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5th Grade Teachers Instructional book.
“Interpret the product (a/b) × q as a parts of a partition of q into b equal parts; equivalently, as the result of a sequence of operations a × q ÷ b. For example, use a visual fraction model to show (2/3) × 4 = 8/3, and create a story context for this equation. Do the same with (2/3) × (4/5) = 8/15. (In general, (a/b) × (c/d) = ac/bd.)”
The questions require tremendous reading skills; far beyond what is necessary to exist in adult life. Those mathematically inclined may figure out what is being instructed, (I didn’t get it until the last parenthetical sentence)…
So, I’m asking Dave Sokola… Interpret this problem! What does this mean?
I’m asking Jack Markell, and Mark Murphy: why are you doing this to OUR kids?
Courtesy of Frank Capra
Any investor knows you buy low and sell high. Buying high and selling low makes you a loser. The same goes with a business. Buying a business doing very well, will leave you no room for growth. Your pie can only get smaller, as more businesses arrive on your block and begin exploiting the fact you are so busy, by offering similar quality and prices with lower wait-times. Their profits grow; while both your market share and profitability decline.
This is why people like monopolies so much. One can consistently almost guarantee one’s income and profitability.
Now because of “math” it is easier to show great gains on low profitability options, more bang for the buck, than on high ones. The closer one is to zero the higher percent increase one can show their clients. If you have just one customer sale, it is easy to have a 100% increase by having 2 customer sales; someone just has to walk into your store. But if you have 1000 customer sales per day, then it is rather hard to jump up to 2000 customer sales per day. Where are you going to put them?
Understanding this is critical to growing the economy.
History lesson. In the summer of 2007 ARM’s started defaulting as the higher rates kicked in, starting a mushrooming effect up and down the securitized mortgage chain. In 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, all hell broke loose. The world financial markets came within 20 minutes of collapsing entirely. But the US under George W. Bush restored confidence in the dollar, and people decided to leave their investments alone and let them ride. That is his most defining moment. That is one memoir I want to read.
Fortunately Ben Bernanke was an expert on the Great Depression. Bolster the banks, keep money solvent, coddle corporations, and keep the infrastructure intact. Knowing full well, if it totally collapsed (like a small town losing its factory) there would be no economic driver to hammer the economy back into shape.
For this reason, great pains were taken to assist big business on their bounce-back.
They bounced back very well. Only this time, they didn’t need as many people to work for them. Over the last decade, software had become smart enough to replace many jobs people had previously occupied.. Just that before the recession, it wasn’t that obvious, It was only after one let people go and ran well or better without them, that one realized how just how fat you were beforehand.
So this brings us to the point. We have invested in corporate bounce-backs as far as we can go. We have hit the ceiling as far as getting a return on our investment. On the other hand, now on the labor side, we have great opportunity. Every little investment over there into into putting people to work, will return great dividends very quickly.
We have to realize there as simply some jobs in society that cannot be performed by machines inside corporate establishments or a banks. Those jobs, simply put, are ones whose duty is to watch corporate giants and banks to insure that they comply within the law and prosecute them fully when they step out.
We need these jobs. We really need them now. After all, people do not work best without any accountability. In fact the opposite is mostly true. When you have to personally answer to a boss, you are more productive. Even when that demanding boss is oneself; they still answer to someone. Consider the opposite. If you could be paid whether you did work or not, would you be as productive as you are now, where if you don’t do work, you don’t get paid? Or would you take advantage of that opportunity, to heck with productivity, and seek to experience some of the quality of life you missed hereto? Our corporate entities and banks need to answer to a boss. That boss should be the American People via their proxies. the government watchdogs.
Those record breaking Corporate profits which are achieved by cheating society, are not really profits towards society’s benefit at all. Some one has to eventually pay for them. If you pump toxic chemicals into the ground to avoid paying for their disposal, at some future point when they hit a water table, society will have to pay to remove them and the damage they caused as well.
It is cheaper now to prevent that action while we have tons of money, than it will be to fix it when we simply do not.
The small business method to fix our economy, is to hire more government workers (invest in a brand new business) and pay for them out of the corporate earnings (our business already tapped out) because they can run with less people.
It is really no change from before. Except for the person writing the check. Prior to the recession these people worked for a corporation and got paid by their company. Where we need to go, is to have these people work watching over their former corporations, now getting their pay checks written by the government, which gets its extra funding to cover their pay, from taxing the excessive profits those corporations are making. Why are the making them? Because they aren’t working as many people….
