i think they should probably be thinking about being a positive force in helping clean up the mess we are in now, rather than worrying about what to do in 4 years.
Oh good lord, can't they at least let the man actually be president before they start lining up to replace him?
Right now, the big talk on Talk Radio is about the government confiscating all IRAs,401(k)s, and personal retirement accounts (pensions) and putting the money under Social Security. If you thought the dust-up about immigration was huge, just wait until Congress starts messing with our money. Apparently, some people think we'll believe anything if they spout it long enough.
if the educators union did not back slots, they (the people in power who wanted slots) were going to fuck with our pensions. so the union backed the slots and our pensions were left alone. yet another reason i fucking hate that slots won. every commercial or ad with "happy" teachers that "support" slots was like a knife to my heart.
we'll never see a penny of that money, just like we've never seen a enny of the lottery money that was promised in the 80s. all new hotels here were built with massive rooms whth rows and rows of floor jacks. these rooms sit empty waiting for big time gambling to be legal, and have a feeling in 4 years, they'll be pushing that, because slots won't pay off.
meanwhile, my neighborhood is going to go downhill because the "Selective controlled gambling" that passed is near me. we won't turn a profit and social ills will go up and their solution will be o legalize more gambling and they'll blackmail us again to get what they want. i don't understand how anyone i work with could vote yes on that.
i don't know any other educators that were for the measure except my union rep and they had to pretend to be for it even if they weren't, to show solidarity with the union (bunch of pussies). i dislike my union rep, so it wasn't hard for me to tell her to stfu and stop lying to us when she went into her "it's good for us" bullshit.
Georgia passed a lottery in 1993, the proceeds of which are used to fund college tuition for high school students with a B average (but the student must maintain a B average during college to retain the scholarship). Now some of the money is going to fund preschool programs, although there still aren't enough slots to go around to all the little kids. The only drawback to the college scholarship is "grade inflation" in high school, but if the kid can't maintain a "B" average during college, the money is lost. Of course, this encourages some students to go to college who aren't really college material and also doesn't fully fund money for textbooks which isn't nearly enough to take care of the cost of the books. However, my daughter kept her scholarship for the full four years it took her to get a degree so I think the HOPE scholarship (that's what it's called) is the best thing since sliced bread since our outlay was only to fund the shortfall in the cost of her textbooks. So in our case, legalized gambling has been a great thing, but I can see why Jilly is upset with the way her state has used the money. (Being in the Bible Belt, funding scholarships is the ONLY way the residents of Georgia would even think agreeing to this bill).
NC has a program called Smart Start for preschool children in disadvantaged situations to bring them up to the level of children from more affluent/stable/whatever families (other states are gonna adopt something similar in hopes of looking progressive and compassionate also). And it WORKS! up until I think it is either the middle of the first or second grade, you can show a positive coorelation between children who have done Smart Start with those who match up statistically and haven't done it. But after that, there is no difference in the children on various assessment scales. So, we are pouring MILLIONS of dollars into a program that within a few years can't be tracked because it makes no difference. And you thought No Child Left Behind was a joke. We are in debt, we got the lottery which isn't nearly as good at channelling money into the educational system (but please, who thought it really would? I wanted the lottery so at least we would have lottery jobs in this state, not all that money crossing the border)as promised and we fund a program which looks spectacular on paper but accomplishes very little down the road. I don't know what the answer is. But I recognize this isn't it and should be abandoned. It's political suicide to take anything away though.
