West Virginia Teachers Strike

I've seen a lot of bad takes on these here rjkarl boards, not the least from the namesake himself, but catamount is really gunning for the crown here.

WFcatamount22 said:

So we are eliminating wasteful positions, and diverting funds from wasteful spending sounds smart. "Technology" spending is the biggest waste of the current educational environment. Students don't need chrome books to learn the basic subjects or nonfunctional smart boards and TV's. Those are the kind of things that look good when showing schools to prospective parents but don't have any tangible benefits. If we want to make investments in technology then setup elementary, middle, and high schools with legit computer science programs and fund it that way. Otherwise give them a book, notepad, and a chalkboard.

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Well let's stop school choice policies that encourage such recruiting and accountability regimes that depend on if a school can enroll the best students.

By the way, many of those technology needs are for career and technical education programs that will allow high school kids to compete for 21st century jobs.

catamount is probably 100% behind the NCGA's recent cursive writing mandate. kids today need to quit that new-fangled computin' and get back to purty writin'.

Deacon923 said:

catamount is probably 100% behind the NCGA's recent cursive writing mandate. kids today need to quit that new-fangled computin' and get back to purty writin'.

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Wrong, I am 100% for teaching computer science as early as possible. I’m just against wasting money on pointless technology that doesn’t assist in the education process, which is a lot of what is happening now.

PhDeac said:

Well let's stop school choice policies that encourage such recruiting and accountability regimes that depend on if a school can enroll the best students.

By the way, many of those technology needs are for career and technical education programs that will allow high school kids to compete for 21st century jobs.

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You literally just ignored the next sentence after the bold, which addressed exactly that point.

No I didn’t. I mentioned that there are plenty of programs besides computer science that are worth the money.

Now if by “computer science” you meant “computer science and dozens of other subjects,” ok.

JuiceCrewAllStar said:

I've seen a lot of bad takes on these here rjkarl boards, not the least from the namesake himself, but catamount is really gunning for the crown here.

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TITCR

Well I’m glad you’ve found a straw man to argue against.

catamount is too dumb to be a good troll

To be be fair, a lot of that classroom technology is a blatant bandaid on the bulletwound of a starving infrastructure and yearly budget cuts. A cart full of wholesale ipads and a smartboard isn't a big investment.

All of the above. One of the reasons the schools need more computers is that the legislature refuses to appropriate money to buy textbooks and supplies, or pay for teacher assistants. So the teachers are forced to use free online educational tools to take the place of the textbooks, and use computer-based activities in place of a teacher assistant to keep part of the class occupied while they deal with kids who need extra help or perform all the state-required assessments.

Deacon923 said:

All of the above. One of the reasons the schools need more computers is that the legislature refuses to appropriate money to buy textbooks and supplies, or pay for teacher assistants. So the teachers are forced to use free online educational tools to take the place of the textbooks, and use computer-based activities in place of a teacher assistant to keep part of the class occupied while they deal with kids who need extra help or perform all the state-required assessments.

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^This. I know several elementary school teachers who each had a full-time assistant before the NC GOP and guys like Phil Berger took over the legislature in 2011. In the past seven years, they have gone from that to having only part-time assistants, to sharing a part-time assistant, to now having no assistant at all, due to budget cuts. In the meantime, each of them has seen an increase in their class size. It's things like that that helped to create this walkout situation. But, according to some conservatives, the real issue is that we're not teaching cursive in schools anymore. Maybe if schools also brought back the abacus and electric typewriter we could really MAGA.

Deacon923 said:

All of the above. One of the reasons the schools need more computers is that the legislature refuses to appropriate money to buy textbooks and supplies, or pay for teacher assistants. So the teachers are forced to use free online educational tools to take the place of the textbooks, and use computer-based activities in place of a teacher assistant to keep part of the class occupied while they deal with kids who need extra help or perform all the state-required assessments.

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It’s 2018. Computers and tablets are the books.

My kids do almost all of their homework online. I have no idea how they're supposed to learn from what they got wrong. It drives me nuts.

[h=3]Teacher narrowly upsets Kentucky House GOP leader. A sign of things to come?[/h]
http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/election/article211665879.html

As upset teachers across Kentucky Tuesday tried to flex their political muscle, Rockcastle County High School math teacher R. Travis Brenda narrowly defeated House Majority Floor Leader Jonathan Shell of Garrard County in one of the most-watched races for the state House, according to unofficial results.


Brenda tried in the Republican primary election for the 71st House District seat to capitalize on teacher anger against legislators who backed a controversial pension bill in this year's law-making session. It was Brenda's first bid for public office.
Shell, a farmer who has occupied the seat since 2012 and had the backing of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell as a potential rising star in the GOP, played a prominent role in handling the pension bill in the legislature.
The measure sparked a backlash of frustration by thousands of teachers who held protests at the Capitol.

'Our Voices Were Heard.' Dozens of Teachers Advance in Oklahoma Primaries After Walkouts

Two Republican state representatives who voted against a tax hike to fund teacher raises this year lost their primaries. They were among six GOP state lawmakers who lost to primary challengers on Tuesday, the Tulsa World reported. Several other Republican incumbents were forced into runoff elections.

“Our voices were heard tonight,” said Oklahoma City assistant principal Sherrie Conley, according to the Associated Press. Conley will compete in a runoff election against Republican state Rep. Bobby Cleveland, who voted against the tax increase for teacher raises.

Another Republican, state Rep. Kevin McDugle, narrowly won his primary by just three votes against a candidate who withdrew from the race weeks ago. In November, McDugle will face Democrat Cyndi Ralston, a teacher who declared her candidacy after McDugle criticized educators who flooded the state capitol during the walkout. “I’m not voting for another stinking measure when they’re acting the way they’re acting,” he said in a Facebook Live video, which has since been deleted. “Go right ahead, be pissed at me if you want to.” McDugle later apologized.

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That's fantastic. It's especially encouraging to see Republican teachers running against incumbents on a education funding platform.