This is quite sustainable when viewed from this perspective, as would be readily seen by the owner of a small business. If we were happy in the nineties, back when everyone was better off each year than they were before, then we can be happy again, just by keeping all portions similar, just moving labor from the private to the public, and increasing assessments on the private sector to pay for it.
There are those who will scream. They are selfish. They will be proven wrong.
As our planet becomes more crowded, we need more solutions. Some solutions are not very profitable and for that reason, we need a government capable to grow to meet them.
The old arguments of government being the problem, are long gone. They weren’t true ever, though a lot of people believed them back in the day. The opposite is certainly true now. As a society we need more watchdogs working to make our lives better. As a society we really don’t need more profits. We have too many of them now and really, what good are profits really doing for us? None. Instead, we need more people working and buying things.. Nice things that someone’s got to make…
It is time to pivot in how we view the entire American economy. Let’s hire us some watchdogs and cut the deficit while doing so, by increasing the rate of taxes on all those profits being sucked up in excess because a lot of workers got fired..
This is post number 2000.
The only real significance is it is 150 posts more than where Tommywonk stopped exactly one year and fifteen days ago…
If some future historian looks back, I can only guess they may kindly make some note of the quality of thought that underlies these efforts, but my guess, is no one will ever notice…
Irregardless, as long as the urge to put thoughts down for others continues, we will go on. As usual, with no goal, no direction, and no ulterior motive. Probably upon reflection, my biggest surprise, right here, right now … is that I still enjoy it so much, and can’t wait to jot my thoughts down, click the button, and send them off to where ever cyberspace and the vast internet ocean, lets them drift….
For each of you who have become regular over the years, … thank you friend…
A wiser man than me once said… ” The electorate is divided as such… If you take a cross section of America, two thirds of them think like Democrats, (that the People should be in charge of their government), and the others don’t. But usually only one half of people thinking like Democrats even go to the polls, … which means we have this fine line of two armies who are almost equal, so that we constantly keep fighting over….”
Which is why, when that segment becomes engaged, we have these lopsided elections like we did in 2008, then bounce back to disasters like 2010 when they stay at home…
Now the primary reason that one third that doesn’t vote, is that they do not feel up to speed on the issues… For them the issues in national elections are sort of like what we may have felt back when we voted for the first time, and got hit at the bottom of the ballot with state reps, state senators, county councils, register of wills, and a sheriff….. As we checked them off, we were thinking I hope I’m doing the right thing… based on a name, a party affiliation, or some arrangement of tea leaves on the carpet floor the night before…. (It used to be such decisions came solely from the News Journal guide published prior to elections).
It is to this group, too afraid to vote, that we need to bring knowledge. Of course, on the opposite end it is also to this group, the business class needs to prevent that knowledge transfer from happening….
What we can do, is use real world analogies to dissolve the lies being made by the other side.
Facts in our favor…. If you are middle class, then…..
WE pay more in actual medical costs now, than we did before Republicans.
WE pay more to insurance companies, than we did before Republicans.
WE pay more in utilities now, than we did before Republicans…
WE pay more to big banks now, than we did before Republicans….
WE had higher incomes before, we had to deal with Republicans….
WE had safer food, before inspections of it were dismantled by Republicans…..
WE had a healthier environment, before Republicans dropped environmental controls and brought back pollution.
WE had cheaper food than we did, before Republicans…..
So ask them… Pivotal moment: who would you trust with your future? A party that builds itself up as being the protectors of your future? Whose credibility and power are won or lost solely on how well you do? Or,… a party that worries more how to protect those people stand to make money off of your future, and whose credibility and power are won or lost by how well they can deliver on THAT promise….
You see, there is only one answer.
Is this. They take money away from other schools…
The idea of charter schools is Republican at best. You take a school, make it excel, and parents will want to send their kids there. You then close other schools that fail…
The problem that was never addressed, was what then do we do with all those students who for whatever reason, can’t get into a charter school.
The answer provided by the Charter School Program, is that we consolidate them into even more problematic, even more underfunded, and even more unstructured environments where if they couldn’t learn before, they certainly can’t learn now….