I have no idea how the pre-K is working here since I don't remember any information appearing anywhere about it-just that slots are hard to find. I do know that the HOPE scholarship worked like a charm for my child and I do appreciate all the gamblers paying for her college education ;-) That being said, I've purchased about two lottery tickets.
we have all day kindergarten and it's not good at all. those poor kids sit at desks all day and do work meant for 7 year-olds.
every state in theory has head start programs, which are great and not used or funded often enough. when i was little, my mother was a poor single mom, and my sister and i were sent to head start all day.
they took us to the doctor, got us shots, we saw the dentist, they fed us 3 times a day and we played and read books constantly. i have many good memories from head start. when i was 5, my mom got re-married and her income was too high for it so we then went to public kidergarten which was okay, but not as fun.
i think i was helped further in that my mom read to use and we learned to read at 3, so most of the information gap between low income and high incomes was not present. moreover, my parents were very fond os museums and i think we went to every museum in the mid-atlantic before i was 10 at least once. this was great background knowledge that again, most poor children miss and it takes years to catch up for missing schema.
i had a hope scholarship in college, that's a federal program. i also had an americorps scholarship and several academic scholarships. gambling here is supposed to 100% fund k-12 education, but it doesn't. like i said, we've never seen a penny from the lotto, which was supposed to fund special ed tutoring programs. special ed kids never get anything unless it's second hand it seems.
i think i'm going to apply for loan-forgiveness next year because i'm a teacher, but the restrictions are so crazy, it's a miracle anyone qualifies. my guy could have done it this year, but we didn't get the info packet until sept 12 and the deadline was sept 2. typical.
sheila, you can't really track kids long term and expect to get any useful data on educational tests because not only do people change, but the tests do too. our system either compares this years kids to last years kids (as if every group is the same), or it tries to test people over and over to coorelate their scores. the problem there is you lose validity because the tests are too different. oh, and the companies that write the tests purposefully write the tests so that most kids will fail. if an item has more than a 60% pass rate, it's tossed off all future tests, so we set out giving kids tests where 60% or more of the kids are meant to fail right off the bat.
but that's another gripe i have with the educational system--the stupid testing that really means nothing in the end. oy and to get them to toss off items that are flawed, biased or flat out racist or classist is almost impossible. this is why we get to retire after 30 years, i think it's impossible to put up with the leadership after 3 years.
Someone needs to do an audit on your state's lotto, Jilly. The one here has been operating since school year 1994 and I've heard no complaints about it not being funded.
8 comments:
i think they should probably be thinking about being a positive force in helping clean up the mess we are in now, rather than worrying about what to do in 4 years.
Oh good lord, can't they at least let the man actually be president before they start lining up to replace him?
Right now, the big talk on Talk Radio is about the government confiscating all IRAs,401(k)s, and personal retirement accounts (pensions) and putting the money under Social Security. If you thought the dust-up about immigration was huge, just wait until Congress starts messing with our money. Apparently, some people think we'll believe anything if they spout it long enough.
if the educators union did not back slots, they (the people in power who wanted slots) were going to fuck with our pensions. so the union backed the slots and our pensions were left alone. yet another reason i fucking hate that slots won. every commercial or ad with "happy" teachers that "support" slots was like a knife to my heart.
we'll never see a penny of that money, just like we've never seen a enny of the lottery money that was promised in the 80s. all new hotels here were built with massive rooms whth rows and rows of floor jacks. these rooms sit empty waiting for big time gambling to be legal, and have a feeling in 4 years, they'll be pushing that, because slots won't pay off.
meanwhile, my neighborhood is going to go downhill because the "Selective controlled gambling" that passed is near me. we won't turn a profit and social ills will go up and their solution will be o legalize more gambling and they'll blackmail us again to get what they want. i don't understand how anyone i work with could vote yes on that.
i don't know any other educators that were for the measure except my union rep and they had to pretend to be for it even if they weren't, to show solidarity with the union (bunch of pussies). i dislike my union rep, so it wasn't hard for me to tell her to stfu and stop lying to us when she went into her "it's good for us" bullshit.
jilly
Georgia passed a lottery in 1993, the proceeds of which are used to fund college tuition for high school students with a B average (but the student must maintain a B average during college to retain the scholarship). Now some of the money is going to fund preschool programs, although there still aren't enough slots to go around to all the little kids. The only drawback to the college scholarship is "grade inflation" in high school, but if the kid can't maintain a "B" average during college, the money is lost. Of course, this encourages some students to go to college who aren't really college material and also doesn't fully fund money for textbooks which isn't nearly enough to take care of the cost of the books. However, my daughter kept her scholarship for the full four years it took her to get a degree so I think the HOPE scholarship (that's what it's called) is the best thing since sliced bread since our outlay was only to fund the shortfall in the cost of her textbooks. So in our case, legalized gambling has been a great thing, but I can see why Jilly is upset with the way her state has used the money. (Being in the Bible Belt, funding scholarships is the ONLY way the residents of Georgia would even think agreeing to this bill).
