Turning Around a School District By Fighting Poverty (npr.org) 413
New submitter gomezedward40 writes: Through her unconventional focus on addressing poverty, Superintendent Tiffany Anderson has been credited with rapidly improving the school district of Jennings, Mo. NPR reports: "The school district of 3,000 students has taken unprecedented steps, like opening a food pantry to give away food, a shelter for homeless students and a health clinic, among other efforts. 'My purpose is to remove the challenges that poverty creates,' she says. 'You can not expect children to learn at a high level if they come in hungry and tired.' That unconventional approach has had big results. When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."
Goddam SJWs. (Score:3, Funny)
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The only way I can feel good about myself is to know there are people who have much less than I do. How can I get someone to mow the lawn or shovel the snow if there are not poor people who need the money? We need poor people.
Re:Goddam SJWs. (Score:5, Informative)
It may surprise you but (a) poverty correlates with poor academic in the US (not so much in other first world countries, why is that?) (b) the effects of poor nutrition and poor parenting in the first 5 years of life are persistent. (c) universal free public education is a cornerstone of democracy
Re:Goddam SJWs. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's horrible! She should be paid around the median household income of $28,429! That'll fix things!*
Because obviously we should starve kids into affirmative action and welfare. I mean, it's your bygone conclusion these are all affirmative action and welfare babies, so let's just fuck them over when we can, right?
"One-quarter of Jennings’ residents are living below the federal poverty line, according to 2014 Census Bureau data. The median household income is $28,429. Just 13 percent of those age 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, half of the state average."
Or, in short, the place is so far in the hole that their rates are actually an improvement.over the norm and imply possibly improving the state average. Yea, it'd be great if those "college and career ready" were a lot better, so we really need to look further down the line to see if things continue to improve. You know, crazy shit like that.
*Whether $200k/year is actually is actually a fair pay rate, I don't really know. But short of some part of jealousy (or pissy whining about taxes), I don't see why she shouldn't be being paid well if she's improving the circumstances of her district. Fuck knows that private company presidents can do much worse and can be paid much more. If that's the efficiency of the market, it's hard to argue that the public sector is doing wrong to pay their Superintendent well.
PS - Seriously, what's with assholes like you who say she's "on the dole" to be paid a decent salary for her work. And why do you jump to the conclusion this will invariably lead to "affirmative action" and "welfare"? Are you really that pathetically racist that anyone who would try to actually improve their own situation and the situation of others through measurable stats is somehow worse than a person who otherwise would be paid the same but improve nothing? Because the insanity precisely is that we already have affirmative action, welfare, starving children, and your racism. Clearly you don't want success. Success would just drive point how much of a horrible person you are.
PPS - Before you think I'm giving a "free ride" to anyone, I'd note that I'd expect in the future to see further success in this school district and a failure would indicate that the strategy is incomplete or outright flawed. Not that, you know, you're presenting some sort of counterargument or actual suggestions on ways that would improve the circumstance. But, then, the objective for you is obviously not to improve the circumstance. It's to, no matter the circumstance, to use examples to justify your racism. Even when the examples disprove your biases.
Re:Goddam SJWs. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the American Dream. Anyone can make it, but if it looks like they might you must hate them because that means it's slightly harder for you to get ahead*, and especially if it looks like they may have benefited from the tax/welfare system more than you did.
* Of course, this isn't true.
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Re:Goddam SJWs. (Score:5, Insightful)
She's on the dole for $200k/year and just feeds kids into affirmative action and welfare: "just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests to meet Missouri's definition of 'college and career ready.'"
1) She's employed, not on the dole.
2) There can be no doubt that her policies are effective, even if you don't like them. FTFS: "When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."
3) Your negative perception of the 36 percent being ready to go on to college doesn't take int account previous rates or, for that matter, that getting a high school diploma is in and of itself an achievement in such areas, for such poor people.
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No need to invoke affirmative action to get the result of placing 100% of the graduates looking for jobs into jobs - the quotes were actually:
"just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests
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Also, the SAT is optional. It could be that only 36% of the kids took the SAT but they had a 100% pass rate (I doubt it, but it is possible).
Not everyone takes the SAT, it is something you have to pay to take outside of school hours.
Re:Goddam SJWs. (Score:5, Insightful)
At $200k a year, if even a couple of kids a year become productive citizens instead of the State having to pay to house them in jails, she is a bargain.
