Kavanaugh votes either way, but I don't think this is out of principle... I just think he's just kind of an idiot and thinks he can write a justification for just about any of his biases without making those biases obvious. It's kind of apparent if you read his opinions; they tend to be very verbose (his dissent here is 63 pages!) without saying a whole lot, and he gets sloppy with citations, selectively citing precedent in some cases while others he simply hand-waves. Take his opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (the "Kavanaugh stop" case): there's a reason why no one joined his concurrence.
The fact that they've rebranded teachers gives me concern that they're trying to further devalue teaching as a profession (if that's possible) and remove some of the professional expectations and protections that teaching still has.
>When I asked the head of admissions how they found such good staff he told me their compensation was fully transparent. “Associate Guides” were paid $60,000/year (vs the $40,000 average for Austin teachers), “Full Guides” made $100,000 and the five “Head Guides” in the school each made $150,000. They were able to both poach the best teachers from other schools, but also bring exceptional people into teaching that would not have considered it otherwise. It also let them have very high expectations for teachers once they were hired.
You dont need to be a billionaire to be able to afford a good school for your children if the public ones dont meet your criteria.
Im not sure about this particular school, but i am greatly disappointed at baseline california core requirements for math and science in middle school and the parents choice is to either have your child be bored in school while complementing their education with RSM or Singapore Math after hours
Or to choose a private school that will make your child more competitive with kids being educated by other countries systems.
Public education caters to the common denominator…the public. If you want higher rigor and standards set for your children, then you will need to find alternatives - which, in some areas, are no better than the public schools.
I wouldn’t blame the system for poor standards. Their standards are actually decent for most children. The problem is that teachers are forced to spend a significant portion of time and energy on classroom management.
Couple that with the fact that most parents aren’t reading to their children at night, so those kids grow up falling behind the curve. Reading comprehension drops -> other subjects follow suit. Rinse and repeat each year, and you eventually end up with high-school seniors reading far below their grade level.
The teachers now have to scaffold all of their content. The kids who didn’t fall behind? They receive no attention from the teacher who is instead focused on helping the kid with a 3rd grade reading ability to try to understand the content.
An indirect tragedy of the commons, where parents are relying on public education to raise and teach children with no input of their own.
Not a billionaire, but pretty well off. Unlike the college loan grift that we also need to address, you're not getting a parent plus loan to help your 3rd grader.
>i am greatly disappointed at baseline california core requirements for math and science
Don't look at the other states, then. I agree the standards are low, but they can't even meet those marks. You don't improve that by raising bar and expecting students to keep up. All while continuing to defund education.
For me, it was a matter that they identified me early on elementary and basically put me a year ahead in studies. By middle school they called it "honor students". And I only studied in public schools (well, a charter high school. But I was guaranteed in since I lived in the neighborhood).
I dont think California education is defunded. Mismanaged yes, wrong incentives and priorities, yes.
Quick google search shows that my district has nearly a budget of $195,927,382 for years 2024-2025 serving 10,278 students. Thats nearly 20k per student. THe district employed 481(<22 student per teacher on avg) teachers and 480 admin staff.
Residents of my school district constantly vote for bonds to pay for capital school upgrades(thanks Prop 13) in addition to high amount property taxes. We dont have an issue of defunding the education here.
Our education is non-competitive with Asian and European ones not because we cant afford it, but because its mismanaged, incorrectly incentivised and often ideological (math is racist).
I feel less safe knowing that anyone's doorbell could be tracking me and sending my movements to a third party to do whatever they want with that information. A camera that lets someone see their front doorstep and can record someone stealing a package is one thing; when that camera is now part of a network that is part of a larger, society-wide surveillance apparatus, I am concerned.
Um, sometimes people help each other because they want to, or because they understand that those less fortunate than them need it, or because they understand that they may need help someday and so it doesn't make sense to make a big deal of "compensation" now. It's called community, and I think it is something to be proud of.
I assume that's not an employer sponsored plan? You can read the methodology for more, but their data is a mix of a) how much people pay into employer-sponsored health insurance plans, b) individual and small group insurance market information, where available, and c) estimated out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance. If you're buying a plan through a marketplace, you are almost certainly going to come in well above the median for your area.
It would not surprise me to learn their methodology is flawed however under the affordable care act people below 400 percent of the poverty line pay less due to tax subsidies so we can't assume 5 percent of the population pays what you pay.
I am but a single datapoint, but the $100/month for home internet hits quite close to home. I currently pay $130 for Spectrum's gigabit cable internet plan. Their website offers it for $70, but that's only for the first year; they have raised that price by, apparently, $20 per year I've been a customer. We do not have fiber and my only other ISP option is a DSL provider that maxes out at 40mbps for $30. So sure, I can save about 75% on my internet bill by opting for internet that is 4% of the speed that I currently pay for. And this is in a rapidly growing suburb. I think $100/month is easily the case for places like my home, where local broadband monopolies still exist mostly unchallenged.
First of all, back in November, a judge approved his release on bond, which he paid, but the government ignored that order and continued to detain him.
After his detention, he was asked to sign paperwork opting for voluntary deportation; he refused, but then the government proceeded to claim in court that he had signed documents to that effect, which he and his lawyer insist must be falsified or otherwise in error. However a judge allowed them to stand, which removes his ability to appeal. Now, either because the government is inept or malicious, he seems to be stuck in a legal limbo unless his lawyer can challenge the government's documentation or force an analysis of those forms.
I always appreciated the Mobile Suit Gundam approach (U.C. timeline, to be specific): humans in space largely live in O'Neill Cylinder-style space colonies arranged in constellations at Earth-Moon Lagrange points, allowing them to a) be built from materials gathered from space and b) once built, manufacture things from those materials without having to land them on Earth first. There are large settlements on the Moon, and while they are important manufacturing and research centers, they're not the primary population centers in space. Mars is, to the best of my knowledge, uninhabited. As far as the outer solar system goes, only Jupiter has a permanent human presence as the primary source of humanity's helium-3 (Gundam predates the proposal of mining the Moon for helium-3 instead).
I like this approach. It's plausible based on the assumptions made by the story, lets people in space have the benefits of mostly-normal gravity and radiation exposure (as compared to, say Mars), and keeping things local to the Earth means you don't need to be too concerned with the distances involved. Where they really lose the plot, though, is with population; Gundam claims that, in less than 100 years, billions of people--in fact, the large majority of humanity--have moved to space. I can't even begin to fathom what kind of effort would be needed to build that many space colonies, and then shuttle the people up there to populate them.
Which is, in and of itself, a problem: I feel like we're trending towards a US news landscape where the NYT and their editorial board are the only ones setting the tone and discourse of print media.
reply