Do You Have even just one Pro-Trump Friend?

The Mark said:

Maybe this would provide some competition:

Any family that wants to home school can, and will be compensated the same amount the government would have spent on educating their child.
Restrictions on that are the child passing an evaluation or evaluations by a trained educator, to ensure the child is receiving a minimum standard.

On a related note, I'm suddenly wondering if that'd be a better system for result analysis than standardized testing.

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Nevada tried something similar to that (though it was a voucher system for 90% of the cost) a couple of years ago - as I recall, the public sector unions freaked and took it to the courts. Folks on the left here were especially concerned that those evil parents might be Muslims, and teach their kids Isla- lol, just kidding, they were worried they might be Christians . I stopped tracking it - Fiddy, any reports?

That being said, if the State wanted to pay for the programs and materials we signed up for, they would find we are educating our children better than they, at a fraction of the cost. I'd be happy just to split the difference with them :lol:

The Mark said:

Maybe this would provide some competition:

Any family that wants to home school can, and will be compensated the same amount the government would have spent on educating their child.
Restrictions on that are the child passing an evaluation or evaluations by a trained educator, to ensure the child is receiving a minimum standard.

On a related note, I'm suddenly wondering if that'd be a better system for result analysis than standardized testing.

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The reason why I brought that up was in my area there has been a fairly frequent rise in certain student populations (those with mental health concerns) not having their educational rights respected, and districts use the tools available to them (including law enforcement) to either get the kid (often an elementary school kid, sometimes middle and high school) an arrest record, and then the system from there either tries to take the kid from their family outright or separates them by forcing them into institutional facilities (sometimes out of state, at that).

On your related note, there isn't. A lot of teachers want much more subjective measurements. On one hand it is self-serving, but on the other, there is a lot of "there" there to those subjective tools. The problem is, you have to keep coming back to standardized testing as a means to figure out somewhat what you're dealing with and what your floor is, because with subjective measurements you have no real concrete knowledge about what your floor is.

vesper said:

No Cruz never helped make Trump the nominee. He fought it all the way to the convention. .

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Yeah, no. Cp is referring to the fact that no one was wanting to be the guy who dropped out, but wanted everyone else to. But I will go further. Cruz for much of the primary was very friendly toward Trump, because while Cruz was certainly more of a movement conservative, he and Trump were most identified with hitting at that growing populist base. When it was becoming clear that the field would have to revolve around maybe 3 v Trump, Cruz became much more adamant and confrontational.

vesper said:

No Cruz never helped make Trump the nominee.

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Cruz did in the same way any of them did - he could have gotten out and supported another, and chose not to. He could have concentrated his fire on Trump instead of trying to kneecap the others so it came down to Trump and him, and chose not to.

However, Cruz also helped Trump out in a bit more of a concrete way - helping him to win the New Hampshire Primary.

He fought it all the way to the convention. Your man Rubio on the other hand secured Trumps nomination as did anyone who voted for Kasich. Too many primaries robbed Cruz due to Kasich and Rubio still in the race when they had no business there.

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No, too many primaries robbed Rubio, except too many competitors robbed Kasich, who should have been the nominee, except too many robbed Jeb, except all the others really robbed Santorum, or Graham...

Only if you start by assuming that your guy deserved it, v having to win it, does the argument make sense. Either Cruz or Rubio could have likely beaten Trump, if it was one-on-one. Ditto Jeb. But no one was willing to be a team player, everyone kneecapped each other while letting Trump glide (or actively helping him, as Cruz did), and some simply stayed way past any semblance of even having a chance (Carson comes to mind, as does Kasich).

So stick a sock in it. I am really tired of crap scenarios of people who won't take responsibility for their own judgments.

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Will Cruz take responsibility for helping Trump win in New Hampshire, and gain real momentum coming out of it?

No. But at this point, except as a matter of a good lesson-learned (if you play with fire, the country can get burned), it's not terribly important. :shrug:

But having said that Trump has turned out to be more conservative than Reagan in many aspects. He isn't a refined speaker. He has many flaws yet he gets things done

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Like ending Obamacare, for example. Which was sort of the main thing the GOP organized around for.... the better part of a decade....

G-d bless Trump and G-d bless the U.S.A....

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Amen to both.

Fiddytree said:

Yeah, no. Cp is referring to the fact that no one was wanting to be the guy who dropped out, but wanted everyone else to. But I will go further. Cruz for much of the primary was very friendly toward Trump, because while Cruz was certainly more of a movement conservative, he and Trump were most identified with hitting at that growing populist base. When it was becoming clear that the field would have to revolve around maybe 3 v Trump, Cruz became much more adamant and confrontational.