36% - bad, but is it an improvement? (Score:3)
What was it 3 years ago when she took over? Below 36%? Above? The same? Heck, looking at the article, it implies that the graduation rate has increased substantially. Even if it remained the same, that's a lot more kids graduating, which means that 36% of graduates being considered ready is a higher percentage of the kids entering her school.
Also, if she's really getting 100% of graduates employed or in college within, say, a year of graduation, is the state's metric of readiness really accurate?
Finall
Re:Another NPR snowjob (Score:5, Insightful)
And how useful is private education? Private industry is good when there is plenty of competition and consumers can switch easily. I dont think parents can easily keep on switching their kids to different schools to "shop around"
You are either a corporate shill for private schools or just plain ignorant.
Re:Another NPR snowjob (Score:4, Informative)
And how useful is private education?
Here's a government report on the topic:
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsrep... [ed.gov]
TL;DR: In some subjects, the private schools "significantly" outperformed public schools, but overall they're only slightly better.
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BS. All the studies that I've read say that when the private/charter schools are required to take *anyone*, not cherry-pick, they do NO BETTER, and frequently worse, than the public schools.
And it's this kind of send 'em to private school crap that's helping destabilize the US. Without most kids going to public schools, they never meet kids from other backgrounds, other ethnicities, and so they're all "them", soon to be trashed by Faux "News" and Donald Trump.
When I was growing up, we were *proud* to be "th
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They love these. Then ten years later, all the facts come out, and the "miracle" turns out to be fake.
Yeah, much as I would love to believe this story to be true (so everyone else could then learn from it), really dramatic increases in test scores from year to year are usually the result of some sort of cheating or cooking the numbers. In real life, there are no quick fixes for education. It takes hard work over the long haul. If the test scores jump drastically in a single year or two, that usually just means something fishy is going on.
I would also seriously question her claims of "a 92 percent 4-year gra
Re:Another NPR snowjob (Score:5, Interesting)
What's there to doubt? (Score:2)
FTA:
"just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests to meet Missouri's definition of 'college and career ready.'"
There is your evidence right there. These passing rates are based on either state, county or district standards. As soon as these kids are held up to the standards of a national test, the numbers drop right back down to where they were before her "miracle cure" was instated. There is no doubt that what she is doing is a good thing and that in the long run, if the area can sustain it economically, there will be a positive net impact on the community. But these numbers are clearly from low or non-existent
Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't new news here, this is all data that's been proven out over more than a decade of study. What's news is that someone has finally had the wherewithall to actually use the data. Hopefully, this will be a wake up call, and just the first of more to come.
No student can focus on learning when they're distracted with the struggle of just living, hoping they'll have food to eat tonight, and a warm place to sleep, clean close to wear. All the things that so many of us take for granted.
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, in my son's district, a school failing due to poverty is told they're failing because of "bad teachers" and the school is put into receivership. They then have 1 or 2 years to turn it around (how much is determined by State Ed who are the ones blaming teachers). If they don't turn it around enough, the school will be given to an outside agency who can turn it into a charter school and restrict student admittance to whomever they want. In other words, they'll kick out "under-performing" kids or kids with issues that require extra assistance - pushing them to other public schools - and then they'll show how they've "improved" scores and will push for more schools like theirs. (Using more taxpayer money, of course.) Meanwhile, the poor kids will still be worrying about whether they'll be able to eat or have a place to sleep tonight.
I'd go for a funny line like quoting Futurama's "Thus solving the problem once and for all.... ONCE AND FOR ALL" but, sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
This should really be called "class warfare", but somehow the term only applies when it is the poorer parts of society taking action against the wealthier.
Offtopic: Are the /. devs trying to kill the site by driving away readers through persistent, unfixed login issues?
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just yet another illustration of the privatization fallacy: that privatizing public services somehow makes them more efficient and cheaper NO MATTER WHAT. I've never been able to understand the reasoning behind - when the state provides a service, they do not have to produce a profit for shareholders, whereas private companies exist mainly to do this; all things being equal, how can a private company deliver the same service and skim off a profit? The answer is of course that the private company doesn't actually deliver the service, for one thing. The other side of the answer is that public services are cronically underfunded, and the staff is underpaid - which leads to poorer quality services that rely on overly complicated bureaucracy, since nobody is willing to take responsibility and take real leadership; public servants are simply not allowed to do the things that would lead to efficiency and real improvements.
