Think Republicans and Democats should do this???
 

I normally do not throw my hat into the political arena. So I am technically still not about to do so.

Earlier today I was thinking about the jobs situation and something I heard recently about how there are several CEO's who have come out to state that their issues hiring overseas are no long financially motivated, but intelligence motivated. They have publicly stated that they can get the same work done in the US for the same if not equal overall cost, but that now it has become an issue of the workers in other countries just plain out being smarter.

So this got me to thinking about the education system, which is clearly a major issue and has been for a long time. I am not going to say that there are not good parents out there who do very well by their children, but there are also a lot of enablers who tell their kids they are the best thing since sliced bread even when their child is a little shit and fucks up badly in school.

I personally think that parents should be very involved in their kids schooling and thought why not incentivize parents to do so.

What if there was a government instituted tax break/deduction dependent on a child's grades. Easily monitored by a third party, the schools, and redeemable the year following the end of the full school year. School year ends in June, claim can be made the following April. I am not talking about some astronomical amount here.

How many parents do you think would actually start pushing their kids harder if there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of say $2000 for the whole family. I am talking about a deduction, not a rebate or credit here.

Obviously the logistics would have to be worked out, but I think there could be some legs to a program like this.

Thoughts???

I think Vendzilla will be in this thread shortly to o'pine.
:winkwink:

I think its a great idea and I would be getting that deduction. :)

CEO's are the best at spin. It's a bald faced lie to say foreign labor is the same cost in other countries, that is a preposterous fucked up lie and still most all other countries do not have as an advanced education system at all compared to the USA.
America's Public Education system sucks but it is better than most.
America also has the most colleges and universities for degree educations that output the most degree's in the world.

The CEO is simply bullshitting.
I would love the names of those CEO's and what companies they represent.
What they said is not backed by facts or findings.



Good idea though on prizes for the best students.

like: if there were no wetbacks , we could educate the real americans....

( Naturally, he will not point out that during his "school years " , he was riding in the back of a red pick-up truck - his own words btw ... ) ... ) :upsidedow

I personally do not think that a 2,000 dollar deduction is much of an incentive as that only means they do not have to pay tax on 2,000 dollars which at best is a savings of a few hundred dollars.

In many cases (I think the stats show the majority)...in this day and age...unlike years in the past...there are two working parents in the home now...and between commute time and work hours there simply is not the time for the parents to spend much time tutoring their children. In some cases one or more of the parents have two jobs so the time for their children is reduced even further.

It may not be a bad idea and may even be a good idea but...in my opinion...the monetary incentive would have to be great enough to relieve a significant financial burden on the family to provide the time for tutoring their children.

the problem is that the have nots would blame the school for their kids bad grades..

we are a society of freeloaders and thats the problem..

and i also agree with alien. i have 10 phillipinos that i pay between $75 - $125 per week and my top guy who oversees them all has a masters in computer science..

not only are they cheap and intelligent, but they appreciate their job and bust their ass no less than 8 hours a day..

americans are lazy and want to do as little work as possible and be overpaid..

so, until americans stop being lazy and looking for handouts, jobs going oversees will never come back..





.

You dont wont to know situation beside USA and Easter EUrope, i am fucking Engineer of E. business and i can't find job, fucking retarded system of education and country!

If parents have to be bribed in order to push their children to perform better, there's really no hope in any of it.

The problem is not going to be fixed by throwing money at it.

The root of the problem is that we have incentive-ized under achievers and the looting class by offering money, healthcare and housing to people who have children out of wedlock and we reward them for NOT working.

Years ago Nobel prize winner Dr William Shockley wrote about this de-evolution and was chastised a racist for it, but fundamentally he got it right.

We used to have the worlds best education system, now we rank 50th.

We punish the achievers and the people who work hard to make a modest living and we reward the people who produce the non achievers and we wonder why this country has gone to hell.

The Democrats and the Republicans are not the solution, they are the fucking problem, social engineering to buy votes got us in this mess...it won't get us out.

take away the Xbox, the Internet/Facebook and cellphone- honestly if I had those 3 things as a child and teenager nobody, surely not my parents, could convince me that i already didn't have everything i need for a great and rewarding life. i can imagine the screaming matches between me and my Mom and she'd give up like most parents do. the only solution would be to take those physically away from me until I fell in line.

