TEXAS Y'ALL - THE TEXAS THREADS (but don't tread on me!) 🧵

[SuperSpreader]

Texas Senate approves bills requiring 10 Commandments in K-12 classrooms, Bible time in school | The Week

THEWEEK.COM

 

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[TUFKAK]

Sure fuck it why not 

[GeneticBlueprint]

Seems like that law will come into conflict with their "no sexual books" law pretty quickly. I'm sure the state supreme court will find a workaround.

[Mr.Vic20]

The freedom to be dumb program! 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

That picture is from Ohio 22 years ago, specifically from the school district I went to high school. Seeing that picture I was INSTANTLY reminded of it, very triggering! They tried to add the magna carta and a few other "foundational documents" to the front of each of the 4 identical high schools in the district but the federal courts stopped that.

 

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/depiction-of-the-ten-commandments-is-shown-outside-of-news-photo/1652644?

[AbsolutSurgen]

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I had thought these kind of things were explicitly banned in your constitution.

[Jason]

10 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I had thought these kind of things were explicitly banned in your constitution.

 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I had thought these kind of things were explicitly banned in your constitution.

They aren’t. They are banned through SCOTUS rulings.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

21 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I had thought these kind of things were explicitly banned in your constitution.

Look there is nearly century old judicial rulings that incorporate the bill of rights and hold the first amendment as applicable to the states, something that did not apply before the 14th amendment. See:

• Guarantee against the establishment of religion: Everson v Board of Education
• Free Exercise of Religion: Hamilton v. Regents of the University of California, Cantwell v. Connecticut

But this radically conservative court is wholly unhinged from reality, so there is zero guarantee that these are still “good” case law and that’s what Texas clearly intends to challenge. And given the insane right wing bent of the 5th circuit (which covers Texas) they will get their wish no doubt. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I'm so glad I don't have kids and if I did, I wouldn't be sending them to public school with the way things are going.

[CastletonSnob]

Texas Senate moves to end countywide voting on Election Day

WWW.TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG

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Voters in nearly 100 counties — mostly rural — can vote at any polling site in their county. The sponsor, without offering evidence, said the practice was not secure despite years of successful elect…

 

[Jason]

56 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I'm so glad I don't have kids and if I did, I wouldn't be sending them to public school with the way things are going.

 

The GOP views it as a positive that this helps kill public schools.

[Ghost_MH]

8 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I'm so glad I don't have kids and if I did, I wouldn't be sending them to public school with the way things are going.

 

Massachusetts public schools are great. Just a shame how much it costs to live here...though that's also part of why they're so great. Now, allow me to go weep at my empty bank account.

[Joe]

I grew up always thinking public schools were way better than private ones. I was shocked to learn later in life that is not the case in most places.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

16 minutes ago, Joe said:

I grew up always thinking public schools were way better than private ones. I was shocked to learn later in life that is not the case in most places.

Are they actually better or are the parents simply wealthier?

[Joe]

Just now, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Are they actually better or are the parents simply wealthier?

Theyre actually better 100%. But these are of course high property tax areas so the schools are very well-funded.

[PaladinSolo]

19 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Are they actually better or are the parents simply wealthier?

This obviously depends dramatically where you live, but NE states schools don't rely solely on the locals for funding, poor areas receive huge amounts of state funding, the 21-22 budget for the district i work for which is rural and has a lot of poverty, gets more funding from the state than local taxes.  It was something like ~24m from state ~18m from local taxes.  While the district I'm in has significantly more wealth and a bit larger so local funding is nearly 50m alone, with the state putting up another 30m or so.  Both schools are great.

[Brian]

1 hour ago, Joe said:

I grew up always thinking public schools were way better than private ones. I was shocked to learn later in life that is not the case in most places.

In NJ, public schools are quite good. Of course we pay for it with our taxes. The only time I knew someone go to a private school was either a religious reason or prestige seeking. 
 

My sister lives in Boston and she wanted her kids to go the public school down the street. Boston has a lottery system to try to make it fair where kids can go to any school despite location. Unfortunately my sister kid got picked to go to a bilingual school pretty far from her house. My sister was concerned about it so she enrolled her to a private school. 