That said, I think traditional welfare is probably not the way to help the poor; in order to manage your life well, you need more than a home and money to spend; there's a lot of life skills that you never had a chance to learn when you were a child and which are are very difficult to pick up when you are constantly running to keep things together as an adult. I know this - I grew up in poverty, and although I managed to climb out of it, I had to fight many years with the debt trap, and the fact that I had never been in a situation where making a budget was a realistic proposition; how can you make a budget, when you know you are going to be hit by more bills than you can possibly pay - and on top of that, even if you do make a list of everything, there is always going to be several that you have missed? It is very easy to simply give up and think "what do I care"; a lot of poor people do just that - they know they will never have any real hope. What you need in that situation is a way to get rid of their debt once and for all, and then coaching in basic life skills: budgetting, planning, even cooking good meals - all the things they didn't get the opportunity to learn, because they grew up knowing they were just trash and society didn't want to know about it.
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Arguably privatizing saves costs by cutting the extreme benefits and making working weeks more normal vs. what public sector employees get so it's conceivable that private vs. public can actually provide the same level of service for less - at least for the short term.
Long-term I agree with you that over time profit considerations will cause problems like lack of investment in infrastructure, cost vs. safety problems, etc.
On your second paragraph I agree 100% having lived, from the sound of it, in more or l
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The reason that privatization may work is that government employees can't be fired
They can't? Tell that to those who have been laid off because of cut-backs and privatisations. But perhaps that is different in America than in Europe.
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Why do we have private companies in other areas besides schools? Why doesn't the state run all businesses?
Because some things should not be run for profit, some things should.
Most things should be run for profit in fact. For me, the dividing line is money over life. Owning a farm or a widget factory is money over life. Yes there is safety and all, but the main idea is to provide something, and profit off it. Then you get to life over money. The idea of running schools, prisons and healthcare as for profit industries is now putting money over life, and the student is not a commodity, the prisoner is a commodi
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In most cases the profit motive creates more efficient and effective organizations, but there are many areas where the profit motive breaks down. Education is one of them as is operating a prison. Natural monopolies are another area where government control is usually recommended.
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Why do we have private companies in other areas besides schools? Why doesn't the state run all businesses?
Because private business is the right thing in many cases, especially small to medium sized businesses, which apparently are much better at creating employment than large companies. What I'm saying is that privatization is not universally the best solution; a lot of things would be provided much better, if it was provided by well-paid, public employees. Well-paid, because this attracts many of the best talents, public, because that removes the profit-seeking and ensures long-term stability.
One of my favouri
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There are two ways to fix schools. First, by putting a blunt end to all poverty [wordpress.com], thus reducing one external factor. The second is to fix the education curriculum.
Sadly, in my son's district, a school failing due to poverty is told they're failing because of "bad teachers" and the school is put into receivership.
Education--we're talking about real education, not workforce development (college) mislabeled as "education"--involves complex interactions between parents, students, teachers, administrators, and politicians. If the parents don't raise their kids right, they're difficult to teach--hence poverty impacting academic performance--and the schools
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I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and am very familiar with the Jennings area. My old roommate was a graduate of Jennings high-school, in fact.
That area definitely qualifies as one of the poorer districts in St. Louis and I can absolutely see how basics like ensuring students are fed helps with the learning process.
That said? I think there usually is a combination of problems with these schools, including mis-use of funds by faculty and general corruption, plus the fact that sometimes they really DO h
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to fail in reading comprehension. Read what the grandparent wrote again. You don't need to agree with it, but your response indicates you didn't understand it.
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No, definitely your mistake.
GP would likely be in perfect agreement with you that the unions have been fighting against charter schools and the like, and have been spending a lot of money doing so. However, GP was making the point that in schools where poverty is clearly the issue, the administrators ignore the actual problem and instead bring in charters, as if that will fix the problem of students being too hungry to think straight.
GPs post is not a comment against charters but rather one advocating for l
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's been the problem where I am. We had tons of charter schools without much of any oversight. They got to set their own goals and if they missed them, oh well. One charter school was finally closed when they missed their own goals for 10 years straight. Even then, they fought in the courts saying they should be allowed an 11th year to turn things around.
The standard response by politicians in my area to a school not doing well is "let's open a charter school." Usually these politicians have clear campaign donation links to the companies opening the charter schools. Those schools are allowed to kick out kids who aren't as profitable. (My child and a bunch of others were kicked out because they required occupational therapy services. Unfortunately, we were afraid to upset the wrong people by pursuing it so it never was pursued.) The charter schools drain money from the public schools and leave the public schools with the lowest performing students and the students who cost the most money. This means the public schools continue to do poorly and the call goes out to open another charter school. Businesses profit and kids who need the most help suffer.