Our schools teach memorization to a tested standard... like math, it's 1-2 ways to solve a problem, do it wrong and you fail... even if you have the correct answer.

Other than basic fundamentals that are tested... our kids aren't being taught much of anything useful.

We won't let schools be correctly funded, besides old knowledge that is often 20 YEARS out of date, our kids eat total trash, man made, packaged, death 'corporate made' food that kills our kids brain processing power, injects them with hypoactive dyes and preservatives that fire up ADD.

We, Americans want better education but refuse to pay for it.. or fight for changes, they just bitch it's not right, then send the kids to the same school. Welcome to America....

Kinda what TheDoc said, if you aren't taught the way you learn best, it can be demotivating, hard to achieve goals/grades, etc. And any learning disabilities just amplifies that even if they aren't normal ones. My epilepsy led to a learning disorder which I had to overcome. On top of that I'm a hands-on learner, and not many schools are. It's sad actually, there aren't many times in life you can't ask a buddy next to you how to do something if you don't know.

And I'm not a parent who defends my dipshit children. That drives me nuts, be a parent, not a friend.

It would seem that way, but adult sports work this way as well. Not like pro's, they buy those people... but like the local soccer team and crap. If they have too many people on a team, they'll swap everyone in for a quick play... normally though an adult walks up to rest and someone takes the persons place, it's not a coach telling us.

You're also talking about Jr. High.... They're learning playing & team skills, having a practice and it gives them a rest, if you took a coach out you would have girls walking up to rest. And it's female sports, they normally only have one sport at a time.

Oh, team A and team B, and so on... yeah we did that too, for sure the younger we were and the larger the team. Adult teams do this as well, entire lineups.

I'm decent at most sports, but I sucked at them in Jr. High. It wasn't until high school and a good coach that the skills finally came out, for sure in baseball.

Even if you suck, you need sports... for sure when you're younger or a young adult.

Team skills and sportsmanship are very important life skills, skills that will get used throughout life, until you die.

Step 1) Kill teachers unions
Step 2) Stop babying kids and catering to the lowest common denominator and start demanding results and demanding excellence... you know, like schools used to do.

Its so funny how we have such shitty schools, shitty education and that's all relatively new. Everyone's answer is all this special attention, special teaching techniques, more money etc etc etc.... yet kids never got that in the past. You were told to sit down, shut up and do your work and if you got out of line you got beat in front of the class. You were expected to do well or you were an asshole and any adult within a 50 mile radius would let you know that.

Why is it that suddenly today, education is this insanely complex issue, when for centuries, it has always been extremely simple? Sit down, shut up, listen, take notes, do your homework and don't be an asshole and don't even think about doing shitty in school.

We've lowered our expectations, lowered standards and started getting politically correct and are always saying "it's not their fault"... and they suffer for it. That's all that's really changed.

Lengthen the school days, add physical education and art back into the curriculum, and shorten summer recess by a month.

The "Millennials" Are Coming

Sure, I've raised a kid and did it right

If you would have been raised under Eric's idea, your parents would have been fined

We refuse to pay for it because of the cost of educating illegal aliens, see prop 187, at least in California.
My daughter is a vegetarian


I have a lot of respect for those that overcome adversity, great going!!

I raised my daughter as a friend and a parent, she's my best friend, graduated from high school on the principals honor roll, had a year of college done by then, then joined the Navy to be an Avionics Electronics Calibration Tech, got 5 medals while she was in, two for humanitarian efforts in the Philippines, then got out and is now pre med in Washington state. Best part, still my best friend. And one of the happiest people I know.

Problem is that most parents only know what they learned from their parents. I kinda did things differently, I was raised by my mother and step father, didn't really get close to my dad, because of that, when I spilt from my daughters mom, I took charge, got custody and did the right thing. I got involved, I interacted with teachers and scared a few. I think one thing that some over attentive parents forget is to let your kids be kids. Raise them to be in control of their world. At age eight, I taught her to boil an egg in the micro wave using a coffee cup, after that, she got a little more responsibility and is in charge of her life.


