Jackson Jambalaya

Thanks, Claiborne. Now get back to work in Oxford.

Mr. Barksdale is mistaken in his belief that it will be easier to address the "fundamental step" of maximizing personnel inside the existing bureaucracy than it will be in new school.

"Strategic funding" is nothing more than liberal code for "throw copious amounts of incremental money at the same ol' approaches to the problem" and "raise taxes to whatever level it takes" to pursue what already doesn't work.

Just what DOES he mean by 'strategic funding'? I guess rather than throwing a million at the blackboard, we should throw some at the chalk tray, some at the eraser bin, a little at the pull down map and the rest at the cork border that's been rotted away for years. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if his underlying motivation is to get himself and Loome put in charge of rationing out the millions. Arrogance has its mysteries.

Better teachers and better teaching will have NO...ZERO...NADA...effect on the quality of schools.

The problem with public schools Grades 1-8 is parents of the kids.

Until parents of the kids take an interest in their kids' education, nothing will work. NOTHING

And we have a winner. Almost.

440 hit mighty close to dead center. Add grades 9-12 and you've got a big win.

Mo' money doesn't equate to success in any venue.

Razor

4:40, I somewhat disagree. They can make up for lack of parents to some degree, if you are prepared to have the schools i.e. the state keep them at achool all afternoon or until 6 or 7 at night, in effect raising them.


Hmmm... the state replacing the parents.. where have I heard that before?

Mr. Barksdale is right in a management sense, but he errs in leaving out the general culture which is also a 'teacher'. Our culture sees education as a means to an end and not an end in itself. Our society is interested in other things besides knowledge. Our universities are vehicles for social advancement. We value sports, personalities, and things not learning. That is our problem.

10:50; Knowledge, in and of itself, is of no value. Only in its application is value derived. As Robert Browning said, "Nothing is of value in itself, only to what it may lead or the help it may yield the spirit." No culture sees education as an end in itself. That's a reality not peculiar to our culture. And while it may seem to you, at times, that we only value sports, personalities and things while overlooking education, that's a broad-scattergun generalization as well.

Our society is highly competitive which tends to make learning a sport of sorts. So our young scholars learn for the sake of winning which is not proper in my view, Shadow. Learning and scholarly investigations could be more individually satisfying and socially useful if the approach were different. Ask young scholars if they like school.

Anyone who has ever met Claiborne knows he is not the smart Barksdale.

My argument with what's "wrong" with public schools lies in this fact - ask any public school principal about his drop out rate and how that equates to the points rating system for public schools. For example - in Rankin County schools, each dropout equals a 300 point deficit in their school rating. So, prinicpals urge teachers to get the kids to pass the subject matter no matter what, thus hoping to keep them from dropping out as long as they are "passing." Also - the term "credit recovery" comes to mind. Google it as it relates to Mississippi public schools. Now that administrators are allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to pass no matter if they've mastered the work or not, it doesn't matter about parent involvement, etc etc. Lastly, as a human resources professional in the Jackson area, I see the product of these schools every day - Rankin County, JPS, Madison, etc etc. The current 18-25 year old population have no respect for authority, they can't read, they can't write, and they certainly have a problem with showing up to work on time, if at all. However, every last one of them has a high school diploma. This behavior of school administrators and their programs like credit recovery give the student/graduate a sense of "I don't have to do it right or do it right now, because my boss will let me slide." they are then in for a rude awakening.

Ahh, too bad. I thought this was going to be about the "other" Claiborne.

10:21
Shadow is exactly correct. Knowledge, in and of itself, is of no value. If you accrue every bit of knowledge that there is, but don't apply it, then what is it worth? Nothing. If half the students are failures then they, their parents and their teachers have failed. Not society.

10:21; I did not say 'learning is not a value in itself'. I said education in and of itself, without application, is of no value. If you think it is, please explain.

You even answer your own dilemma by going on to state the purpose of education as 'becoming productive'. Whether or not that is true, you still seem to realize that education, without implementation (becoming productive in your opinion) has no value.

Kingfish: Is there some way you and Miz Fitch can put in place a screening program to eliminate those from this site whose IQ does not exceed, say, 75?

Strategic funding is targeting money to accomplish specific goals. Government usually just increases budgets or salaries without tying those funds to criteria that must be met.

EVERY conservative should be FOR strategic funding.

I'd like the person who wrote that personnel improvement is more likely to be accomplished in a new school to back that up. Do explain how lowering the teacher minimum requirements as the charter bill did will " improve" personnel.

I would suggest the idea in this piece of improving minimum requirements works. I would include allowing Master's degreed and PhD's to be licensed without having them take education courses, most of which they could pass in their sleep just from having been students for so long.

Well, Shadow,
I guess with an IQ of 76 that makes you safe, right?

Barksdale is an idiot. The problem is not the teachers, it is the circumstances they have to work with.

It begins in the home where many parents are no longer willing to take the time to teach their children the basics they need to function in school. They are simply too busy watching TV and texting to be concerned with their children's educational foundation.

It continues once those same children reach school age. They are so developmentally behind that it takes a disproportionate amount of the teachers' time just to try and get half the kids to be able to write their ABCs and wipe their own asses. In the meantime those children who are appropriately ready for school don't learn as fast as they are capable of doing and are told to to "busy work" just to keep them out of the teachers' hair. It winds up being boring for those kids and they loose their desire to learn.

That cycle repeats endlessly through 12th grade. The kids with parents who won't take any time to help them with their education outside of school hold back those kids who are capable of doing much more than the system allows them to.

The school assessment system is designed around mediocrity too. A school with a high percentage of successful students along with a high percentage of failing students is punished severly because of the failures while a school with a consistent level of average is rewarded. It is to the school's advantage to ignore the best and brightest and spend a disproportionate amount of time on the students that need remediation.

It reminds me of an analogy, school is like a convoy; it is only as fast as the slowest ship. I don't care how many PhD's you have in the teaching system, until you can get society (the parents) to realise they need to spend a couple of hours a day teaching their kids from the time they are born the weak will continue to hold back the strong.

I am sure I can find a value in education SF. There is a monetary value, there is a institutional value, and a moral individual value. Whether that education is used or not there are specific oppurtunity costs given up to attain an education. You on the other hand sound like some crack smoking liberal professor at Harvard and I don't mean that in a valuable way.