Divemedic

I recently posted that we are throwing money at underperforming and poor students without getting much of a return. A reader left a comment, asking if I have suggestions for improvement. I do.

First, some facts: 
Three in ten jobs in the US do not even require a high school diploma.
Two out of three jobs do not require a college degree of any sort.
4 million students a year begin high school. 90% of them graduate.
70 percent of those who graduate from high school go on to enroll in college, despite the fact that only one third of jobs require a college degree.
Of course, of the 63 percent of high school students who attend college, less than half of them will actually graduate with a four year degree.
Of the students who get a college degree, twice as many get degrees in park, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies as there are students who receive degrees in mathematics or engineering.
Ten percent of college freshmen want to become a medical doctor. Less than 0.4% of them actually DO become doctors.

In other words, Americans are overeducated for the jobs that are there. We need to get away from the idea that every student needs to be ready for college, because even with all this money we are throwing at the issue, they just aren’t learning. Here is my proposal:

At the end of the eighth grade, all students are given a proficiency exam. Students will be tested on proficiency in reading, vocabulary, and math skills. There will be no adjustment for special needs or learning disabilities.  Your score determines what taxpayer funded school you attend. If a student wishes to attend a higher level of school than the test determines that they are qualified for, then they can pay for the difference in cost out of their own pocket.

The lowest performing quintile will be sent to a school for the next two years to be taught how to be an adult: they will learn about  budgeting, along with basic life skills. At age 16, they will graduate and be able to get a job. This is all you need to mow lawns, work at a retail or fast food job, or any other job not requiring an employee to solve algebraic equations or write sonnets.

The second and third quintiles will attend a vocational high school. In this school they can learn general vocational skills like use of tools, construction, culinary, or mechanical skills. They can graduate at age 16 or 17 with the basic skills needed to work at the apprentice level of the skilled trades.

Fourth and fifth quintile students will be eligible for the college pathway. They graduate after taking classes on algebra, chemistry, composition, literature, and civics.

To be honest, we are doing this now. The school where I work pulls out the best performing students and puts them into “honors” classes or “AP” classes that are designed to prepare them for college. The remainder of the students are placed in fluff classes that are essentially babysitting to keep them out of their parents’ hair until they are eighteen years old. All this would do is save us money by getting them off the gravy train earlier, and also give them life skills instead of paying lip service to the idea that every kid needs to be ready for college.

So much data has been spent complaining about how smart devices are spying on you. There are many bloggers that I have a lot of respect for that say they will never own a smart device because those devices will listen to every word you say.

As for me, I think that ship sailed years ago. Many people stay away from Social media because it spies on you and sells your information. Guess what? Do you have a cell phone? It spies on you. So do frequent shopper cards. Your email provider does, too. As does your credit card provider, your bank, and your ISP.

I own my own business and I advertise online. One of the features offered is a “pixel” campaign. You know those pictures and memes that get passed around the Internet? Companies offer the ability to add a pixel to those picture files that acts as a tracking beacon. Every time someone looks at that picture, the pixel executes a program that mines information about the person viewing the picture.

Even if you refuse all of that, there are companies who are tracking your shopping habits by tracking your purchase history by your credit or debit card numbers. So you say, never mind, I will avoid using customer loyalty cards, credit cards, a cell phone, an email account, and the Internet. That will not work either, because there are companies using facial recognition and license plate readers to track you as well.

Data mining is the new gold rush. Most companies have large databases of information on people, and they sell that information to anyone who wants to pay for it. Big brother is watching you. It is now impossible to live in this country without someone somewhere having the ability to track your every move.

I teach at a title one school. The reason my school is a title one school is that more than 70% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. Being a title one school entitles the school to receive a large amount of additional funding. For my school, that means an additional half a million dollars in title one funds. Our budget is somewhere north of $15,000 per student.

In addition, students and their families are entitled to:
– free breakfast for all students, regardless of whether or not they qualify for free or reduced lunch
– free coats for students who request them
– free groceries that can be sent home for the families of students who need them
– free daycare during days when school is not in session (winter break, summer, etc.)