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Nope. I wrote what I meant to write. In NY (and many other parts of the country), companies like Pearson Education are contacting politicians and telling them that there's a huge education problem. The companies say that students are failing and that teachers are to blame. Don't worry, though, the companies have the solution. You just need to give them a few million dollars and they'll test and re-test and re-re-re-test the kids to show that they are failing. Then they'll sell you lesson plans, teache
Re:Fighting Poverty..not new. (Score:4, Informative)
You don't have that quite right, and there seem to be some things that you don't realize.
It’s Not ‘Unfair’ for Charter Schools to Expel Disruptive Students [nationalreview.com]
After Katrina, Fundamental School Reform in New Orleans [nationalreview.com]
Today, about 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.
These reforms altered public education in New Orleans, but they did not eliminate it: Charter schools are public schools, although they do not answer to school-district administrators. They are still paid for by the taxpayers, but the government’s principal role, apart from channeling the funding to the various schools, is oversight — that is, holding schools accountable and, if a school is found to be ineffective, closing it.
A team of academic researchers, led by Tulane University’s Douglas Harris, has been studying the impact of New Orleans’s education revolution. In a recent report, Harris and his colleagues found that the reforms have produced enormous gains. Test-score improvements for New Orleans students are of a life-changing size — on average, the students’ percentile rankings on standardized exams are up by about 15 points. New Orleans students are now more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.
The Big Easy’s experience demonstrates that radical education reform can fundamentally improve the lives of poor urban kids. ... Previous research had suggested that incremental education reform can be positive. New Orleans demonstrates that comprehensive reform can be a stunning success.
If 91% of the students are in charter schools it is hard to claim that they are only taking the cream of the crop, isn't it? And yet they are still making large gains in performance.
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I think that the NO experiment(if that's what it is) would point to the need for a full switch, either no public schools, and all charter, or all public schools.
The problem seems to be that when there is a safety net of sorts for the charter schools to dump underperforming students, they'll use it.
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A lot of the ones who didn't return to NO moved to Houston and the surrounding areas. The neighborhood I used to live in had great schools until 2006. Then everything went to hell: increases in violence, decreases in test scores and graduation rates, higher teacher turnover. By the time my kid was old enough to go to kindergarten, the whole district was in shambles. So we moved.
I'm not going to argue that the refugees were the only reason things got bad. The general problems with home values (and thus schoo
So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:4, Insightful)
>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.
So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:4, Interesting)
A fellow in Florida took his lottery winnings and started day cares for people in his district. Free of charge. School attendance went way up. Parents could get jobs and help their families...
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>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.
So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
Looks like they are just doing more of the same, showing welfare isn't the problem. Not enough welfare is the problem.
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Looks like they are just doing more of the same, showing welfare isn't the problem. Not enough welfare is the problem.
No the wrong kind of welfare giving money to parents who waste it best to give precisely food, clothes, medical and shelter for the children first and welfare for the parents second after all they had their chance. Notice in the article she gives parenting classes maybe add to that home budgeting and they could break the poverty/welfare cycle.
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While that's not valueless, it's not really the major problem. Everyone has some ideals about what the problem in every large system (welfare, education, American government) is, and they're all largely symptoms or tangential disturbances.
I happen to agree with an EBT system for children, while many of my contemporaries have this ridiculous idea that we should give $4,000/year to parents for *every* child they have, flat out. That's stupid: to ensure that only 3 in 1,000 fail to thrive, you'd have to s
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This isn't about parents who said "We could afford to do your laundry or take you to the doctor but we're too busy partying on our yacht to do that." This is about parents who are working two jobs (each in the case of 2 parent households) and even then barely able to afford the bare necessities of food, clothing, and housing. These are parents who have to make the serious budgetary decision of whether they feed their kids dinner toni
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Sorry, but this is welfare. Welfare just isn't a globally derogatory terms.
I do not believe that this is an appropriate way to solve the problem, I think a guaranteed income is a better solution, but given her circumstances and what she has to work with it's probably the best she can do. All she's in a position to do is patch a broken system...probably knowing that the patch will fail fairly soon either because her funds are cut or for some other reason. This *is* welfare. It advantages some over others
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Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:5, Informative)
Well if they refused to work your definition might be valid. Sadly these parents ALREADY HAVE JOBS DIPSTICK! In some cases multiple jobs. Your libertarian right-wing "I hate handouts" bit doesn't actually work in this case because it doesn't apply. It's not welfare, either, it's child welfare - it's helping the CHILDREN of those parents. Because those children will be cooking your next meal, stopping you at your next traffic stop, and saving you from your house fire next time you leave the stove on. Some of those children will even go to college, and could become politicians, making decisions affecting you.