[Ghost_MH]

45 minutes ago, Brian said:

In NJ, public schools are quite good. Of course we pay for it with our taxes. The only time I knew someone go to a private school was either a religious reason or prestige seeking. 
 

My sister lives in Boston and she wanted her kids to go the public school down the street. Boston has a lottery system to try to make it fair where kids can go to any school despite location. Unfortunately my sister kid got picked to go to a bilingual school pretty far from her house. My sister was concerned about it so she enrolled her to a private school. 

 

New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all have some of the best public K-12 in the nation. It's easy to complain about how shitty public schools are when you aren't from the Northeast, but shitty public schools are a choice. We still don't pay teachers nearly enough, but policies and the general attitude toward public education help a lot.

[Massdriver]

The Texas House should hopefully block this nonsense. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, Joe said:

Theyre actually better 100%. But these are of course high property tax areas so the schools are very well-funded.

I guess I’m also asking by what metric is it better? Test scores? Facilities? Student outcomes long term?

 

because once you control for family income (and wealthier people are also more likely to send their kids to private school) the advantages of private school disappear on a population level. 
 

Quote

On the notion there are advantages to private schools, and that those advantages disappear when controlling for certain factors

"We look at these kids when we assess them in ninth grade, and if you just simply look at private school versus public school — don't consider any other factor in the kids' history — you see huge benefits to being in private school. They're about a standard deviation of like 15 points higher on test scores, they're more motivated and the like. And then as soon as you put into the equation that you're using to predict, as soon as you put in family income, those differences disappear — and they never reappear again, no matter how many other variables that you put in.

"So the idea basically being, that it's what's happening in kids' families and the kinds of conditions that they're able to purchase for their kids and the circumstances that they're able to provide for their kids over the long haul that really matter in adding up to the kinds of things that we assessed in ninth grade."

On the difference it makes when parents provided their young children with educational resources and stimulation

"That is a very big difference. Importantly, those families continue to give those kids advantages from kindergarten all the way through ninth grade. So it is important what happens in that birth-to-5 [years old] period for sure, it sets kids up on a trajectory of success or not. Those families that give those advantages tend to also be families that will place their kids in private schools.

"Now, some low-income kids do end up in private schools for all sorts of reasons. When we looked at the low-income kids in the sample who were in private schools, we didn't see any advantage to private education there either. I think one of the things people miss is the stunning heterogeneity of private education. We all have this idea of what private education looks like: It's like a prep school. But private education on average is very, very heterogeneous.

"If you want to predict children's outcomes — achievement test scores, the things we care about socially — in high school, the best thing that you can use to predict that is going to be family income. Regardless of what high school you go to, the best predictor is going to be family background. And in this case, it's family background before the child even goes to school in kindergarten. There will be individual cases of poor kids who went to private schools that are tremendous success stories. But we make policy not on the basis of individual cases, hopefully, we make it on the basis of larger data sets and patterns of information."

Family Income Affects Kids' Success More Than Public Vs. Private School, Study Finds

WWW.WBUR.ORG

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Conventional wisdom is that more expensive private schools give kids a better education and career prospects. But a yearslong study concludes that's not the case.

 

[Joe]

2 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I guess I’m also asking by what metric is it better? Test scores? Facilities? Student outcomes long term?

 

because once you control for family income (and wealthier people are also more likely to send their kids to private school) the advantages of private school disappear on a population level. 
 

Family Income Affects Kids' Success More Than Public Vs. Private School, Study Finds

WWW.WBUR.ORG

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Conventional wisdom is that more expensive private schools give kids a better education and career prospects. But a yearslong study concludes that's not the case.

 

Certainly a very interesting read! I know one way the public schools set themselves apart here is the student teacher ratio. But yeah, it can be hard to determine if high test scores are a result of the school or just wealth of the parents (tutoring etc).

[Ghost_MH]

11 minutes ago, Joe said:

Certainly a very interesting read! I know one way the public schools set themselves apart here is the student teacher ratio. But yeah, it can be hard to determine if high test scores are a result of the school or just wealth of the parents (tutoring etc).

