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Imagine K12

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Re: Imagine K12

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal representation can't be totally inaccessible unless the justice system removes the right to trials altogether. Representing yourself in court is possible, at least to some extent,^ and it doesn't require hardware like flying does. (Incidentally, this is also why it's a good thing to have libraries in prisons - the innocent can use them to learn more and help exonerate themselves.) ^I know that it's a very poor…

It's an interesting topic though :). I concede the point that it can't be totally inaccessible, but the it seems like farmers with hunting rifles going after professional soldiers. Sure, sometimes it works out or you get lucky, but that's not the norm. Although come to think of it, the public defender situation isn't much better, is it.

There are rights and then there are rights. It's pretty easy to see the characterization of "free speech" as rooted in reason / "natural law", or given by God. It's harder to see the "right" to drink alcohol on such universal bases.

Something like legal representation isn't so much deeply fundamental as it is a pragmatic and institutional response to the problem of checking arbitrary prosecution. We would drop it if we could find some better way of checking those prosecutors.

Re: Imagine K12

#82
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes, as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive teachers, and a community that i…

I've been running a project targeted primarily at schools for about 8 years now (emusictheory.com), and I know this market exists (I attended a rich public school, actually), but I also have no idea how to target them without cutting out many of the public school teachers that have been my supporters over the years. Can anyone point me to good writeups of how to build pricing to target the big players while still let…

The pricing jump is probably only "ridiculous" to you. Schools (and government in general) make it so hard to sell to themselves that prices in the tens of thousands are normal to them, even for tiny districts.

I don't think the pricing is the hard part - it's getting them to buy. And I'm not convinced those two are completely related.

Re: Imagine K12

#83
I don't know how most states are doing on education budgets, but the districts around me in Texas aren't doing so hot. From what I can tell, we're cutting budgets by 1/6. (I saw spending of 54 billion in 2008-09 with cuts of 9 billion this year in separate reports)

How does that play into this?

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