I grew up in poverty, but I did what I could, and with some natural ability and some luck I've done pretty well for myself. Imagine how much more I could have done if I'd not had to worry about food, or heat growing up. Clothes. All of these things would have really helped my attention to school and not starving or freezing. These kids will have those opportunities, and SOCIETY AT LARGE will benefit from them. That's why we have public roads, public schooling, public funding for all sorts of things - it benefits EVERYONE.
So get off your libertarian "I hate poor people" stand. You're not held at gunpoint - none of YOUR money went into the CLEARLY LOCALLY FUNDED district. If you want to complain about someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to fund something, complain about the military that we have to fund 857 MILLION in "defense spending" when we are at peace with our only two neighbors - Canada and Mexico. But we only spend 393 million on welfare. Source: http://www.usgovernmentspendin... [usgovernmentspending.com]
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Successes like this go against many comfortable rationalisations for doing nothing and paying less tax.
"Anyone can get themselves out of poverty, I did!"
"Intelligence is genetic, X are just dumb/gifted from birth"
"It's all wasted money, nothing works"
"The problem is too many kids, the only solution is sterilization"
That's why people get upset. It breaks their comfortable bigotry.
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Successes like this go against many comfortable rationalisations ....
Indeed they may. Take this snippet from the article, for example:
Part of the funding for these efforts comes from donations from Jennings residents and many local businesses.
Imagine that, local voluntary donations .... including from businesses.
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That's why people get upset. It breaks their comfortable bigotry.
Does that include knee-jerk hatred of businesses? What about making automatic assumptions of hateful bigotry?
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But we only spend 393 million on welfare.
^^ a democrat once again proves that they are full blown autistic when it comes to money.
We are spending 393.2 Billion on welfare. Literally 1000 times as much as you think.
This is enough to give almost four hundred thousand people per year enough money to permanently retire on, 4 million people per decade, the entire population of the country in less than a century.
But my words are lost on you, because you can't even tell when 'million' is obviously the wrong unit -- full blown autism when it comes
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re: libertarian take (Score:2)
Oh -- so it's back to the "Libertarians are assholes who hate the poor" argument again?
This viewpoint always makes me shake my head and sigh, because it comes from having tunnel vision that socialist policies are the only valid fix for poverty.
Any self respecting libertarian-minded individual I know *does* complain about that $857 million of "defense spending" we're stuck paying for! But yes, we ALSO take issue with that nearly $400 million MORE we have to fork over, involuntarily, for government mandated
Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:5, Interesting)
The few of us that work are getting crushed under the massive amount of money taken from us to give to lazy people that refuse to work.
No you're not.
"Lazy people that refuse to work" are a vanishingly small proportion of the un- and under-employed. The problem is a lack of jobs.
The real problem is a lack of demand, since the poor have no money, and the middle classes are either flat broke after decades of wage stagnation, or completely tapped out on debt and sacrificing most of the money they do have into it.
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Job creation is being stifled by administration policies, regulations, and the "reforms" that the president's party pushed though. Two examples:
"Angel" investors have traditionally played an important part in funding startups in the early stages. Under the "reforms" pushed through by the Democrats there have been significant limitations placed on that which make it more difficult for startups to develop their business.
"Obamacare" has resulted in many businesses restricting their growth to stay below the t
re: lazy people (Score:2)
I don't know about "lazy people that refuse to work" being a vanishing small number.... but I *do* know that current government assistance programs often encourage these types of behaviors because of poor design.
For example, I used to have neighbors who moved into a house next to mine that was being rented out as section 8. Nice enough people, but I quickly noticed they seemed to be home an awful lot, considering how much they needed money. Eventually, I figured out that one thing holding them back were the
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You're trying to count SS as part of the budget. It should be separate (needs a constitutional firewall to be effective also useful for other specific purpose taxes), We still have not payed anything but the SS payroll tax and interest on securites. To add insult to injury they then try to claim that paying back the special non marketable treasury securities is funding SS, no it's paying back a loan + below market interest.
