Granberry's Parlor

DPBD

I should mention that I also attended private Christian schools when I was a kid. I do not believe that, academically speaking, the parochial schools offered any inherent advantage. I think they are great for families that a) believe that integrating faith into their child's education is of value and b) can afford the tuition without requiring taxpayer dollars.

c) de-integrating distracting curricula and people

What a journey.

962

Me too, but the cold hard data shows that there is an almost unbreakable correlation between successful parents and quality schools. By successful I mean in all the measurable/external way -- income/education status/health. In a depressingly predictable way you can find places where the parents have a high percentage of professional degrees/masters +, higher income, and better health and POOF the schools are good. You start "dialing down" the economic data, the parent's success, and their health (as typically happens in areas where life span is shortened due to violence or were the work is significantly more toxic/dangerous like mining, chemicals and certain kinds agriculture) and WHAM the schools are signficantly less good. I'm not just talking about the extremes either, you can almost without exception go in even incremental steps of even a few thousand dollars in median household income, mere percentage points in parental educational attainment and health and even the slightly stronger ATTENDANCE AREAS of even the same district tend to show measurable differences... It almost sick.

At the highest end of income there can be a fall off in school rankings. People who study this have two explanations of what is happening -- first is the fact that at the very highest income levels parents are much more likely to send their kids to private schools. The other thing that is going on is that at highest level of income there is not much motivation for the parents to care about their kids going into competitive careers, the family money will afford adequate income. There is also some limited evidence that in towns with really concentrations of parents with PhDs (like college towns) the educational calculus changes too -- these people tend to have different yardsticks for what consitutes a successful school from year to year than people who are more "conventionally oriented".

I did a ton of research on this when I was working on my education certificate and beyond. It is fairly well known among most professors of educational policy. The leaders of the teachers unions really try to distort the data into "wealthier school == better schools" but that has been shown time and time again NOT to work. In areas where per pupil has been increased/padded the gains in achievement don't stick UNLESS there is an improvement in the demographic profile of the parents (which does happen with SOME but not all gentrification).

I suspect that the best way to help individual kids get a better education ought to include actively encouraging some people to move to a better a school. I'm not just talking about busing, I'm saying help some families relocate to the area with higher household income, more educated neighbors, and healthier/longer lived people. Very non-laissez-faire, and likely to result in greater disparity of the folks "left behind" but I don't know what else will really work...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2008 08:31AM by stan adams.

What's wrong with this picture from the protests about the Olympic torch?

A. They did host the Olympics. Which shows a complete lack of historical knowledge on the author's part (or gasp, f*ing googleit).
B. Godwin's Law!

Pretty typical...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2008 12:07PM by rino.

I don't have a source for the information handy but the number one factor in the success of a school is the involvement of the parents in their child's education. This involvement comes in many forms. It can be direct involvement in school activities (mostly K-5 years when parents can come in and read to kids and stuff). It also comes from attending parent-teacher conferences and learning about what and how your child is being taught. The most important involvement is discipline. Make your children do their homework. Punish them when they misbehave in school.

More and more parents these days are looking at schools as free daycare. Any problems that happen in school should be dealt with by the school... and are probably the school's fault anyway. Right? If the teachers were doing their jobs they would be able to give Johnny the 1-on-1 attention he needs because he's "special." No. He's not hyperactive. He doesn't have ADD. You just aren't accommodating his needs.

The number of people who believe that teachers get kick-backs from the pharmaceutical companies for Ritalin, etc. is amazing. Seriously. Many people honestly believe that teachers can prescribe medication or something.

Ugh. I'll stop here. I've written at extreme length on the subject of what's right and what's wrong with schools before. If I ever get around to finishing that psych degree, I plan on doing many more research papers on this topic.

"We" might mean us, not collectively in the past./?

But, I dislike the no left-U-Turn sign. Also, they mixed capitals and lower-case in the words. Blech. And the font is the suxors.

What a journey.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89545855

Thanks ethanol mandate!

should lower the cost of food-grade petroleum products. Like the grease they use to lubricate the ice cream/milkshake machines.

What a journey.

Would the Street finally be wising up?.

Building long-term value

According to Mark Van Clieaf, who runs compensation consultancy MVC Associates, the 12-month pay period makes no sense. "In a one-year period, anyone can make the numbers look good," he says. "If you aren't looking at measuring a business over a four-to-six-year performance period, you're going to mismeasure a business, because it takes that long for new investments to work their way through the profit-and-loss statements."

In recent years, boards of directors at companies such as General Electric, DuPont and AmEx have begun looking at long-term goals when structuring CEO compensation packages.

In the case of AmEx, the compensation of CEO Chenault is measured over a six-year performance cycle. Van Clieaf says AmEx's peers might have benefited from a similar pay plan.

"If that had been in place for most of the Wall Street CEOs, would they have made the risk and product decisions they did, knowing they would have to live with them? I'm not sure they would have," he says.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2008 09:38AM by tliet.

why start now? Until stiff penalties for jail time are instituted and those that already are, raised, then they have nothing to fear. And they don't care.

What a journey.

The United States has more people behind bars than any other country on the planet, including China, Russia, Cuba and Iran. You cannot get tougher on crime. You have to get smarter instead. Conservatives, alack, don't "do" smart.

The problem is the lack of respect for the rule of law. This comes from bullshit traffic tickets and the War on Drugs. Especially the latter, as the law is unreasonable and inflexible in the face of modern bio-science and psychology - addiction is a health issue, not a criminal issue. If the law is going to fuck people over at random, or worse, let rich, white, politically connected kids go free while black men rot for years at a time for having a joint on them, no-one is going to respect it, no matter how harsh it gets.

An abolishment of criminality for drug use and the availability for free addiction treatment would be cheaper, safer, and go a long way to re-establishing respect for the law.

But, conservatives are stupid, and believe Big Brother should be peering into and meddling with any part of a private citizen's life that isn't a gun-rack.

SoupIsNotCharitableAfterPetrausTestifiesHe Failed

Is there only like 5% of the population that does not lie/cheat/steal in some way or another?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-13-Taxcover_N.htm

21% taxes go unpaid?

[quoute]The IRS estimates that 21% of federal individual income taxes go unpaid each year — about $300 billion last year. States lost about $60 billion in such taxes, $6.5 billion in California alone.[/quote]

What a journey.

Sad to say I learned this from a comics blog, but do all the True Republicans who've been decrying McCain's proposal as amnesty - and by extension, amnesty as a bad thing - remember that Reagan signed amnesty into law? Not saying it was anywhere near perfect, but on the surface, it seems a lot less punitive than what Bush and McCain have considered.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2008 06:44PM by johnny k.

That's one of the reasons most immigration legislation is nonsense. We already have laws on the books. Either enforce them or get rid of them.

Interesting development. Anyone ready for the atomic car?

Yes!

"Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed!"

Dan,

You're sounding increasingly delusional if I may say so. To claim that the Soc Gen fraud had a major impact on the market (why not make it the cause of the current troubles while you're at it?) is simply ridiculous.

The Soc Gen debacle was a major factor in the unwinding of the markets. Yeah right.

But indeed, the question remains how long the rest of the world wants to be paid back 30% less than what they've been lending out. Doesn't make good business sense now does it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2008 09:55PM by tliet.

Anyone have any opinions on the proposed lowering (or discussion of) the drinking age here in the USA ? (some states)