NC has a program called Smart Start for preschool children in disadvantaged situations to bring them up to the level of children from more affluent/stable/whatever families (other states are gonna adopt something similar in hopes of looking progressive and compassionate also). And it WORKS! up until I think it is either the middle of the first or second grade, you can show a positive coorelation between children who have done Smart Start with those who match up statistically and haven't done it. But after that, there is no difference in the children on various assessment scales. So, we are pouring MILLIONS of dollars into a program that within a few years can't be tracked because it makes no difference. And you thought No Child Left Behind was a joke. We are in debt, we got the lottery which isn't nearly as good at channelling money into the educational system (but please, who thought it really would? I wanted the lottery so at least we would have lottery jobs in this state, not all that money crossing the border)as promised and we fund a program which looks spectacular on paper but accomplishes very little down the road. I don't know what the answer is. But I recognize this isn't it and should be abandoned. It's political suicide to take anything away though.
I have no idea how the pre-K is working here since I don't remember any information appearing anywhere about it-just that slots are hard to find. I do know that the HOPE scholarship worked like a charm for my child and I do appreciate all the gamblers paying for her college education ;-) That being said, I've purchased about two lottery tickets.
we have all day kindergarten and it's not good at all. those poor kids sit at desks all day and do work meant for 7 year-olds.
every state in theory has head start programs, which are great and not used or funded often enough. when i was little, my mother was a poor single mom, and my sister and i were sent to head start all day.
they took us to the doctor, got us shots, we saw the dentist, they fed us 3 times a day and we played and read books constantly. i have many good memories from head start. when i was 5, my mom got re-married and her income was too high for it so we then went to public kidergarten which was okay, but not as fun.
i think i was helped further in that my mom read to use and we learned to read at 3, so most of the information gap between low income and high incomes was not present. moreover, my parents were very fond os museums and i think we went to every museum in the mid-atlantic before i was 10 at least once. this was great background knowledge that again, most poor children miss and it takes years to catch up for missing schema.
i had a hope scholarship in college, that's a federal program. i also had an americorps scholarship and several academic scholarships. gambling here is supposed to 100% fund k-12 education, but it doesn't. like i said, we've never seen a penny from the lotto, which was supposed to fund special ed tutoring programs. special ed kids never get anything unless it's second hand it seems.
i think i'm going to apply for loan-forgiveness next year because i'm a teacher, but the restrictions are so crazy, it's a miracle anyone qualifies. my guy could have done it this year, but we didn't get the info packet until sept 12 and the deadline was sept 2. typical.
sheila, you can't really track kids long term and expect to get any useful data on educational tests because not only do people change, but the tests do too. our system either compares this years kids to last years kids (as if every group is the same), or it tries to test people over and over to coorelate their scores. the problem there is you lose validity because the tests are too different. oh, and the companies that write the tests purposefully write the tests so that most kids will fail. if an item has more than a 60% pass rate, it's tossed off all future tests, so we set out giving kids tests where 60% or more of the kids are meant to fail right off the bat.
but that's another gripe i have with the educational system--the stupid testing that really means nothing in the end. oy and to get them to toss off items that are flawed, biased or flat out racist or classist is almost impossible. this is why we get to retire after 30 years, i think it's impossible to put up with the leadership after 3 years.
jilly
Someone needs to do an audit on your state's lotto, Jilly. The one here has been operating since school year 1994 and I've heard no complaints about it not being funded.
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