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That is also true. Cruz assumed Trump would eventually lose, and wanted Trump's voters to shift to him.

2016 was truly Greek Tragedy.

cpwill said:

Nevada tried something similar to that (though it was a voucher system for 90% of the cost) a couple of years ago - as I recall, the public sector unions freaked and took it to the courts. Folks on the left here were especially concerned that those evil parents might be Muslims, and teach their kids Isla- lol, just kidding, they were worried they might be Christians . I stopped tracking it - Fiddy, any reports?

That being said, if the State wanted to pay for the programs and materials we signed up for, they would find we are educating our children better than they, at a fraction of the cost. I'd be happy just to split the difference with them :lol:

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I haven't tracked it. My main pursuit is with special education, and as you know, you have to add additional averages to those students in order to adequately finance their education. And given that many (perhaps a meaningful minority, maybe less, I am not sure) require additional funds than even that weighted average can presume, it's not necessarily a solution.

Fiddytree said:

The reason why I brought that up was in my area there has been a fairly frequent rise in certain student populations (those with mental health concerns) not having their educational rights respected, and districts use the tools available to them (including law enforcement) to either get the kid (often an elementary school kid, sometimes middle and high school) an arrest record, and then the system from there either tries to take the kid from their family outright or separates them by forcing them into institutional facilities (sometimes out of state, at that).

On your related note, there isn't. A lot of teachers want much more subjective measurements. On one hand it is self-serving, but on the other, there is a lot of "there" there to those subjective tools. The problem is, you have to keep coming back to standardized testing as a means to figure out somewhat what you're dealing with and what your floor is, because with subjective measurements you have no real concrete knowledge about what your floor is.

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We're talking children though.

As developing humans, there is no floor, and not even a ceiling.

We can make an artificial floor though. And ceiling.

cpwill said:

That is also true. Cruz assumed Trump would eventually lose, and wanted Trump's voters to shift to him.

2016 was truly Greek Tragedy.

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And with the lack of a convention revolt, we saw several authors, especially Henry Olsen, David Karol, Hans Noel, John Zaller, and Marty Cohen see their central thesis fail in that moment.

Fiddytree said:

Yeah, no. Cruz for much of the primary was very friendly toward Trump, because while Cruz was certainly more of a movement conservative, he and Trump were most identified with hitting at that growing populist base. When it was becoming clear that the field would have to revolve around maybe 3 v Trump, Cruz became much more adamant and confrontational.

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Fiddytree that is BS. Cruz was not real friendly with Trump during the primaries. And if you think such you didn't watch many of the televised debates.

I am tired of the revisionist history that only happened over a year ago you and others like to spin. You should be ashamed but I doubt you are. Bottom line Cruz would have been the nominee for the Republican party if Kasich, Rubio would have backed out. But they both had a lot of money pouring into their campaign from the left and the right to keep Cruz from being the nominee.

So we got Trump and even Trump bested Clinton at the polls. What does that tell you?

cpwill said:

I find value in improving education. That seems to require introducing competition. Generally I think that Parents are going to be both the most informed about the needs and particulars of their children, and the most incentivized to see to it that their kids get what they need.



The vast majority of Charters are non-profit; and they provide better solutions for at-risk kids. The latter point is all we really need to know. That they often do so at less cost per student is simply an excellent bonus.

If a traditional school system loses (making up numbers) 8% of it's students and 5% of it's funding to Charters, then that system is better off. They now have more money per student.



earlier you said their requirement to test drove them to teach to the test - which is it?



:yawn: let me know if you find someone arguing that we should.



OTC, now you are assuming evil motives of those you disagree with - and you are as wrong as if I accused you of wanting to keep black children in failing-school-plantations because you secretly want them downtrodden, because that way they won't think, but will vote Democrat (which, some fools on the right do, in fact, accuse liberals of). Disagreement with ones' means is not the same as opposition to one's motives.



Low teacher salary is usually a result of pushing compensation into pre-tax and out-year benefits. I'd more than be willing to reverse that in order to offer higher salaries - we'd get a greater supply of quality teachers, and be better positioned to retain them.

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And it continues.....

It has been demonstrated over and over that the best indicator of a public school's success is the dedication and involvement of the parents...not competition from the private sector. There has always been private school competition. You are now speaking of using public money to fund private endeavors. Parents can get what they need by becoming actively involved in the public education of their children. The easy way out is the Charter school route, or the Home School route, both funded by other people but focused only on the good of their own. I think Ben Franklin and the founding fathers might be sad at this outcome.

I am not convinced by your made up numbers. Do you have any citations for the value of the money actually lost by the local public school system?

As far as teaching to the test...I thought I clearly stated that some Charter Schools teach to the test, and then report their scores as exemplary. They are not required to report such scores, and when scores are bad you would have no idea.

