, because your friends can still look at it. And it might make it hard to go to school. So the mean person should get in trouble at school."…

…"A student should have the right to say what they want in a text message or e-mail, but not if it’s going to hurt someone’s reputation – like calling a person fat or stupid or saying that you hate them," a girl from a parochial school wrote. "I personally know someone who had that happen to her, and those comments never go away."

"The First Amendment gives us the right to say what we want in this country, but not if it affects our right to a safe environment," a local high school boy wrote. "I know a kid who doesn’t like to come to school out of fear."

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It’s not about “saving the planet” – it all about the Benjamins and control

Burning Planet Once again, we’re seeing the pronouncements, even in the background of Climategate and Al "I created the Internet" Gore’s (let’s see again, how big is his carbon footprint?) admission that his support for corn based ethanol was just pandering to farmers to bolster his run for President.  Once again, it is easy to see what the real agenda is.

After all, all of us little people just don’t seem to understand all these really smart people that have a much bigger problem to solve than our petty little ones.  And they are getting some uppity and upset that the vast majority of us just won’t listen to them.  But the gaffes keep coming out anyways – what’s beyond the smoke and curtains.

From The Scotsman:

Mexican president Felipe Calderon called on climate negotiators to put national interests aside and act on behalf of all humanity to fight global warming.

Opening a two-week conference in Cancun last night, Mr Calderon urged delegates to overcome the deep divide between rich and poor countries that has hampered efforts to negotiate a new climate treaty for three years.

"It would be a tragedy if our inability to see beyond our personal interests or national interests makes us fail," he said in a speech to delegates, businessmen and activists. "The atmosphere is indifferent to the sovereignty of states."

But the money transfers he wants are NOT indifferent to the sovereignty of national borders.  A poor excuse of an argument and ‘victimization’ – and like many, his self-interest is to see that transfer goes into his country.  Sorry, but my national self-interest comes into view here.  15,000 people?  And that carbon footprint is so small, right?  And frankly, any time I see anything like "indifferent to the sovereignty of states.", the fuzzy antenna go up and start wigging out.

Why?  There was this from his fellow countryman:

"Climate change is the most serious challenge our society has ever confronted," said Mario Molina, a Mexican chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his studies on the ozone layer.

Really?  I would posit that…

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