Travis In Austin

Tome has flown, congratulations.

Nutella is made out of Soylent Green.

It is 65 in Texas, ir 5,000 posts, whichever occurs first. http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/txstatutes/PE/5/22/22.04

I used to love going to Swensens in San Francisco on Hyde, but I always thought Bud's was a little bit better. But I think Swensens really changed after Mr. Swensen died. It just isn't the same somehow.

It is in HEB, limit 2 gals per customer. It is also in Randalls

Used to love the houses like yours when I was a kid. They made a haunted mansion every year, it was quite something, at least for an 8 year old.

Well I took Jim's suggestion to look up the person "who invented" Common Core Math Standards. Funny, this guy doesn't look black. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/12/29/371918272/the-man-behind-common-core-math

Well Jim I think you have uncovered a bombshell, you have single handily uncovered the conspiracy that everyone knew was behind this crazyness of attempting to create national standards that would make the US ed system competitive with the rest of the world. A black guy wrote the math standards in such a way that it would make is easier for black kids to learn and harder for white kids. That's what "level" means right? Was he he able to succeed in designing it so it would be even harder for Asians to learn than whites? How did it come out for the Latinos? Easier or harder? This guy is a pure genius, he can create a standard that will be super hard for an average Asian kid to learn, and easier for an average black kid to learn so everyone should come out level. Whoevwr this guy is he must be a genius, to come up with a standard, not just dumbing it down so everyone can pass it, but that makes it so black kids can learn it easier is simply amazing. I will look him up for sure. On how the teachers want you to show your kids how to do math, that is curriculum, not standards. As far as the money goes, Common Core is not a federal program, it is sponsored by the Governor's Association. Federal money is not keyed into Common Core. Federal funds go to states under ESEA, and the current version of that is No Child Left Behind which requires states to periodically test. It is interesting that the governors would be behind standards that are all about money, it wouldn't be the first time. As I mentioned before, the House had a bill they passed this year in the Spring that addressed all of this, and the Senate had a different bill they passed in July. Didn't hear a peep from anyone. The Senate bill would have prohibited any attempt by DofEd from linking federal money to adopting any national standards, Common Core, or otherwise. It also would reform state testing. But it sits stagnant. I guess they have much more important things do deal with than children's education.

They are incredible. How was Gabby's solo? I saw them with Robert Trujillo, mind blowing. Sadly, I took photos, so maybe it was all just a dream.

Good ole Boonville, we went through there many times on our way to Mendocino and Ft. Bragg. They have four boys, the two youngest were adopted, on African American the other Native American. The father was a professor at Washington University and was denied tenure because of his political beliefs and so he and his wife decided to drop out. He had a PhD from the University of Chicago in Sociology and studied at the London School of Economics. She has a masters from the London School of Economics. The oldest three boys all attended Harvard undergrad. The oldest went to Harvard Medical School and then worked in public health in San Francisco fighting HIV. He works in the Obama Administration as the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. The second oldest, went to law school, and then worked his way through medical school at Harvard as a lawyer. The adopted AA son went got a degrer in AA Studies and then went to law school at Yale. He works for a legal aid type firm in the east providing legal services to the poor and in civil rights cases. The 4th boy is going to a community college up in Sacramento and kind of figuring out what he wants to do. The oldest boy took the SAT and scored in the 1300s. The big question is if the boys have kids, did they home school them?

That 3rd link is awesome. The Great Courses by the Teaching Company is also excellent.

Let me make one last clarification.Institutions and bureaucracies like the public school system are not needed in order to get a first rate education in modern society. Well for some things they are. Hmmmmmm, lets see, what kind of professions or occupations would you like to see formal education and training by an institution, public or private, or certification by a bureaucracy as opposed to being "self educated."Medicine Nursing Pharmacology Psychology Marriage and family therapist Police Officer Law Accounting Engineer Architect Airline Pilot Train Engineer Accountant Optometrist Dentist Well those are just a few where I would prefer the individual was delayed and had to attend a public or private institution or be certified by a giant bureaucracy.

Arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to school to show his science teacher.