Re: So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail (Score:2)
The alternative is those people taking your money at gunpoint directly. They then go to prison and the government takes even more of your money at gunpoint to provide them with the education, health care and a secure place to live that the initial far lower theft at gunpoint would've provided. The thing you've missed of course is that a lot of the poor are working poor doing one or more jobs and are not lazy, just badly paid.
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Having high wages is worthless if your cost of living is even higher...
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This. So much this.
I really wish that reports of, "Undeveloped country X has a monthly wage of just ten dollars!" would also include the cost of basic necessities in that same country. What does a loaf of bread cost? A gallon of milk? Average rent for a two bedroom apartment if they have those?
'Ten dollars' means nothing if you can buy a car for twenty dollars.
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Absolutely! On my middle-class income I could live like a king in many countries, like a middle class person in my area, or in a cardboard box in Silicon Valley.
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Except it isn't. Check out the forums at places like Mr. Money Mustache or Early Retirement Extreme for tons of examples of people living -- and living well, not on deprivation -- on roughly "poverty-level" spending (e.g. $20K/year) just about anywhere in America outside of Silly Valley, Manhattan, and DC.
The real issue is that the examples I cited are on early retirement websites for a reason: the people executing the plans have got their shit together and know how to optimize their lifestyle, and have hug
Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistics fail - sorry, but 1% is not the entire US.
The world has around 7-7.3 billion people. 1% of that puts you at 70-73 million people. The US population is nearly 320M people. Or basically, if all the 1%-ers are in the US, that would mean almost one-in-four to one-in-five is a 1%-er.
As much as it is trendy to hate on the rich, being in a first world nation does not make you a 1%-er. There are much more valid reasons to hate on the 1% such as creating the laws that make income inequality a growing thing since the 70s, or the CEO salary ratio, which means the average CEO would make as much money as their lowest paid employee by mid-day Tuesday (this is in the US) this week (January 5). Those are very valid problems.
Most kids in poverty aren't there because the parents spent all the money on yachts and expensive cars, but are because of those policies. Minimum wage is a wage - money paid per hour. Just because it's $10.50 or so doesn't mean you even get full time work - a lot of those jobs are for 4 hour blocks or less per day. Which is why a lot of those parents work 2, 3 or more jobs, plus commuting (and a lot of places in North America mean you need a car, which is expensive).
So housing, car(s), food, and you can barely make it through the month. That sort of stress creates a negative learning environment. And that assumes they can make it - if they can't, then something has to give - rent, electricity/heat/etc, food, etc.
And it's a big social problem too - because people then turn to crime to fulfill basic needs, so society ends up paying. WE end up paying anyhow becase someone has to pay for their medical bills and other social problems they inflict on everyone else as well.
So yes, hate on the 1% for creating an environment where the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed (and stuff like medical reform and Obamacare are putting bandaids on the real problem).
Sure you may think the guy living on the street is lazy, but it actually costs everyone time and money dealing with them.
Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It doesn't reach the poverty line; it does cover the cost of living. I've known plenty of people who lived below the minimum wage; there's even some giant dbag on the internet who retired on $7,000/year because what the fuck.
I don't believe the modern economic climate makes that technically feasible. $10,000/year for a single individual, sure; $7,000, you're getting into "the market must adjust" territory.
I frequently push for a Citizen's Dividend [wordpress.com] which pays, in 2013 dollars, about $7,000/year. It's ti
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Re: So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail (Score:2)
So much stupid in so few words. I'm impressed.
Re:So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+... = fail? (Score:5, Interesting)
So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
Most likely, no.
With programs like these, often it is a single person who cares that makes a huge difference. In the foster-child program, for example, the people who are hired by the government to handle cases are the difference between a horrible program and an excellent program.
You can try throwing money at the problem, but unless people care, it's not going to make a huge difference.
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So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
Most likely, no.
With programs like these, often it is a single person who cares that makes a huge difference. In the foster-child program, for example, the people who are hired by the government to handle cases are the difference between a horrible program and an excellent program.
You can try throwing money at the problem, but unless people care, it's not going to make a huge difference.
You can also turn that around and say that you can have people who care but if there's no money to support the program (ie. the free food, shelters for homeless kids (what country is this again!?!?!?!), etc that the program cannot succeed.
As the man said, Money can't buy you love but I can tell you from experience that Love can't feed a hungry child either.
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You can also turn that around and say that you can have people who care but if there's no money to support the program (ie. the free food, shelters for homeless kids (what country is this again!?!?!?!), etc that the program cannot succeed.