Eric, the main problem with your idea, (and I would love to see more parents involved) is that we are way too PC for it to work. Illegal aliens would complain they don't benefit from it because they don't pay taxes and should be paid cash, and a line of lawyers would back them up. And that would just be the start. Some would laugh, but think about it , it would actually happen.

I think Mike is on target from my personal experiences::thumbsup

After seeing the difference between a good school district and a bad one. Its pretty clear. It has always come down to the involvement of the parents in lives of their children. Kids in better neighborhoods tend to have parents that care more about their childs education. And a good education is the only motivator.
You could offer $10k a year to lower income parents and I dont think it would get the kids grades up. Those parents will spend more time trying to figure out how to take advantage of the system or cheat to get the money. And liberal politicians will find a way to help them cheat to gain their votes.

What you wrote and as long as a School Districts like USD 497 in Lawrence, Kansas can find over $25,000,000.00 (Twenty Five Million Dollars) to spend on sports complexes while firing teachers, running classrooms short of materials, denying tenure to teachers who clearly deserve tenure, paying administrators exhorbitant salaries and creating a monster of a beaureaucratic system which becomes self-perpetuating and must continue to justify its own existence, none of this will change.

A $2K tax deduction or credit will do nothing but engender abuses.

I do not have the solution but as long as money is put into the wrong places, there will be no solution.

Overall, I like the idea BUT the following should be addressed

Standardization - is a C in a hypercompetitive and driven school really a C and an A in a school filled with meth heads really an A?

Are there any conflicts of interest?

What about course standarization? Some courses aren't available throughout the system

Nice theory, to bad Obama is president. Vote for Eric!

Considering 50% of the population pays ZERO income tax what good is a dedcution to them? And they're the one with the stupid kids.

Many states like Wisconsin and Tenn are already doing that. I suspect the quality of teaching in those states will get worse not better.

The whole "unions are bad" crowd always gets me. Unions would have NEVER existsted if workers had been treated right to begn with. So who is REALLY to blame?

Unions are a necessary evil when economies are industrializing, but they are just plain evil in economies which have matured.

I don't think that's the problem at all. I think the basic underlying problem is the same reason the economy collapsed -- greed and financial gain. The better grades kids get, the more government funding the school gets. The kids are retards, or its too much work to teach them? No worries, just change the curriculum a little, lower the passing grades, and you'll be fine.

Then the downward spiral kicks in, and every school district starts doing it to keep up. Fast forward 30 - 40 years, and high school graduates are about as intelligent as a 7th grade South Korean kid. School has a fancy gymnasium, and the principal has a nice car though.

I remember high school in Texas when I was 16. You weren't taught to question or think. All you really needed to do was memorize a bunch of names, dates, and other shit, and you'd get honors. You were in no shape or form required to stretch the limits of your mind though.

For one of many examples, the largest experiment we did in Biology class the entire year was dipping litmus paper into different liquids to see what color it would turn. Plus the teacher kept promising us if she had enough snails in her garden this year, we would do another experiment to see how many paperclips the snails could pull. Sad, but true. In Canada, I would have been dissecting pig fetuses, and sheep brains.

This is just a bullshit excuse to keep shipping jobs overseas for higher profits. HTH

a couple of iq points ain't making no fucking difference whatsoever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_...lth_of_Nations

You should have went to private school.

The US school system is lightyears behind most european and even 3rd world countries. For that matter our health care sytem is so broiken it should be scrapped and the insurance companies should be taken out back and shot IMHO...

Look at countries like canada and the UK, if they can have insurance and good schooling for children why cant we, the worlds largest economy, it is due to the corrupt and broken government system of kickbacks and pure evil so ingrained inour society that their is no turning back. The only thing that can fix our schools and healthcare is a civil war or complete anarchy.

My two cents....

Education always has and always will be the "silver bullet". If you figure out how to fix it, it will solve most of our problems. However, it's not just as easy as saying "give the parents more incentive to help their kids more".

I have a kid in grade school in Northern California, just north of Sacramento.

