I was not born yesterday, judge

Clamshells? What clamshells? I was too busy dancin' an' jammin', mon.

we said "glack, glack"
you know, last newsletter day some Objectivist came in here and tore my house post to shreds, which was kinda the point of the post, but then all the comments and likened himself to the farmer in the dell. he wraps up his big arrogant point by saying the bone stands alone.
what a cheese

I prefer to be around people who have a panda's understanding of good grammar, too, but if wishes were fishes, then women....no, that's not gonna work.

take 2: I prefer to be around people who have a panda's understanding of good grammar, [NO, THIS IS NOT A SLAM AT YOUR GRAMMAR SKILLS. OR ANYONE ELSE'S] but I don't get it very often. sigh.

"My conclusion? Public education is killing off our best and brightest, and it's not by accident"

Brilliant conclusion. The schools are crushing Reason one little mind at a time on purpose..

Hey, I remember seeing all those in the original b&w on Sat mornings. You young whippersnappers have no respect for your elders, esp when it comes to the deprivations we suffered.

...went the little green frog one day...glub glub went the little green frog! (Ope sorry... I slipped back into my church camp campfire song days.)

or to - maybe - somehow - find yourself a dead-end job where you don't make enough money to pay taxes? hmmmm.

I gave you a point

(glub, glub)?

Federal government. I suppose if I had made that clear in my original comment, it might have eliminated some of the drama. /sigh

Thank you for not wanting to spend my money. However, I have no choice but to pay taxes for education or go to jail.

I know...I just to hear his rational self interest point. Guess I'm not going to tho.

lol

Thank you.

pay attention. that's mother goose "he could eat no fat, she could eat no lean"

ummm, I take issue with paragraph 7 -
by definition, a public school is financed by the public [that's the government] which means its curriculum is skewed.
Call them "city schools" if you want - if they're financed with taxes, they are tainted from the very beginning.

Didn't the line 'be he fat or be he lean' come from Jack and the Beanstalk?

Do you mean "a federal issue" like "make a big deal about" or like "an issue for the federal government"?
The federal government certainly has MADE it their issue.

No points?

The way we dealt with after-school care [remember, I worked at a private school for smart kids] was that parents paid for it; at least an hour and a half was "work time" for students; and it ended at 6 PM. If you were late picking up your kid, you owed the day-care person who stayed $1 per minute, payable in cash on the spot. But the parents I knew had already self-selected the school.

Huzzah!!! but you forgot the free breakfast, too, and the hand-wringing "how will those kids get fed during the summer, or on vacation?"

That was ME drumming my fingers!

disclaimer: I have no source handy for the following because all my "teacher books" are packed and won't be unpacked until I can do it without crying.

By most measures, "gifted" [read smart] begins at about 135 on the Stanford-Binet. About 2% of the population falls above that 135.
ASIDE: Like any test, the further you get away from the middle, the less accurate the test is. The biggie is the Four Sigma - they take the top 2% of that top 2%, and they do their own testing. I understood the questions, but couldn't answer them!

So, we have the "smart population" being 2% of the total population.
For the population of teenagers who try to or do commit suicide, 50% are smart.

My conclusion? Public education is killing off our best and brightest, and it's not by accident.

It is assumed by most educational institutions for the general public that the smart kids will get along, so we don't have to worry about them - and they do get used as "mini-teachers". Most of the smart kids I taught learned NOTHING academic during High School. One reported to me "It's tough - I can do no work, and get an A, or do 5 hours of work, learn something, and get the same A. Nobody cares but me."

Well done!

I think the fact that I was referring to my county property tax got lost in the heat of things.

I don't want to spend your money, and I certainly don't think public education is a federal issue.