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Blackdog said:You have got to remember I am a social liberal for the most part
As am I. Libertarianism is essentially left-leaning in social issues.
I don't disagree because you are necessarily wrong (the fiscal conservative in me, lol) I disagree because we should provide a good education no matter where you live or what economic group you are part of.
Whoa whoa whoa. I never said that economically depressed schools and districts should get bad education. I'm just saying that rich districts should get more luxuries which may have ancillary benefits in education. I think you're seeing this as zero-sum, where rich districts get all the education and the ghetto/inner city/slum districts get the leftovers. That's not what I'm saying at all. I favor all schools, regardless of median incomes within any particular district, to get as quality of an education as feasibly allowable.
If your school has no money for new computers or up to date history books etc. This should never be an issue for k-12.
And I disagree. Are students really that crippled if they have to use computers with Windows XP instead of Windows 7/8? If they have to use Word/Excel 2003 over 2007 and newer? I don't think they are. Is the life story of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Winston Churchill any different now than it was in 2008? Negative. Sorry if I don't believe in giving the poor all the "bells and whistles".
It's to important. To deny a good education because they were born impoverished is no excuse. Under your plan the person who could cure cancer being poor would never get the chance because of circumstance out of his/her control.
They'd get the chance. It just wouldn't be as easy.
Fluffyninja said:Blackdog raises some good points, as many schools lack the resources to even adequately enforce their own attendance policies........and simply allowing the students to stop attending won't work either as part of the "mystery formula" for measuring a school's effectiveness involves tracking those students who originally enroll all the way through to graduation. Essentially the school is penalized for students who drop out or just stop attending on a regular basis. Is this fair?
It absolutely is. Nobody can bitch about quality of education in the poorer schools when the kids themselves refuse to go.
Discipline is also a major issue. Try penalizing a student for using his/her I-phone during class to text or to play games and more often than not, you get angry parents who bitch and whine that they "spent hard-earned money to buy their precious that phone and WANT their kid to have it simply for the sake of convenience."
Then you don't do it. There is a massive difference between having the ability to educate and recipients having the desire to be educated. If students want to skip school, text in class, and generally refuse to learn, they should have that right - but I'd be adamantly against a complete waste of money being used for that purpose. Just let the school suffer, along with the students in it, who don't seem to give a damn anyway (nor do the parents). That's the rub about education - it has to be achieved under one's own volition. You can lead a horse to water, after all...