 

I learned how much money can affect a child first hand  when my youngest wound up being so far ahead of her peers. I'm positive the reason for that is being exposed to tutors, speech, and behavioral therapists since she was 2 thanks to my autistic daughter having them come by the house 4-6 days a week. She's 4 now, but it's really easy to forget you aren't talking to someone twice her age and it makes for some really complicated situations. She can express herself as well as any first or second grader, but she has all those big 4yo toddler emotions. Unfortunately, she currently spends most of her time in preschool chatting up the teachers because, expressively, she's so far ahead of her classmates. As a result, she's also trouble. Bored kids have too much time to plot mischief. Luckily, the kind of mischief my daughter causes is pretending to be a poliglot and convincing a substitute teacher she can translate for the kids that speak Arabic.

 

If insurance wasn't covering most of it, she never would have been exposed to all this extra at-home tutoring. I can't help but imagine what difference it would make for well off parents.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

45 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I learned how much money can affect a child first hand  when my youngest wound up being so far ahead of her peers. I'm positive the reason for that is being exposed to tutors, speech, and behavioral therapists since she was 2 thanks to my autistic daughter having them come by the house 4-6 days a week. She's 4 now, but it's really easy to forget you aren't talking to someone twice her age and it makes for some really complicated situations. She can express herself as well as any first or second grader, but she has all those big 4yo toddler emotions. Unfortunately, she currently spends most of her time in preschool chatting up the teachers because, expressively, she's so far ahead of her classmates. As a result, she's also trouble. Bored kids have too much time to plot mischief. Luckily, the kind of mischief my daughter causes is pretending to be a poliglot and convincing a substitute teacher she can translate for the kids that speak Arabic.

 

If insurance wasn't covering most of it, she never would have been exposed to all this extra at-home tutoring. I can't help but imagine what difference it would make for well off parents.

Yeah, I have a similar (though less severe) situation where my oldest daughter has ADHD and through expensive private testing it was discovered she also has dyslexia. If we relied on the resources available solely through any nearby school district, it is doubtful she would ever be diagnosed with ADHD (as her symptoms, like ADHD in many girls, manifests itself largely as inattention rather than hyperactivity. So there’s no classroom management issue that raises red flags like there is with many boys!) and it would have probably been years until she got flagged and tested for dyslexia because in first grade the symptoms are subtlety but distinctly different than simply being behind grade level in reading. So now we’re able to get her weekly specialized tutoring and therapy to help her emotionally and academically. All out of pocket. 
 

if she had lower intelligence she possibly oils have been flagged sooner but her disability just makes her an average student so the school doesn’t care too much or notice

[Guest]

Parental involvement > “quality of school”, always and forever. It’s why parents with high school educations can produce Ivy League university students with home education.

 

I have no doubt my children would do well above average in public school if we sent them, my wife and I are very involved in all aspects of their schooling. This semester for example, I’ve read all the books my questions 16 year old is reading for his history, government, arts, and philosophy courses at the college. I help him do quiz and test prep. He gets great grades, but I’m pretty sure if I were to work with most of the kids in his class, I could get them to at least a B in each class.

But most of the kids at the community college are there because they have never had the academic support of their parents in any meaningful way. For those with children, just be an active participant and the results will be good.

 

@b_m_b_m_b_m we just recently talked with our pedi about our 11 year old daughter as she read a listing of common ADHD traits for girls and freaaaaaked out because so much of it described her. She’s done pretty well to self manage all these years, but we are now looking in to whether medication may be helpful too. So much of our medical world still revolves around the experiences of males, even with regard to children. It does seem to be getting better though as I’ve noticed more material at our pedi mentioning how these things present differently in males and females, like autism.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Oh and the other thing to mention about private schools is they often work out of their system low performing students or those with disabilities like adhd and dyslexia, and don’t necessarily have the supports needed for when they do teach these kids. 

[Ghost_MH]

28 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

if she had lower intelligence she possibly oils have been flagged sooner but her disability just makes her an average student so the school doesn’t care too much or notice

 

As I came to learn with my daughter, signifiers for things like autism and ADHD are all hyper focused on how symptoms manifest in boys and nobody else. I'm lucky to live in Massachusetts here, because we have easy access to some great doctors. Her primary care picked up on some signs when she was three and we managed to book her with a neurologist that specializes in girls like her before she even turned four. The worst part is the whole process was that I didn't have enough money to pay for therapy out of pocket and it took Blue Cross like six/seven months to agree to cover her therapy costs.

