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The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

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Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#121

Post by bzbarsky »

bestes wrote: post #38
mattdeboard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about the other side. Why are we putting people in prison over this? Having the law/rule is one thing, I guess, but the punishment is extremely excessive. 10 days in prison, and 3 years of probation? She's lucky she got commuted by the governor. Not everyone will be so.

Don't forget that as a felony (before the Govenor intervene), she could no longer vote and loses many other rights. Basically not a citizen anymore.

The woman in question lives in Ohio. In Ohio, a felony conviction means you can't vote while in prison (in this case for 10 days); once released, even on parole, you can vote. See http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=2... for the nice table.

In fact, a felony conviction only carries permanent loss of voting rights in only 12 states out of 50 according to that table.

Now I agree that there lots of other impacts of a felony conviction; the article mentions it being a bar to being a teacher in some cases, for example, and reading the relevant Ohio law she would be unable to hold public office in Ohio or to sit on a jury. And clearly if the woman were to move to one of those 12 states she would not be able to register to vote there.... But it's not as cut-and-dried as "could no longer vote".

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#122

Post by aamar »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #29

AS if anybody cared - how it works in Russia: - There are virtually no private schools, every school is public. - There are better schools and worse schools. In a big city there are a few really good ones and a bunch of mediocre ones. - A school have to accept anyone living in a proximity, but it may also accept anyone else. So the good ones set up entry exams. Mediocre ones enroll everybody. - I guess there are some…

To answer your question at the end: a child born in the U.S., whether born to illegal immigrants or not, is a citizen and therefore a legal resident and therefore can attend public school.

Children who themselves illegally immigrated to the U.S. can also attend public school without cost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyler_v._Doe).

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#124

Post by Turing_Machine »

ojbyrne wrote: post #114
anamax wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also hard to escape the fact that many, if not most of these suburbs were explicitly set up to keep out blacks, latinos, Jews, and other undesirable groups. Actually, it's pretty easy to escape that "fact" because it simply isn't true. Yes, there were some covenants like that, but they were relatively rare. And, most of the housing stock is newer than that, so even if such covenants were somewhat common and we…

I was mostly with you till that Canada/Minnesota comment. Perhaps Minnesota is exceptionally diverse... Because Canada is very definitely more diverse than the US.

Wikipedia puts the "Visible Minority" population of Canada at 16.2% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada#Visible_... and the (at least partially) non-"White" population of the U.S at 27.6%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#125

Post by callmeed »

I was so close to doing this for 2 of my kids this year—we were to the point of signing the papers. Our neighborhood was in the region of the worst-performing school in the district (not even the closest, either). My mom owns a house 3 blocks from a great school and we were going to use that address. My mom wasn't comfortable with it so we opted for private school.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#126

Post by dalke »

aik wrote: post #15

>> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. I'm not sure if it is entirely fair to single out the education system here (once again), or at least batch it in with "yet another failing". I believe more is at fault here. Unless I'm mistaken, tax payers in a particu…

The article mentioned Florida: "School districts in Florida, .. all boasted recently about new address-verification programs."

In Florida, each county is its own school district. 54.15% of school funding comes from property taxes says http://www.fldoe.org/fefp/pdf/fefpdist.pdf .

Therefore your comment about tax "fairness" only make sense if you mean students who cross county lines in order to go to school. This is going to be rare just from a geographical standpoint.

In the 1970s we lived in Miami with my grandparents. My parents bought and moved into a house across the street. The street was the boundary line for another elementary school. My parents didn't want us to switch schools so we continued to claim my grandparents' address as our residence. The boundary had nothing to do with differences in tax levels.

Your logic also contains the implication that people with more children are taking more unfair use of the school system, unless they also pay more taxes. Do you really mean to make that association?

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#127

Post by guard-of-terra »

pyre wrote: post #71
guard-of-terra wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is that you perhaps should be making bad schools less bad, instead of making the awesome schools more shiny and then digging moats around those.

Therein lies the problem. How? In general, bad schools suffer from a lack of funding and the political will to do something about it.

As far as I understand, "failing" school isn't about just money. It's more an atmosphere thing. Of course, the atmosphere comes with most pupils' poor background, but you wouldn't fix that by throwing money at school. ButnNot that it would hurt, too.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#128

Post by wyclif »

ojbyrne wrote: post #114
anamax wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also hard to escape the fact that many, if not most of these suburbs were explicitly set up to keep out blacks, latinos, Jews, and other undesirable groups. Actually, it's pretty easy to escape that "fact" because it simply isn't true. Yes, there were some covenants like that, but they were relatively rare. And, most of the housing stock is newer than that, so even if such covenants were somewhat common and we…

I was mostly with you till that Canada/Minnesota comment. Perhaps Minnesota is exceptionally diverse... Because Canada is very definitely more diverse than the US.

Canada is not more diverse than the USA. My grandparents were Canadian, but there's a real reason why the US is called "the melting pot."

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#129

Post by Mvandenbergh »

lhnn wrote: post #61
potatolicious wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously proposing we go back to pre-public schooling society - you know, the one where the vast major of the population was completely uneducated since education was strictly reserved for the wealthy? Laissez-faire brings out some admirable qualities in people, but it is also an extremely unequal system with many detrimental effects on society (including the rich). There's a historical reason why we invente…

Now that we have things like affluence, the 'primed pump' of an educated society, the NEED for an educated society, and finally, the Internet, I don't see why we need nearly the government involvement in education that we did 50-100 years ago.

I think the case can be made more easily for government involvement in education than in almost any other area of life. Purely because in a certain small % of cases, parents simply won't take any steps to see their children educated. That isn't a choice the child is making. Whether that means that the government should also run the schools themselves is of course a separate question.

Some of the world's best school systems are highly decentralised and some are highly centralised.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#130

Post by rue »

wyclif wrote: post #128
ojbyrne wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was mostly with you till that Canada/Minnesota comment. Perhaps Minnesota is exceptionally diverse... Because Canada is very definitely more diverse than the US.

Canada is not more diverse than the USA. My grandparents were Canadian, but there's a real reason why the US is called "the melting pot."

I won't assess whether you're correct or not, but want to point out that things in a melting pot don't diversify, they blend.
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