Throwing money at the problem isn’t going to fix education. There is a well known connection between poverty and poor performance in education, but after spending 5 years as a teacher, I think I know why:

Whether it is nature or nurture, affluent parents generally have smart, well educated children. The reason for this is simple: parents who are successful tend to be smart and well educated themselves, and pass this trait on to their children.

Parents who are poor do not.

The funny thing is that students who need public funds to buy food all seem to have smart phones with data plans. Several of my students have taken cruises this year, even though they are on food stamps.

We as a society are wasting gobs of money for little return. No one believes this money will fix anything. This is just another scheme for redistributing wealth.

Tell me again why the Republicans are the party of small government…

the more it looks like the liberal paradise of Chicago.

The former police chief of Biscayne Park, a city in Miami-Dade county, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison for ordering officers to arrest black people for crimes they did not commit in order to give the impression that his department was solving crimes, court documents say.

Every person arrested of any crime at all in that city should immediately request and receive a new trial. All evidence provided by that police department should be disallowed in those trials. This case is less about racism and more about cops who will do anything to look good, even if that means destroying the lives of the very people that they are sworn and paid to protect.

The officers of this department are nothing more than a street gang with qualified immunity.

Even local news station weather forecasters are beginning to doubt global warming.

Interestingly, some scientists have stated that increasing snow is consistent with climate change because warmer air holds more moisture, more water vapor and this can result in more storms with heavy precipitation. The trick, of course, is having sufficient cold air to produce that snow. But note that 93% of the years with more than 60″ of snow in Boston were colder than average years. The reality is cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Note the graph depicting declining January through March temperatures for 20 years at a rate of 1.5 degrees F. per decade in the Northeast!

Meanwhile, it is 40 degrees outside of my home as I type this. That’s pretty cool for this early in the season for Central Florida.

The Democrat governed state of California keeps voting for the same old, same old. They vote for things, and when their chickens come home to roost they come to the rest of us, demanding help.

The voters ask for and receive the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Not only do those laws fail to stop the shooters, but leave the targets of those shooters defenseless.

The voters pass laws that allow them to build homes in the middle of forests without a thought of putting defensive zones for wildfires around those homes. Then demand aid to help rebuild.

It seems to me that California voters are getting exactly the government that they have asked for.

(and yes, I say the same thing about people in Florida who build homes right on the beach and then demand help when hurricanes destroy their homes. It isn’t the responsibility of the rest of us to fund your bad decisions.)

People who live jammed into cities where the food and water must be imported from rural areas should not pick fights with those who feed and provide water for them.

Headline:

NBC REPORTER WONDERS HOW LONG ‘AMERICAN MAJORITY WILL TOLERATE BEING PUSHED AROUND BY A RURAL MINORITY’

What he is saying is that the people in cities should be able to order the people in rural areas to provide agricultural products to them. The last time Democrats made that demand, the Republicans had to start a civil war to stop them

From NYmag comes a story called “12 young people on why they probably won’t vote.” If you read the reasons, you see the “If the person I support doesn’t win, I won’t play” attitude. Here is Samantha from New Jersey:

I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day… Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly.

So the entire system is there to ensure that your favorite candidate wins, and if they don’t, the system is obviously broken.

Most of the other 11 people say that voting is too hard, or that they don’t have the time or energy to vote. I don’t understand the lack of energy thing. The oldest of them is 29 years old. How can you not have energy in your 20s? I think that the lack of energy or ambition is the reason why so many of them support people like Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez. After all, if they are too lazy to vote, how motivated are the to actually earn a living and work for themselves? With that said, here is a quote from Anna in New York City:

 When I was at the post office to register, this poor girl, clearly also a college student like me, didn’t know what “postmarked” meant and had no idea how to send an important document by mail. Most people my age have zero need to go to the post office and may have never stepped into one before. Honestly, if someone had the forms printed for me and was willing to deal with the post office, I’d be much more inclined to vote.

Seriously, an entire generation that doesn’t know how to mail a letter?

Personally, I am kid of happy the morons in this story don’t want to vote. Read the whole thing. It is an interesting look into the youngest adults in the nation.