60 years since a sitting president visited Madison, WI. Exciting!

He's speaking at a middle school regarding education reform. Regardless of your political preference, how can you not support more money for schools???

Bush's "no child left behind" was a joke, though. The idea is good, but the implementation is terrible. It punishes school districts with failing students and cuts their funding. Ridiculous. Those are the schools that need funding the most.

Anyway, I'm pretty close to where he's speaking, might catch a glimpse of the baller motorcade. Every beltline exit for 3 miles is basically shut down... seems a little overboard.

First Madison, next The People's Republic of Boulder. He is smart to go where his socialist brethren hang out.

Regardless, it is impressive when a President comes to town. It used to happen quite a bit here in Colorado Springs.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

Bush's "no child left behind" was a joke, though. The idea is good, but the implementation is terrible. It punishes school districts with failing students and cuts their funding. Ridiculous. Those are the schools that need funding the most.

Lol @ spending more = fewer failing students.

get pics.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

So you'd rather just give up on them?

Not even close man, seriously. All he is saying (and I totally agree) is that spending more money on schools AND/OR teacher salaries has not shown any improvement in the education of kids or in measured tests (and yes, I agree that I hate end of year testing for kids and how much that rests on the teachers).

I don't think you would find one person here in OT who would say give up on kids but throwing more money down the drain is not the answer.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

He's speaking at a middle school regarding education reform. Regardless of your political preference, how can you not support more money for schools???

Bush's "no child left behind" was a joke, though. The idea is good, but the implementation is terrible. It punishes school districts with failing students and cuts their funding. Ridiculous. Those are the schools that need funding the most.

I agree that its nice that Obama is pushing for more money for schools.

Just had to point out how funny it was that you questioned how ANYONE could EVER not support more money for schools and then manage to do it yourself in the very next sentence.

Pretty funny.

 

Originally Posted by jetsjets1028

I agree that its nice that Obama is pushing for more money for schools.

Just had to point out how funny it was that you questioned how ANYONE could EVER not support more money for schools and then manage to do it yourself in the very next sentence.

Pretty funny.

Think you should re-read it. The next sentence I say that the provisions in "no child left behind" that CUTS funding from failing schools is a JOKE.

It does not contradict my earlier statement in the least. Perhaps you should take a critical reasoning course.

fair enough...but didnt it cut funding from failing schools and give it to thriving ones

thats called INCENTIVE TO SUCCEED

a concept most people arent aware of these days

 

Originally Posted by jetsjets1028

fair enough...but didnt it cut funding from failing schools and give it to thriving ones

thats called INCENTIVE TO SUCCEED

a concept most people arent aware of these days

The problem with that is that teachers do not have a stranglehold on whether their students succeed or not.

I hear stories every so often from my fiancee and aunt (who are both teachers) about kids that they specifically target to help (outside of normal class time) that just flat out refuse to do their work and sit in class waiting for it to be over. Teachers do everything in their power to help kids but some just do not want to do their work and take ZEROES on a daily basis. Yet you think you should punish the teachers? Who are helping many other students?

Cutting funding specifically targets the amount of teachers available in a district. So it's a downward spiral of more students unwilling to work with less teachers to try to reach them. Again, the idea of the proposal was novel... the implementation is terrible.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

Again, the idea of the proposal was novel... the implementation is terrible.

This sentence can be affixed to to pretty much any government program as an accurate summary of events.

I hope you have the foresight to realize it will also be that way with Healthcare and even moreso because of the MASSIVE scope of that bill.

 

Originally Posted by jetsjets1028

This sentence can be affixed to to pretty much any government program as an accurate summary of events.

I hope you have the foresight to realize it will also be that way with Healthcare and even moreso because of the MASSIVE scope of that bill.

Health care isn't the problem. Lazy f*cking americans who eat too much and want salt, fat, and sugar as their three main ingredients are the problem.

Everything starts with education, even health. I'd like to see money poured into hydroponic research/development so that we could produce vastly more vegetables and fruits. I'd also like to see heavy fat/sugar/salt products be taxed into oblivion.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

edit: ^ that doesn't even begin to discuss the problems of people not exercising. I think it might actually be healthier to exercise vigourosly every day and eat crappy food than to eat good food and never exercise.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

Regardless of your political preference, how can you not support more money for schools???

Throwing money at a problem never solved it. I have an idea, lets abolish public schools and privatize them.

 

Originally Posted by Vypirious

that is wrong on so many levels buddy. read my last post.

It would be nice to look at a proposed plan in detail looking at the pros and cons and seeing if it is a viable solution to the problem. Rather than blindly support something without any knowledge of what his or her plan was.

Almost everyone is for supporting education. Most people want enough knowledge to understand how much money it will take to implement a plan along with the likelihood of that plan succeeding is in order to feel comfortable giving their hard earned money away to support said idea. Very few people blindly open their wallet and say take whatever you want I trust you to solve it.

Congrats on being one of a few, sadly I don't think its your wallet that is open.

Sure it's cool the president is here. But it's kind of funny because it's being made into such a bigger issue that it really is. The school he's speaking at is in pretty nice neighborhood. The "no child left behind" act doesn't really apply here. Madison schools are some of the best in the country. Granted they made a great change and I'm happy for them, but the majority of these kids are not nearly as poor as most of the kids that were supposed to be covered by this act. I mean in some areas of Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago there are kids that are struggling much more. Just seems to me that they're trying to make it look like this act is a success when it reality it's a huge fail.

Why on earth when a school is spiraling down would you pull funding from it? It's impossible to get these kids to pass the standardize testing when they're hardly in school. I really think that they should be shedding more light on how this is making bad schools worse instead of mediocre schools better.

Oh and they made a bigger deal when Kerry came to town than they are for this. The shut down downtown Madison when Kerry came to town.

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