No, it just adds an extra step for people who care (and raises the barrier somewhat). See The Freedom Writer's Diaries for example, or Stand and Deliver.
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It's possible to create a programme that gets good results consistently, we don't just have to rely on chance to get good individuals. It's the same with lots of other areas, including things like operating an aircraft or administering treatment for depression.
Depression is largely curable with cognitive behavioural therapy. It used to take a skilled psychologist to help someone with depression, but now relatively low skilled people can follow a programme and deliver good results. There are exceptions, whic
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> Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
I'm afraid not. It's not a "new paradigm of education science", it cuts corners on bureaucracy to fund staff and programs other than teachers, and it puts tenure at risk. Even if the district teachers are on board with it, middle management at the district and state level will attempt to fit it into their particular programs, and especially into federal funding guidelines. The disc
Most districts don't think of this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad a school district does this (Score:2)
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These sorts of things aren't supposed to be the school's problem; but it seems hard to argue with the idea that they have become the school's problem anyway, since the readiness of the students they have to work with is being seriously affected. When something becomes your problem, having the option to deal with it is ugly; but often much less painful than waiting hopefully for whoever is supposed to fix the root cause of the problem
Homeless Students? (Score:2)
Who ever heard of homeless children going to high school? Is that even allowed, I would sort of imagine that the government would want to scoop them up and drop them in some orphanage.
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High school teachers.
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Who ever heard of homeless children going to high school?
1 out of 30 american children experience homelessness in 2013 (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/17/report-one-in-30-us-children-homeless).
This doesn't mean living on the street, but it's when a family is kicked out of where they live without having anywhere to go... I would imagine it means sleeping in a car or a shelter until you find something..
Children shouldn't experience not knowing where they are going to sleep (nobody should experience that).
Congrats for her... (Score:2)
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Working in UK schools, I think I'm safe in saying that a homeless child coming to school would be a priority one issue and get solved pretty damn quickly.
Children coming without proper breakfast - yes, we have breakfast clubs for those parents who can't get up and spend ten minutes making cereal (not an insult to them all, some of them just literally do not have the time and must go to work).
But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
It's not the school's job to be doing this. And it's quite telling of a complete failure of social care, rather than a success story for a school. "We finally fed the kids, now they are doing better"? Well, fucking yes!
Something like 40-50% of kids in the UK are eligible for free school meals, you have to declare the figure as part of being a school and I've been involved in that many times. But even in schools where that's been near 100%, I've yet to see kids suffering complete neglect or lack of suitable social care to this extent.
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But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
That sort of support exists in America, too. In this situation, it's not really clear what was going on, why that wasn't happening already, the article doesn't go into enough detail.
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But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
That sort of support exists in America, too. In this situation, it's not really clear what was going on, why that wasn't happening already, the article doesn't go into enough detail.
Yes and no. The support exists but in areas where a significant part of the population is incapable of housing and feeding themselves, social services are just plain unable to keep up with what is required to get such on track to self improvement.
As far as parents that aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit - there are many who are working two or three jobs and doing the best they can aren't able to provide a healthy environment for their kids. Getting taken into care would not be a good thing for
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but in areas where a significant part of the population is incapable of housing and feeding themselves
These areas should get less of the kind of dollars you suggest. Handing out money to "sustain" the situation just sustains the situation. It doesn't fix it. It doesn't do anyone any favors either.
Stop creating welfare cities. I'm talking to you, Democrats. I know you do it because the politicians told you its a good idea, but they only told you that because the local large factory owners wants inexpensive workers and make large campaign donations to them, and to seal the deal on this over-supply of worke
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but in areas where a significant part of the population is incapable of housing and feeding themselves
These areas should get less of the kind of dollars you suggest. Handing out money to "sustain" the situation just sustains the situation. It doesn't fix it. It doesn't do anyone any favors either.
Stop creating welfare cities. I'm talking to you, Democrats. I know you do it because the politicians told you its a good idea, but they only told you that because the local large factory owners wants inexpensive workers and make large campaign donations to them, and to seal the deal on this over-supply of workers the politicians you are parroting also pass laws that discourage or even prevent other factories from being built in the area.
Do tell us about what the people that create welfare cities say about worker rights, while ignoring what they actually do to make workers less and less valuable.
And your solution is what? Stop creating welfare cities....fine: How? Do you have any actual ideas or are you just antisocial to the point where anything that doesn't benefit you directly must be bad?