 

21 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Oh and the other thing to mention about private schools is they often work out of their system low performing students or those with disabilities like adhd and dyslexia, and don’t necessarily have the supports needed for when they do teach these kids. 

 

That's one thing that's been great. My daughter is in public kindergarten now and she's in a small class just for kids with autism. The student teacher ratio in this class is 2:1 and she's been doing exceptionally well there. Meanwhile, my son has a pretty bad speech impediment, and he's been working with a school provided speech pathologist 2-4 hours a week.

[Ghost_MH]

30 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Parental involvement > “quality of school”, always and forever. It’s why parents with high school educations can produce Ivy League university students with home education.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of schools in this country are funded by local taxes, so this means poor neighborhoods get poor schools and poor parents are often busy working parents that often don't have the time to be as involved as they'd like to be. Just like everything else in this country, it sure is handy many schools are funded this way. Wouldn't want any "honest" folk's taxes going to paying for the schools in those historically red lines districts.

[Joe]

Definitely interesting to see how Newark Public Schools in NJ pay more per student than a lot of the highly ranked public school systems in the state. Goes to further show the importance of SES.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

57 minutes ago, Joe said:

Definitely interesting to see how Newark Public Schools in NJ pay more per student than a lot of the highly ranked public school systems in the state. Goes to further show the importance of SES.

Oh yeah, Richmond public schools similarly pay more per student than the more highly regarded county schools. (And more than similarly impoverished and majority minority districts in VA but that’s another issue)

But also here we have e.g. universal free breakfast and lunch year round and have to care and teach for a more impoverished population. So some things that other areas may have the PTA or student fees cover the school system may pay more to subsidize the costs like after school programming or sports and music fees. All with school infrastructure that has decayed over the past century due to several issues like white flight and virginias independent city structure and rules surrounding it. 

[Xbob42]

If I recall correctly, don't public schools in general rely on funding from property taxes or some shit, so it's set up to keep the wealthy having very nice public schools and poor areas having absolute trash?

[CastlevaniaNut18]

23 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Massachusetts public schools are great. Just a shame how much it costs to live here...though that's also part of why they're so great. Now, allow me to go weep at my empty bank account.

Yeah, Kal linked me to a house for sale in Watertown a while back that was listed for nearly a million, if I recall. It was like half the size of my home And really old and in need of a lot of work. 
 

As much as I’d like to live in a better state, all the ones I’d like have stupid high cost of living. 

5 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

If I recall correctly, don't public schools in general rely on funding from property taxes or some shit, so it's set up to keep the wealthy having very nice public schools and poor areas having absolute trash?

Yes, that’s part of it. 
 Y’all should read Poverty, by America sometime. 

[silentbob]

 

[Ghost_MH]

49 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Yeah, Kal linked me to a house for sale in Watertown a while back that was listed for nearly a million, if I recall. It was like half the size of my home And really old and in need of a lot of work. 
 

As much as I’d like to live in a better state, all the ones I’d like have stupid high cost of living. 

 

New Hampshire is the sleeper state. Regularly ranks as one of the safest states in the country and regularly ranks in the top five for best public schools in the nation. New Hampshire isn't as cheap as the Midwest, but it's actually still possible to find sub-$500k homes of a decent size and not in the middle of nowhere. If I just drive like half an hour north, the home prices drop by half. Also, if you like hunting, New Hampshire has you covered.

 

The only reason I haven't hopped across the border is because Massachusetts has some really nice social safety nets that make raising a special needs daughter a little less terrifying.

[Ghost_MH]

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

If I recall correctly, don't public schools in general rely on funding from property taxes or some shit, so it's set up to keep the wealthy having very nice public schools and poor areas having absolute trash?

 

That sounds like a feature, especially when you consider the demographics of those poor areas.

 

I grew up in Lawrence, MA and Lawrence had, at the time, one of the worst public school systems in the state. My highschool wasn't even accredited for half my time there way back in the 90s. A nice contrast to Andover which borders Lawrence and has, not just some of the best public schools in the state, but some if the best public schools in the country. Oh to be born just two miles south.