The first issue that comes to mind is the Hispanic population. Even here we have a rather large Hispanic population, where parents do not speak English. In grades 1-4, Hispanic kids are being held back a year to "catch up" because English isn't their native language. In these cases, the Hispanic parents are unable to help - Homework is in English, and if they don't speak English, well, that's not gonna work. (I have a lot of Hispanic friends with grade school kids, and they don't understand anything about American schools - Band, choir, PE, sports, etc - It's totally foreign to them.)

Another issue is currently in the California school system, they are using what's called "New Math". If you don't know what I'm talking about, I can't explain it to you. It's no longer "What is nine times nine" but instead "Why is nine times nine eighty-one?". I don't understand it at all, and frankly the teachers don't get either. My kid just wrapped up fifth grade, and is doing algebra already.

There was a report this week about fourth graders failing history tests. And this link here says it all:

My kid is in fifth grade, and just started to study Abraham Lincoln in the past four months - Not in fourth grade. In fourth grade they study how America was discovered and the Native Americans, and in fifth grade they study how our nation was founded. It's not that kids are dumb, at the fourth grade level they just haven't studied it yet. This seems to be the same exactly program I went through thirty some odd years ago, because I remember making "dioramas" about Native Americans in 4th grade.

As for the CEOS.... They aren't stupid. Why pay an employee an American $70k a year plus benefits when you can pay someone outside of the US $7k?

You cant compare a pre-industrialized nation without labor laws to today... no matter how much you love communism and support the idea.

As the product of a family where most everyone believed that a 98% was nothing to celebrate because missing those extra two points just meant you were careless . . . I'm not sure I would have benefited from more grade pressure.

In a more general way, I think that might just lead to grade inflation where people would be happy with mediocre teachers who handed out good grades liberally.

Agreed.

I don't think incentive is the issue. It is a combination of the fact that education has become a political football and that the curriculum and structure of our education system that is flawed. First of all, a primary enemy of learning is the multiple choice test question. It serves to demotivate the student and makes them reliant on laziness. One of the answers is true... so it is a lottery as to whether or not the correct answer is chosen.

Additionally, the curriculum does not serve to train students for success by teaching them through challenge. The focus is on completing the assignment and passing the test which has been "means tested" against the lowest common denominator. Not to mention "grading on a curve".

There are a number of other issues that affect curriculum and systematic flaws that include how teachers are trained to teach. It would take a book to explain or address them all... however, the fundamental idea is that we need to address curriculum flaws and teaching methodology flaws. The most important change to curriculum would be from the current system to one that is less focused on graduation system (meaning K through 12) and more focused on the goal of education. The graduation system places all students in a box and is the antithesis of promoting students who are self motivated and self challenged. A system like this would quickly separate the wheat from the chaff.

This system should be easy enough to fix... there are groups of people who determine the curriculum. Usually it is a combination of the Dept of Education and a local agency or committee. Whether or not they would adopt an idea such as this is another question entirely.

Assertions like that earn you a dunce hat. Just because someone supports the idea of a union doesn't mean they are communists... let's stick to the topic at hand rather than hyperbole. :2 cents:

My first thought... who's going to teach and decide these children's performances... current public school teachers?? Do you know how dirty these already underpaid teachers are going to be if there is financial incentive to pass/fail kids? You're talking serious corruption opportunities there. And not to mention a lot of the teachers out there are just plain dumb and teaching subjects they hardly know about. It is just a poor system in place already to offer money incentives. Too many variables making it difficult for the kids already, it would be greatly unbalanced also.

Its simple (although i understand that it might not be simple enough for you). This is the year 2011. We don't need unions. Unions came into existence because there were no labor laws. Suggesting they are needed today because they "exist because.." pointing to events a century ago, is no different than suggesting civil wars need to happen to protect us from having slavery again or some similarly moronic analogy.

Unions in 2011, in the USA are destructive in nature. Their very existence is predicated on the notion that union members are being taken advantage of. There is no such thing as "fair" to a union member because if anyone was content, the union would cease to exist. Unions are about doing less for more. Our education system is a shining example of the destructive nature of unions... where a teacher is almost impossible to fire for any reason if they are tenured - no matter how useless they are as teachers.