Promoting the proliferation of Charter Schools will eventually undermine the public school system. If this is not correct, please provide a link demonstrating it is not.

I am quite pleased to see you agree that dismantling the public school system is an "evil motive". I will spare myself consideration of the rest of that little lecture on democratic voting.

The Mark said:

We're talking children though.

As developing humans, there is no floor, and not even a ceiling.

We can make an artificial floor though. And ceiling.

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Yeah, but when you're dealing with educational outcomes of groups, you're going to have to come to standardized tests.

I'll give you an actual example.

Starting in the late 2000s, a group of advocates in my area came together to dispute what the state said was its drop-out rates for a certain population of the student body. They said, essentially, you're cherry picking your results, because you're not collecting data at the moment in which most students, especially our population base, are going to drop out. You're getting like 2% drop-outs as a result. We know it's a hell of a lot higher. After a bit of resistance, Department heads give way and decide to change the measurement. Guess what? You go from maybe 2-5% to 21% the very next year. You now have two student demographics with similar drop-out rates. You now have to explain it to the feds, and so the state did.

But several years go by and the problem is either the same or worse. However, the feds are coming in saying, hey, we are requiring you to improve the statistics on one data point you report to us, over the next five years.

The state department ponders what to do. It thinks it wants to deal with this problem. So, they take a look at what other data they have. They grab student proficiency data from state assessments over the last many years, and they find a number of patterns. This demographic fares far worse at math, etc than almost any subgroup of the entire population. But here's the kicker: it really kicks in when they deliver the state assessment in the 8th grade. It gets worse from there. And that student population, facing all sorts of other stuff, also drops out higher than almost anyone else.

After negotiation with the feds, they say they will increase the graduation rate for this student population. Because of the proficiency data they fairly well understood the following: how well you do in school also significantly impacts whether or not you want to stay in. So they were going to monitor those data points as well. And it really starts to hit in the late elementary years and middle school years.

Standardized testing gave us that data that we needed to show the depths of the problem we could otherwise only anecdotally recall and compile with our own data sources. But the schools compiled their data too, and that helped tremendously.

vesper said:

Fiddytree that is BS. Cruz was not real friendly with Trump during the primaries. And if you think such you didn't watch many of the televised debates.

I am tired of the revisionist history that only happened over a year ago you and others like to spin. You should be ashamed but I doubt you are. Bottom line Cruz would have been the nominee for the Republican party if Kasich, Rubio would have backed out. But they both had a lot of money pouring into their campaign from the left and the right to keep Cruz from being the nominee.

So we got Trump and even Trump bested Clinton at the polls. What does that tell you?

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JMO as a democrat...Cruz was even more unpopular with moderate and independent voters than Trump. Personally I wish he would have won the primary, because he had less of a chance than Trump. He is truly UNPOPULAR.

vesper said:

Fiddytree that is BS. Cruz was not real friendly with Trump during the primaries. And if you think such you didn't watch many of the televised debates.

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I'm sorry your feel that way, because I watched almost all of them.

cpwill said:

Cruz did in the same way any of them did - he could have gotten out and supported another, and chose not to. He could have concentrated his fire on Trump instead of trying to kneecap the others so it came down to Trump and him, and chose not to.

However, Cruz also helped Trump out in a bit more of a concrete way - helping him to win the New Hampshire Primary.



No, too many primaries robbed Rubio, except too many competitors robbed Kasich, who should have been the nominee, except too many robbed Jeb, except all the others really robbed Santorum, or Graham...

Only if you start by assuming that your guy deserved it, v having to win it, does the argument make sense. Either Cruz or Rubio could have likely beaten Trump, if it was one-on-one. Ditto Jeb. But no one was willing to be a team player, everyone kneecapped each other while letting Trump glide (or actively helping him, as Cruz did), and some simply stayed way past any semblance of even having a chance (Carson comes to mind, as does Kasich).



Will Cruz take responsibility for helping Trump win in New Hampshire, and gain real momentum coming out of it?

No. But at this point, except as a matter of a good lesson-learned (if you play with fire, the country can get burned), it's not terribly important. :shrug:



Like ending Obamacare, for example. Which was sort of the main thing the GOP organized around for.... the better part of a decade....



Amen to both.

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There is so much of your post that is BS I don't know where to begin.
I will just say the reason conservatives decided to vote for Trump was because of Cruz.

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was VP Pence that went to Cruz and asked him what would it take to get him on board for Trump and Cruz handed him a list of nominees to the courts that Trump would promise to nominate. It was a list of constitutionalists. It was a list of nominees that would drive the left insane.

