Jackson Jambalaya

Kingfish, you are operating under the misconception that the primary mission of education is to teach children. Not so, my son. Education is about strengthening bureaucracies, increasing executive positions, building salaries, etc. Teaching children is simply an inconvenient hurdle to maneuver around in the lobbying and marketing process.

I know teachers in Jackson (JPS) who can barely speak English. Some have PhD's... they are not foreign language teachers btw
What do you expect?

Anon @ 2:44; You make an interesting point. And it's the same in most other forms of 'government'.

The massive bureacracy out on I-220at the Henry Kirksey State Employment Department is not at all about matching workers with jobs and paying benefits. It's about "strengthening bureaucracies, increasing executive positions, building salaries, etc", to use your exact words. If a governor, any governor, could not populate that organization with cronies, he'd have no use for it.

Same is true with Harvey Johnson's empire. Same as with education. Seeing that city services are 'provided', that a state jobs network exists or that welfare benefits are paid, or that Rehab services are overseen are all rather peripheral to the real reason those empires exist in the first place.

This is not to suggest that each of them won't accidentally do some good on occasion.

mo munie i say! throws mo munie at them!

So, does this mean that 45 states have charter schools? And, if we adopt charter schools in Miss., our problems are solved?

Charter schools won't solve all our problems. But Nancy Loome is an idiot if she thinks the problem is that we have just a few really, really low performing schools dragging the whole thing down. We're at the bottom because DeSoto and Madison are merely average by national standards, and then when you throw in really, really low performing schools the averages just sink. But you shouldn't be proud of DeSoto or Madison schools for being in the 50th percentile nationwide.