This is a common problem:

In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/...#ixzz1PXSyuaLr

Saying "I support teachers unions" in the USA is tantamount to saying "i'm support making my child retarded"

Funny how 3rd world countries don't need teachers unions and untold billions being spent on education to produce brighter students than the USA does. Maybe people having higher standards, wanting to learn, respecting an education and demanding more has a little something to do with it?..

nobel prize winner Mike Judge had it 100% correct in his oscar winning documentary

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...4L._SL500_.jpg

Eric, Eric, Eric... Parents already get $2K CASH back if they have a child and make over 11K, so now you are going to ask them to work on getting a child educated so that they can collect the $2K they already get for doing nothing...

I do like your idea, but it has been ruined by previous handouts. This will get the same negativity as the drug testing they plan to do here in Florida for welfare recipients.

You would have to give the parents an additional $2k per child based on some test SCORE.

That's not a very logical reason to properly fund and correct them.

It's not like every school, all over, is filled with illegals, sucking our Country dry. It's in very few schools in a few areas around a City... and only a handful of States

With such an illegal problem, you would think the major exodus of illegals in Az and Ok, might have lowered enrollment, but no.. might have freed up more of the budget, but no. Might have done something, at least a tiny bit for the schools, with such a huge huge huge problem... but no.

Jobs didn't grow, budgets didn't improve, rental property didn't open up all over, welfare claims still went up, funding didn't free up from all that they took, ER's didn't instantly empty, hospitals are just as tight on budget.

While I don't agree with illegals being here... clearly something isn't right.

Either the issue is very small - school based, or we're being told complete bullshit and not an issue at all or very tiny, or illegals produce tax dollars for the system, thus they wash out completely.

Yeah the States without teacher unions sure rock it.... :error

That is an easy judgement to make until your get screwed over by the company that you work for if you get hurt at work (for example). I have family and more than a dozen friends that have gotten hurt at work and later been totally screwed over by the company and workers comp. The ones that came out ok were union members... the rest got fucked including my Dad who had his left leg crushed at work when a ladder he was climbing up broke and he fell 30 feet. Later ended up having to spend his retirement on medical treatments that the company should have paid.

My Dad is a big dude - 6' 3" 300 lbs. He isn't fat... he is just big. I have seen him pick up the back of an S-10 pickup truck before. The company argued that he was overweight and got his leg crushed because of it. He had requested a new ladder 2 weeks before this happened because the one they provided was getting old and they told him to deal with it. The company approved doctor told him that he would never walk on that leg again and his own doctor said he would but needed surgery. Workers comp refused to pay for the surgery and told him that he had the right to appeal and the company told him that they would fight the appeal... he is a Republican and didn't appeal... he just used his own retirement to pay for it and he can still walk today. He never was able to get a job in the same field...

Another friend of mine is an electrician and he had something similar happen to him... he had a ladder break and he broke his collarbone and it did damage to the nerves in his shoulder. They tried every dirty trick in the book including saying he was on drugs... fortunately, he had gotten a drug test at the hospital that proved their assertion false (it is standard procedure for the ER to do a drug test). They fought but he was a member of a union and they represented him at no cost... and he ended up winning in the end. They paid all of his medical cost plus lost wages.

California, having all it's sanctuary cities is getting all the Arizona illegals now, we're fucked

Hey if you want my personal opinion, take that shit away from them, make them earn it.

Your kid doesn't get at least B's in school - No Deduction
Your kid commits a crime - No Deduction

On top of that, let's limit these deductions.

Kid 1 - Full Deduction
Kid 2 - Full Deduction
Kid 3 - nothing
Kid 4+ - YOU PAY

You want to stop people from bilking the system with kids that they only look at as a paycheck. This needs to change.

As far as the schooling goes, I wish it could go back to the days when I was a kid. My dad walked into school day one, told my teachers, "I expect my son to be punished if he misbehaves or does not toe the line. I also expect to be notified when I pick him up if he misbehaves or does not toe the line." If I fucked up, I got my knuckles whacked and I got it again when I got home. Is it a perfect system, NO, did it work, YES!

LOL, You went to the same school system I went to!

Fitty Political discussions by a newb