Less than 48 hours later the Trump campaign updated their list of jurist it would consider for appointment and promised that their appoinntees would come from the updated list including Cruz's list of nominees.

Then Trump gave a speech in PA focusing on judicial appointees and that my friend is when Trump won the election. It was conservatives worried about the judiciary that came out in droves to vote for Trump. And none of them have been sorry since.

JMR said:

JMO as a democrat...Cruz was even more unpopular with moderate and independent voters than Trump. Personally I wish he would have won the primary, because he had less of a chance than Trump. He is truly UNPOPULAR.

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At the time I wondered how that would have played, but in retrospect, I don't think that would have worked any better for Clinton. Actually, I think it would have worsened it. I don't entirely buy the idea that Trump had a magical quality with union workers that would have made Cruz an anathema.

Fiddytree said:

I'm sorry your feel that way, because I watched almost all of them.

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Could it be you were only looking for what you wanted to hear?

Not to derail the thread completely....but Trump might have had "support" from agencies that Cruz would have lacked.

But no sense looking back. I doubt Cruz or Trump will be the next GOP nominee.

vesper said:

Could it be you were only looking for what you wanted to hear?

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Probably not, considering I was hoping all of the professional politicians on the two stages would have said the three newbies didn't deserve to be on the stage.

vesper said:

There is so much of your post that is BS I don't know where to begin.
I will just say the reason conservatives decided to vote for Trump was because of Cruz.

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was VP Pence that went to Cruz and asked him what would it take to get him on board for Trump and Cruz handed him a list of nominees to the courts that Trump would promise to nominate. It was a list of constitutionalists. It was a list of nominees that would drive the left insane.

Less than 48 hours later the Trump campaign updated their list of jurist it would consider for appointment and promised that their appoinntees would come from the updated list including Cruz's list of nominees.

Then Trump gave a speech in PA focusing on judicial appointees and that my friend is when Trump won the election. It was conservatives worried about the judiciary that came out in droves to vote for Trump. And none of them have been sorry since.

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Wow, and I thought the Judicial Branch was separate from the political shenanigans...:roll:

JMR said:

Wow, and I thought the Judicial Branch was separate from the political shenanigans...:roll:

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It never was. I think many liberals see this differently from conservatives, because while liberals value certain ideas or ideals be instilled in the courts, they aren't exactly hunting for specific people or making it a campaign message. This is mostly because liberals haven't had the same quality of mobilization for the Judicial branch that conservatives had after Scalia.

JMR said:

Wow, and I thought the Judicial Branch!s separate from the political shenanigans...:roll:

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Then you are really an ignorant person to think that those we elect have no influence over who will sit on the bench in the judiciary. Duh!

Fiddytree said:

It never was. I think many liberals see this differently from conservatives, because while liberals value certain ideas or ideals be instilled in the courts, they aren't exactly hunting for specific people or making it a campaign message. This is mostly because liberals haven't had the same quality of mobilization for the Judicial branch that conservatives had after Scalia.

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Obviously conservatives find this a legitimate campaign issue. They have used their supposed "victimhood" to convince voters... To the extent of validating the violation of the process of confirmation and the president's right and duty to make nominations to the court.

Besides the obvious affront to Obama and his nominee Garland, O'Connell stalled the filling of hundreds of judgeships across the country. And a spittoon like Trump will fill them from a list given to him by a pac of some sort. The founding fathers are rolling in their graves.

vesper said:

Then you are really an ignorant person to think that those we elect have no influence over who will sit on the bench in the judiciary. Duh!

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Not ignorant in the least...just disgusted by the overt disregard for the Constitution. What exactly do you hope to accomplish by dismantling more than 200 years of precedent? Overturning Roe vs. Wade? :applaud

JMR said:

Not ignorant in the least...just disgusted by the overt disregard for the Constitution. What exactly do you hope to accomplish by dismantling more than 200 years of precedent? Overturning Roe vs. Wade? :applaud

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You showed yourself to be a hack by turning to Roe vs Wade. There are so many constitutional issues before the court that speak to constitutional rights from religious rights to free speech to 2nd Amendment to other issues focused on the fourth and 10th amendments for starters yet you plucked out Roe vs Wade. Good golly miss molly. You know what? Ignorance is not bliss. The sooner you learn that one the better off the country will be.

vesper said:

You showed yourself to be a hack by turning to Roe vs Wade. There are so many constitutional issues before the court that speak to constitutional rights from religious rights to free speech to other issues focused on the fourth and 10th amendments for starters yet you plucked out Roe vs Wade. Good golly miss molly. You know what? Ignorance is not bliss. The sooner you learn that one the better off the country will be.

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Oh my, I am so chastised. :roll: You need to get over yourself. The sooner you learn that one.....