There is a maxim in both business and the military. You are only as good as your weakest point. The same could be said for dykes around New Orleans. Having a real strong dyke on the wealthiest side of the city, does little when the water comes in from behind, because you forgot to account for a barrier on the poor side of the city.
That’s the problem with Charter Schools…..
Some Charter schools do well. But a lot do no better than public. Charter Schools get to pick their students. If Charter schools had to accept special needs students as do public schools, they would be forced to close…
What Charter Schools do provide, is a haven for parents to send kids so they will not be infested with ghetto values. Pencader School of Business was founded on these principles by Principal Dave Jones. There was no ghetto value along the shore of the Delaware River, overlooking New Jersey.
Some Charter Schools do well. Some Public Schools do well. What both have in common, is a principal who has autonomy to run his school… No DoE’s. No mandates by Dover. None of the normal bullshit that politics has laid at the feet of those just trying to help today’s youth make it in tomorrow’s world.
Another common factor, is that successful schools have community involvement. The community looks up to the schools with respect, and the schools look out to the community with respect. When the community and schools are in line and working off the same page, they are successful; whether private, charter, or public, makes little difference.
It is apparent after reviewing the literature covering both sides of the Charter issue, that the successes on both extremes, have these common values. Good leadership and community support.
It appears current society’s focus needs to re-establish those two cores. Good leadership and community support.
The Department of Education needs to bug out of student’s learning.
The answer to education is simple.
You need a great reward for graduating students to make learning worthwhile. My generation was motivated by the fact that we would one day be paid based on how well we achieved academically. That was a lie. Today’s children know it by 2nd grade.
Second, you need a great reward for educators and principals to achieve the impossible. People rise to the occasion presented. A simple $20,000 bonus if every child in your class, simply met objectives, with $1000 minus off for each of those that did not, would certainly fix education in one year.
Third, you need to give principals autonomy. Their bonus should be $200,000. Then, you rank each principal on the percentage of teachers he has, who received the full $20,000 bonuses…… IF his salary is dependent on how many of his teachers get their full bonuses, his primary goal, will be to work with every teacher for that endeavor. Not as is currently proscribed, working against them…
If every student, every teacher, every principal is working diligently for the same goal, you will not need a Department of Education. You will not need Governmental Interference.
You will need structure (prisons) for lost causes. You will need school transportation funding. You will need upkeep on buildings. You will need new technology. You will need investment in music, art, and drama. You will need investment in sports.
School defines who we are. Cutting down our options, diminishes our future potential.
Mankind can do extraordinary things. We have, when the needs have arisen, done so… Just this tiny bit of money, placed in the right investment category, can change the entire scenario of a failed school district, into a thriving one.
Nashville teachers are getting pummelled. Not just like Adam Knight in the story below, but across the board..
The new evaluations under the TAP program are insane.
These evaluations are called TAP (Teacher Achievement Program) and were developed by a conservative think tank that is funded by the Milkin Family Foundation based in Santa Monica, Calif.
(TAP is presently used by 200 schools and 20,000 students in three states. Tennessee has more than 1,000 school districts and more than 900,000 public-school students. The other states use TAP predominantly in high-needs schools districts.)
The National Institute of Excellence in Education (NIET), which was founded by and is funded by the same Milkin Family Foundation that created TAP, has performed the majority of the vetting of this evaluation system. Not surprisingly, most of its reports are glowing in their praise for TAP…..
Tennessee has rushed into adopting an evaluation system that is radically different from any other, not proven by independent research and written by a multimillionaire-funded think tank that has a deep financial interest in it being adopted and retained, all without public scrutiny.
Now here is the best part…….
The state of Delaware, which was the other recipient of federal “Race to the Top” funding in 2010, decided to do more due diligence on the matter of teacher evaluations. Delaware waited an additional three months before making comparatively modest changes to its teacher evaluation system.
Delaware also was considering this program until blogger extraordianare Kilroy’s Delaware delved into and raise similar questions about the TAP programs validity. Simply his looking at the facts and publishing his findings, were enough to disuade the Markell and state education officials, (who read him religiously) to stay away….
And to quote the Vermont poet laureate, Robert Frost: “That has made all the difference…”
(Thanks dude.) 🙂
Definition: Where American spending was brought up to the level where it should be, without the necessary revenue to support it.
(As evidenced by 154,000 private sector jobs being created in July.)
The problem is not with spending. The problem is the lack of taxing of the top 1%. The spending seems to be doing its job.
kavips 