Well speaking as someone who was born into a welfare family and effectively raised on state money and, because of that, was eventually able to break out of the cycle of life that most poor people get stuck in generation to generation I can vouch that this money is not only wasted but is absolutely necessary u
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
The home for children that I grew up in was closed out of funding a few years ago having been blocked by the state for the home not having employed a full time on-site doctor and all the costs that go with it.
I spent eight years living in that home and with a full-time nurse and two hospitals about ten minutes away by car there was never a need for a full time doctor so I can only assume this was a thinly veiled trick to cut the state budget.
With a poverty level of 24.4% in 2013 (about the same as Jennings, MO), New Haven CT certainly has no fewer kids in need than it did in my time so I don't see the need for such homes decreasing - and if anything the opposite.
http://www.city-data.com/pover... [city-data.com]
With antisocial policies being espoused by those who feel that their hard earned money shouldn't be used for 'socialist' programs like getting the dirt poor out of the cycle that they are stuck in I am not surprised that the number of homeless children in the US is increasing.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
So yes, you're right that this is not a problem for schools. The failure is in the people of the US who want to cut social services, and in those social services themselves who are incapable, for whatever reasons, of fixing what is an endemic problem in the US.
So hats off to the woman who has found a way to make it work in her part of this mess.
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With a poverty level of 24.4% in 2013 (about the same as Jennings, MO), New Haven CT certainly has no fewer kids in need than it did in my time so I don't see the need for such homes decreasing - and if anything the opposite.
New Haven, along with most of the large cities in Connecticut, is a welfare city. The evidence is right in front of you. For instance the largest percentage of Puerto Ricans in the country is in Connecticut (7.1% vs the national average of 1.5%) because of how liberal Connecticut's welfare system is (people are motivated by incentives.)
What Connecticut doesnt need is more welfare. What it needs is (a) more low skill jobs, or (b) less low skill people. Those are the two solutions. The Democrats that run the State manage to continually enact policies that accomplish the opposite of both solutions.
So you're racist in addition to being stupid.
I'm guessing that you were born wealthy enough not to have to rely on state funding so I can make some allowance for you not actually knowing what you're talking.
Connecticut's welfare system basically saved my life. From a family where we didn't have enough to eat, never mind to buy things like clothing or shoes to a good life. I've been making six figures for a long time now and my taxes go back into the system.
Because I was able to break out of that lock that
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It's CT we are loosing our professionals due to our high costs of living etc. As a business owner in state it's getting harder and harder to get qualified people. Sure plenty of people with years in big corp and a 20 year old skillset. Our mass transit is basically New Haven to NYC. Right now I have a lot of remote workers because they can buy a house for a less than a couples yearly income in TN or similar. Most of my 30-50 somethings are here because they can not easily or with our major ramification
Big fucking surprise! (Score:2)
U.S. official turns on brain and acts like a first world authority -> Gets first world results.
Who would've thunk that?
Right idea, wrong agency (Score:2)
It's totally obvious that the failings of most US urban school districts really have little to do with bad teachers or administrators, but instead with the totally broken social environments kids come from.
But instead of really acknowledging this for the problem it is, we instead try to morph the school district into a comprehensive social welfare delivery system. We then destroy the curriculum by adopting every gimmick that can be dredged up in the name of closing the "achievement gap", assuming that the
Planned Parenthood (Score:2)
That's where the money should be going. Nip the problem at its source.
Better But More Needed. (Score:2)
Depressing Comments (Score:3)
Man, America sucks sometimes. Take care of your KIDS for christsakes.
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Sorry I meant "societal engineering", fucking keyboard ;-)
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fucking keyboard ;-)
That's fruitless. Find a woman instead.
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You made my day ! Thx !!!
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I used to favor a Linux Desktop Environment. But a good Desktop Environment has good printer drivers, webcam drivers, scanners, something better than X11, and all sorts of extra stuff that programmers will not care about.
Don't we already have OS X though? Because that's basically what you just described...
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Poor little repressed middle-class white guy! You poor thing! Won't someone please think of the entitled 45-year-old children!?
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Want to end poverty? Stop paying poor people to have children.
If your city has a lot of unemployed people, the last thing that you would want to do is to give people a reason to migrate into the city, but thats exactly what a liberal welfare policy at the city level will do.
They arent migrating to the north end of Hartford (for instance) because its such a nice area or because employment prospects are so promising.. they are migrat
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"Give kids some food so they're not hungry and can learn" == SJW, should be hated. Gotcha. Your parents raised a lovely human being. They must be so proud!