Thats right give everyone a trophy

[dan_bgblue]

Don't inspire hard work and individualism, just make sure no one gets their feelings hurt.

This country is going into the dumper

[KeithKSR]

We wouldn't want to offend those with a low or average gpa.

[CitizenBBN]

Saw that one too. Made my stomach turn. We're checking out real estate in central America. No point in being here to watch the end of the dream.

[PedroDaGr8]

Apparently this story is a bit misconstrued. The making ppl feel excluded wasn't about the grades. This just deals with special sashes for outside organizations. The administrators believe if they let one student wear a sash from an outside organization, then they risk not being able to exclude other outside organizations that are not so education related. This is in a richer more litigious part of Texas too, so not exactly an unreasonable worry (justifiable is a different question though). That being said, this where the word excluded came from. Excluding one outside organization and not others. The administrators chose the path of last resistance, rather than risk having BLM sashes, political sashes, dickbutt(a cartoon character) sashes, etc. They just said no outside sashes, the kids with a GPA higher than 3.6 out of 4 still get a special school designated sash like they always have. So it isn't about making the kids feel worse like this article spun it to be.

[Doc]

Apparently this story is a bit misconstrued. The making ppl feel excluded wasn't about the grades. This just deals with special sashes for outside organizations. The administrators believe if they let one student wear a sash from an outside organization, then they risk not being able to exclude other outside organizations that are not so education related. This is in a richer more litigious part of Texas too, so not exactly an unreasonable worry (justifiable is a different question though). That being said, this where the word excluded came from. Excluding one outside organization and not others. The administrators chose the path of last resistance, rather than risk having BLM sashes, political sashes, dickbutt(a cartoon character) sashes, etc. They just said no outside sashes, the kids with a GPA higher than 3.6 out of 4 still get a special school designated sash like they always have. So it isn't about making the kids feel worse like this article spun it to be.

Yep, we want a cookie cutter world where everybody is the same, looks the same, acts the same, etc... (see my signature).

I would suspect they don't recognize those who have earned athletic letters either. If they do, that would be hypocritical.

My son graduated on Tuesday night. All the students who graduated summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude, and national merit finalist were individually recognized as was the one student who never missed a day of school in 12 years. Considering the point of high school is academics, it was totally appropriate to recognize academic excellence/achievement where as being members of the math club or football team or spam (basically battlebots for which his HS is one of the top in the nation) etc.... simply got to wear "regalia". It added no extra time to the ceremony.

[CitizenBBN]

Thanks for the clarification Pedro. I get the logic, but I'm not sure if that makes me feel better about the country. I'm worn out on silly lawsuits and more esp. on schools doing everything to the least common denominator, in this case the least common denominator of silly parents and lawsuits.

I do have a great solution for the schools and education part of things: complete privatization. I absolutely believe government has no place in education. Every child gets a voucher worth $x dollars (depends on where you live), you can go to any school you want and cash it in. Of course schools may charge more.

Federal government gets out of education completely. No grants, no rules, no nothing. States can keep doing what they are doing if they wish but they cannot prevent competition from other schools. Personally I'd look into selling them all off to private hands.

That solves this b/c it means more competition and choice and also as a private school they can make the rules they choose for the most part so they can allow NHS sashes and ban the rest if they want.

Competition would fix so many of these problems with education, from the quality of what is taught to the bias with which it is delivered.

[dan_bgblue]

I do have a great solution for the schools and education part of things: complete privatization

I have given this a lot of thought over the years and while it has merits, I wonder if it does not have a flaw that would make it unworkable. Are private schools going to locate in inner city areas where crime/drugs are really bad? The children in those areas might be left out of the new educational system?

[CitizenBBN]

I have given this a lot of thought over the years and while it has merits, I wonder if it does not have a flaw that would make it unworkable. Are private schools going to locate in inner city areas where crime/drugs are really bad? The children in those areas might be left out of the new educational system?

It's my main area of concern as well, but it's a system I'd do in stages, so I wouldn't ban public schools at the state level or city level, and we'd see how the market responded to that situation.

But I'll note that in those areas a lot of kids do in fact also go to private religious schools that try to serve those areas, and I wouldn't be surprised to see such organizations step in as non-profits to meet the need. that voucher money would do a lot to fund them and allow them to do their work.

After all most private schools are non profits, they are just charging to cover their costs. I'm betting the amount a city like Chicago spends per child would do a lot for a well run Catholic or other school.

[UKHistory]

No grants? Really? Gulp? I love you Citizen but don't put me on the unemployment line.

This stood out to me. In the fox article near the end this passage reads, "in 2008/2009, class officers and student congress were given the opportunity to consider a change in the practice. The student leaders opted to uphold the tradition. The campus will look at the practice again next year if students wish."

To the school administrators the issue was resolved in the not too distant past (note I wrote future first as my scifi passion controlled my key strokes.) This is 2016 so if I am counting correctly the students who graduated when this current class was in the 5th grade made the decision to uphold the tradition.

