Glenden BrownWhy can’t Cory do math?
Yesterday’s Trib published a pro-voucher letter  from Cory Worsencroft of Sandy that included the following bullet points:
* A west-side public school has 1,000 students.Â
* Funding per student is $7,500 for a total of $750,000.
Now, let’s try the same calculations using actual real world math as opposed to voucher world math.
7500 times 1000 is . . .
7,500,000 not 750,000.
And voucher supporters wonder why we’re not convinced.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Can you say “Bushy Math”?
October 11th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Bwahahahahaha..
Hey Cory, you are a dumbo.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
C’mon Cory, it’s simple math; old math; the kind of math our forefathers did to calculate their sums! As my grandfather would call it: ‘Rithmetic.
It’s not like chaos theory, quantum mechanics or long division. It’s the easy stuff.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Of course, one could also ask, “Why couldn’t the Trib successfully edit Cory’s letter?”
I’m clearly an opponent of Referendum 1, but I wonder if they purposefully left the bad math in Cory’s letter as some kind of editorial statement?
October 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Don - the easy answer - I’ve had the trib call me in the past and ask if I would make changes to my LTE’s - once when I had a factual error they gave me the chance to fix it before they published - but they don’t edit LTE’s - they’re published as received.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
C’mon more BS, you can smugly think it matters, and will sway something, but the lot of our students in international competency testing…
IS 30TH @#$%^&* PLACE!
No amount of political infighting can hide the FAILURE of our educational system.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
In fact, such silliness only exposes it more, for the LAUGHING world to SEE!
October 11th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Glenden,
They do edit LTEs. They’ve edited mine before without asking. From their website:
October 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Glenn,
You don’t like vouchers? You do like vouchers? It doesn’t matter we’re screwed either way? What would you suggest?
October 11th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I have no opinion of vouchers, if people want to take the allotment that their child gets and educate in another manner, this was something that was available in Vermont, on a lower percentage basis than the actual public cost, 30 years ago.
It’s about choice, and parents should have the benefit to make that choice for their kids, to educate them in schools that are accredited. It is their kids, and in fact their entitled monies. Not a school boards, or a political educational activists decision.
Without this choice public schools without options stink of social engineering.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Don - The editorial board at the Trib has contacted me with regard to my LTE’s in the past - for instance asking if I could change parts or edit parts. I presumed they offered the same consideration to everyone.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
glenn - Are you saying that the choice does not currently exist? Because that would be bullshit. I can yank my kids out of one school and dump them a private school, a charter school, an academy, home school, whatever. I have that choice anytime I want to use it.
That’s why PCE pisses me off. It’s not about “choice” it’s about trust-fund baby billionaires looking to build private schools and suck their profits off the tax payer teat. It’s got nothing to do with choice.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Glenden,
It’s not a matter of them offering the same consideration; I think it may just be dependent on what type of editing they might want to do. If they want to help clarify a specific point, or tighten it up, then they might call you (they have done this with me before as well); but if it’s just to shorten a letter or to correct an obvious factual mistake (such as Cory’s math) then they will usually just go ahead and do it.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
As for how we can get better results in educating our children Don, it is beyond obvious that excellence is not the goal of outcome based education. Obedient little drones is the goal. Worker bees, unable to free think for themselves.
My Dad is a born German, he would ask me weekly at least, what I learned today, at school. I learned quite quickly to not say, “ah nuthin”. I spent more than few weekends writing papers on topics for my Dad, after reading content of his choosing. My mother is English born, she constantly corrected my speech, reviewed writing, and quizzed me, at my behest. Call me lucky, though it hardly seemed so as a kid.
This is essential. Without parental involvement, what public schools supporters want will not make the difference. Voucher choices indicate parental involvement.
After all many teachers have their own kids, and only so much can be done at school. Call our parenting culture then inadequate and lacking.
Most parents are chasing the buck, whilst our oligarchy puts their security, and those of children further out of reach, Nothing short of some kind of social revolution can change this. The culture is dying. Well intentioned school marming and social engineering won’t make the difference. they wish it would, but it won’t, so why pay for what doesn’t work? 30th @#$%^&* place. Any teach should just be ashamed to be associated with such FAILURE.
So it would behoove us to look at education systems that excel. For example the Irish have no cost university education, paid of course by social taxation, offered to those qualified. Pretty good economy for having no real material resources.
What a difference it would make to a teen to know his parents fiscal station will not make the decision of whether they should strive for university. They will leave with their skills without DEBT. Not like here, where kids at very tender ages are CRUSHED by ridiculous debt. How can a kid love society or want to work for elders that so indenture you? Jesus, it’s so obvious to me where our troubles lie.
In next form universal health care, parents need not keep some crappy job just because it provides health care for the family. A parent can progress beyond this, get more education, as health care is something you are entitled with birth, and pay for as you increase in value to monetary society. No matter what though, YOU HAVE INTRINSIC VALUE. You are not commoditized like in the US. What a crappy system we have made, and now the stranglehold of those insurers is wrapped deeply around our own necks, and those of our treasure.
One need only look at our own real term social impoverishment to see that our current way, simply sucks.
Disgusting in its breadth, and in the leaderships weakness to dispose of such abomination.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I do believe that this is what I said. My point is that you have been able to do it in Vermont since I was a kid. So, since the early 70’s to my knowledge. Sorry if I confused you, or was unclear.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
The above comment was for JM. In addition, if you have the cash 8 grand in the case of Vermont, you can attend some fairly toney schools, or even begin your own with those parents of like mind. No one is stopping you.
In Utah, since illegal aliens are so loved, why pay a union janitor? In cliffs world, you could open a school and get an illegal to do the maintenance, and save heaps of money. They are just looking for a better life, and you then could help give it to them.
hahha. What a joke, we are not getting out of this problem with a DonnyBrook, I swear.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Maybe Cory went to private school?
October 11th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Glenn,
I agree with much of what you say. I think you made a very important point that parents should have the benefit to educate their children in the accredited school of their choice.
The current voucher law does not require schools to be accredited. It doesn’t require that teachers have degrees or certifications in the subjects they teach. It also has many fiscal issues as I have outlined before.
I’ve said in other forums that I am not necessarily against vouchers philosophically. I might even be able to support some sort of funding portability system under the right circumstances. But this law that we are voting on with Referendum 1 is a horrible piece of legislation and should be voted down. It simply won’t do what proponents say it will do.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Well Don, what does “Accreditidation” really mean when the system judging and creating educational standards is producing teachers and students that can place 30th in international competency testing? It means nothing really, does it?
Our schools are currently horrible, would you force their current incompetence down the publics throat?
As for me accredited would be a building, bathrooms and lights etc. whether the school survived would be based on results. No results, no school. Standards. Basics. Not 18 year old dummies that cannot do basic math and form sentences. Tests are REQUIRED! All of our competitors in this world test, we will have to.
If you can produce results through testing of your student, you are accredited, consider it a “GED” for teachers. Results are all that matter, I don’t care what the education establishment thinks, it isn’t up to them any more, as they are miserable failures.
Speaking of miserable failures, our own president holds a degree from an accredited university, and one of supposed high standards, Yale, So it is more than obvious that the system is broken, and that those that would judge anyones’ ability to convey knowledge to children and adults, have no credibility.
Somebodies parent is doing better at home, and more power to her or him. All the accreditidation needed.