How Blue is Your Valley?
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I’m not going to do much commentary on the underlying proposed legislation, but this statement from BV and Olathe is legit hilarious.“Without intending to sound elitist…” * proceeds to sound SUPER elitist *
Then right below this jewell they list district ACT and SAT scores compared to the poors in the rest of the state. It’s so, so good. And in no way any kind of dog whistle no sir not at all.
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I See. Public school but make it private.
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@FarmerJayhawk You can’t open the school up to whomever wants to go there. There has to be some means of balancing the number of students at each school. Does the proposed legislation have a means to check the number of students that enroll at each school? If not, the passage you quote, while maybe poorly worded, makes sense.
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@approxinfinity yes, districts are allowed to set their own transfer capacity. Which makes it even more “stay out, poors.” Worth noting 47 states have some kind of open enrollment policy, including Kansas. This changes it from optional (districts can agree to take each other’s students) to mandatory.
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@FarmerJayhawk said in How Blue is Your Valley?:
@approxinfinity yes, districts are allowed to set their own transfer capacity. Which makes it even more “stay out, poors.” Worth noting 47 states have some kind of open enrollment policy, including Kansas. This changes it from optional (districts can agree to take each other’s students) to mandatory.
Not sure what it currently looks like legislatively but certainly feels like public education is in some serious jeopardy at the moment. The pandemic only widened existing inequities and some states are making it nearly impossible for anyone with a brain to want to teach.
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@benshawks08 said in How Blue is Your Valley?:
@FarmerJayhawk said in How Blue is Your Valley?:
@approxinfinity yes, districts are allowed to set their own transfer capacity. Which makes it even more “stay out, poors.” Worth noting 47 states have some kind of open enrollment policy, including Kansas. This changes it from optional (districts can agree to take each other’s students) to mandatory.
Not sure what it currently looks like legislatively but certainly feels like public education is in some serious jeopardy at the moment. The pandemic only widened existing inequities and some states are making it nearly impossible for anyone with a brain to want to teach.
Certainly a shifting landscape. I’ve been tracking changes in traditional public school (TPS) enrollment for awhile and it’s astonishing how many families have up and quit the TPS system. Last I saw it was about 1.5 million. Every state I have data lost TPS students. Utah was flat but slightly down, some states lost 6%+ TPS enrollment.
Homeschooling about doubled, and charters gained about 250,000 students. NCES doesn’t have private school enrollment past 2019 yet so that’s hard to say, but my feeling is that it went up, but not to its peak 20 years ago.
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I can tell you I’m pretty mad about this! Charter and private pick their kids, no special Ed. If they get money taken from our state they don’t have to account for anything, where public schools do. They can pick athletes like Bishop miege does, sorry if your kids go there.
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Thoughts, @wissox ?
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I find it interesting that #ksleg will pass out of #k12educationcommitte a bill that has over 70 opponent testimony and 4 proponent. That’s listening to Kansans! They were allowing proponents more time to speak too. Most were out of state. A senator on the committee said she didn’t want to hear from the out of staters.
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What the ks leg is trying to pass is several bills, they want public, not charter or private schools to put their complete plans and materials for the whole year in a portal for everyone to see. I know at least one math teacher who has 4 different preps. These teachers and parents were trying to tell this committee that they can get about anything they want and reach teachers, etc thru all sorts of ways. This guy testifying works for heritage something, I can’t think of the second word. Koch bros. They are trying to bring down down public schools. Some of you know these small towns, that’s what keeps them going. There are no choices. But yet their reps will vote against it. This guy use to live in hutch, use to be a senator. He has no evidence. Senator Sykes kicked his butt.
Listen to just the beginning
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in How Blue is Your Valley?:
I find it interesting that #ksleg will pass out of #k12educationcommitte a bill that has over 70 opponent testimony and 4 proponent. That’s listening to Kansans! They were allowing proponents more time to speak too. Most were out of state. A senator on the committee said she didn’t want to hear from the out of staters.
HB 2662 is the bill, and yeah, it’s bad. I don’t mind the transparency stuff. All my course materials and syllabi are public record and posted on a website. All part of the gig.
The rest of it is a trash fire. Parents shouldn’t be able to unilaterally get books removed from the school library or dictate what goes into them. They’re repositories of knowledge, not political statements. Section 4 of the bill is the worst part. It effectively criminalizes teaching certain things or to quote, “Display material that is harmful to minors.” Which the bill defines as, “…that quality of any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse when the material or performance, taken as a whole or, with respect to a prosecution for an act described by subsection (a)(1), that portion of the material that was actually exposed to the view of minors, has the following characteristics: (A) The average adult person applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex to minors; (B) the average adult person applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance depicts or describes nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse in a manner that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors; and
a reasonable person would find that the material or performance lacks serious literary, scientific, educational, artistic or political value for minors.”It also applies to professors. Which, it’s certainly possible to have minors in a college classroom or taking college courses. I had 45 hours going into my undergraduate degree. I’m almost always down with bills that enable greater school choice for parents, but this is has nothing to do with that. This is a gag order.
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SC has something similar getting proposed, sounds like. Goal is to eliminate freedom of thought and indoctrinate good little children.
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@mayjay I don’t comment here anymore, but do read still. This stuff aggravates me a lot. I’m actually rather conservative, but these ‘teachers must post all materials’ bills are really ways for the people pushing them to make sure no one is teaching critical race theory. I’ve never heard of a teacher teaching CRT, and if they did, they’re teachers, they present materials that students can learn and form opinions on. I really just frankly think this stuff is a horrible overreach by legislators and teachers will leave the profession at a faster rate than they already are. I couldn’t even comply with a law like that as I’m kind of a last minute kind of person and my best lessons and plans are frequently done in the days leading up to the lesson. In other words I procrastinate!
I miss commenting but there’s way too many irksome people to me to find any pleasure in it right now. I like the Jayhawks and a lot of people commenting don’t. So I’ll just read so I know what’s going on. I never had much good to say anyways!
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@wissox it’s important to me. That one dude seems to be gone. I agree with you on this posting plans for a yr too. So many things change, including individual kids. Everything is open, parents, teachers and students all testified to this. Parents are so afraid teachers will make their white kids feel bad. Funny it wasn’t there last yr or before. Koch bros are killing public Ed. But if they give out vouchers, the other schools don’t have to have yrly plans or submit grades. They can choose students, not admit special Ed kids or pick kids of different races. Of course they can pick their athletes. Rich families. Etc. rural towns will dry up. Our school is good, we have great, trusting parents, maybe a few not, but a great community that backs the school! Our teachers are rock stars, so many that have been teachers or runners up to ks teachers of the yr! Yes, I have their back!
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Critical thinking thinking is dangerous i guess.
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@Zabudda watch out, they’ll start calling that CTT and it will get banned as well!
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Lol