That is a big difference in kids.

That is a national honor society rep's view. It might be accurate and it might not be accurate.

It is high school and to me it just doesn't matter.

With that said, graduation should allow a person to be themselves and to display any honors they earn or what their interests are. So my cap and gown might include a Star Wars and UK basketball theme. It speaks to who I am and what I care about.

I am not sure if I see it as playing to the weakest link or one final opportunity to control 18 year olds and putting them in a box.

Federal dollars are valuable but we are talking $42 billion ED grant dollars across the country based in FY 14. 37 billion goes to states with. .
Five billion is in discretionary funds where eligible organizations apply and compete nationally. A significant portion of those dollars go toward the salaries of educators working with kids.

Tax dollars from the community go into actually making the schools run.

Privatization of schools (I take that to mean no local taxes either but I may be misinterpreting the statement) would be the surest way to eradicate the middle class. And the rich Democrats and Republicans want to turn the middle class into the lower class with no hope of moving up. That way they get to keep theirs.

Good blue collars jobs are leaving the country; immigration and cheap crap ensure lower wagess (and lower costs and quality).

Lot of issues with schools. Some of it is that they are filled with dumb kids raised by dumb parents with no hope of really ending the cycle of poverty and stupidity. More people care about reality television than improving the country or their quality of life.

There is a rant. These are my personal views and in no way reflect any official position I have and may change after consuming a protein rich breakfast.

[Darrell KSR]

Interesting discussions here. I sorta "get it," after Pedro's explanation--as usual, the media sort of led us to a direction they wanted us to go--not liberal vs conservative, but sensationalistic, leading to outrage. Common sense sometimes--often--tells us that there's another side to the story, often inadequately presented. I appreciate the efforts made to analyze it carefully to see what is lying beneath the surface.

Not saying I agree with it--just that I "get" what Pedro is saying, and the school officials who made the decision.

On the public/private school thing, man, I'm so torn up over that it's crazy. We have a silly formula with our kids that they all attend Parochial school through 8th grade (when that Parochial School ended), but attend a local, large public high school. We're fortunate that it's a blue ribbon, high quality, well-resourced public school, or else we may have made other decisions, but I think all kind of things *can* work. The system can, and should, be better than it is. I'm never a person to want change just for change purposes, but in this case, some change may get the education system off the bump and cause progress. If it causes some regression, you adjust and move it forward. Knowing that there is room to grow at the top gives me encouragement that it is time to make *a* change--whatever that solution may be.

[CitizenBBN]

History, privatization doesn't mean no taxes. it means the taxes are collected and then each child eligible is allotted his amount and he/she can then cash it in at any school, public or private. One can then move to privatizing the public schools but IMO the first step is vouchers.

What it does is allow competition for those dollars, which are going to remain the same and may even go up.

This doesn't destroy the middle class, what it does is allow people to get into it from below and empower middle class parents. Right now if you're not rich enough to afford a private school you're stuck, and the schools reflect that lack of choice the same way any bureaucracy does, by having lower customer service and quality levels and higher costs.

But what if those parents suddenly got enough money that they could send their child to a private school? Ah, now we have a whole new system. Suddenly those schools have to compete to attract students just like any business has to compete for customers. No more stagnant bureaucracy.

Will it be perfect? Heck no, nothing on this earth is perfect, but it will be a far improved system over the current approach. Education in this country is basically the educational version of socialized medicine, and it's a poor system overall and getting worse as more and more government is injected into it.

As for federal funding yes I'd cut it all out. THe idea isn't that the money isn't available, it's that the states and local areas provide their funding, and the federal government in turn reduces federal taxes to lower the burden on people. Every time a dollar in taxes goes up another level in government more of it is taken in overhead and waste. The federal government is like a charity that only ends up giving 30% of the money to the cause and sucks up 70% in administration.

I dont' want those programs to go away, I want things to be run efficiently and responsively, which means getting the feds out of the decision process completely and being efficient about use of money. the only way to do that is for the feds to not control the purse strings.

They are doing to schools what they've done to states with transportation funding. they have no Constitutional authority to stay what meals schools should serve, but since they give out all this money they can condition that money on doing all these other things. We must cut those ties in order to eliminate their concentration of power. It is undermining the nation and lowering quality at the same time.

For now just move to vouchers, let those tax dollars be voted by the parents and let schools compete for those students. This will EMPOWER the poor and middle class in this country in a way we haven't seen in generations. it won't help the rich at all, they already have more than enough to send their kids to any school they want, but it will give the rest of America that same ability.

This is one of the most "pro poor" and pro middle class policies we could pursue in this country. It would open up opportunities to children in both groups, and would drive schools to do better.

If we got 100% privatized then great, then schools could make choices on things like this as they saw fit, once again responding to the needs of their parents and children rather than some blanket regulation.

[Darrell KSR]

Can I get back vouchers for 45 years of Parochial school tuition paid? I'll vote for anybody that can do that.