So this was a trade of some sorts? He sent you some stuff and you are sending him some stuff? How does he know it will cost $20 extra for 2 day express? How is he supposed to pay you the 20 before you ship it. I would say it is not my problem. I would ask him if he preferred to wait until he teturns before you ship, or does he have an alternate address he would like it sent to, work or business? Or let me guess, he somehow needs this item for his trip. He didn't send you an international money order by any chance did he? I am sure not, but if so STOP and don't do anything else.

Did you read what I wrote? Or, do you just like telling people they're nuts? LOL! Try especially 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and see if you can find me advising to teach "34 kids in a classroom." None of those points solve any of the issues. Using these methods would take far more time to accomplish and drastically increase the room for error. Let alone, who manages and mandates the quality of education being received?Less time, not more. Kids can learn at a far, far greater rate of intake than public schools provide. Manage? Why would someone need to manage it? Who is managing the education that all the dropouts are getting out on the street? Answer - no one. And yet, some become very, very smart. We're getting stuck in the old ideas that education is like building a Model T Ford on an assembly line. LOL! That's the whole trouble with the "public school" idea. It's ancient and doesn't acknowledge the modern world.Let's assume I have a 6 year old kid here. Why do I need to have him in your assembly line? Why would I want your managers to be managing him? I'll set him off on very advanced creative works, that he enjoys and is intrigued by, and he'll learn because he wants to. Maybe building stuff, maybe art, maybe music, maybe programming or robots or writing or poetry? Each thing to learn will involve reading and probably some math. He will find his own talents and pursue them. Management by Joe Blow not needed. We've become so accustomed to the idea that school is a "place" filled with "managers" and "testing" that we've lost the whole means of how people fundamentally learn things. Big Shots with Ph.D. in the FBI are perpetually amazed at the idea that a 12 year old can hack into government computers. They still think you need 8 years of university! That's just dumb thinking. You think all these Rusky hackers making millions of gullible Americans online went to college? Not likely. Learning occurs when internal passion drives goals. Little kids can learn very complex video games in a fraction of the time that their "educated" parents can learn them. Why? Because they have the passion for it. Most development happens by age 3!! That is the parents job to shape there Childs future. I do not totally disagree with your home teaching process vs: the current state of our educational system. Hell, we have gone down the drain so much in what public schools offer, such as advanced classes in chemistry actually using chemicals, beakers and Bunsen burners to actual shop classes like metals, woodworking and welding. Not only is the curriculum no longer there, the meals they are serving are kids are total crap and even were prior to the current first lady, they are not even allowed to have metal silverware, plastic Knives, plastic forks only once in a while and only Styrofoam bowls, not the bowls that came with the tray. Joe, IF you have a wide enough range of learning to properly educate your child, MORE power too you, I say great!! BUT, My father was a history teacher first, then a Principle, then Superintendent over 3 different School systems, the last had the second highest operational budget in the state for AA sized schools. He was also treasurer and later, president of the county board of education. My mom was a first grade teacher with her PHD in education and a Masters in guidance counseling, so I was raised with a lot more insight on this then you have. As stated before by others, "This is NOT an EASEY fix" and the largest problem we have and have had for decades is Federal Government intrusion. Just as the Federal Government has gotten involved with healthcare to the point that the Nurse and Doctor MUST spend more time charting than with the actual patient, so has it negatively affected the Teachers and their actual ability to perform their roles and actually teach and foster young minds. Once again, IF you can give your kid a leg up, GREAT, but it is a HEII of a lot of work and you need to be proficient in a lot of areas! Roger Then your Dad will tell you it was the federal government that created public education in this country, starting with the Northwest Ordinance. He will also tell you that the first six presidents, i.e. the "founding fathers" were all very strong promoters of public education. He will also tell you that no state is required to take federal funds, but if they do it comes with strings. Why does it come with strings? Because some states felt it is ok to spend less on education for schools that were predominantly one color or another. Some states and local school boards thought it was ok to spend a million dollars on a boys football team but nothing on sports for girls. Some states believed that special needs kids didn't deserve specialized teachers and programs to enrich their lives. He will also tell you that the federal contribution to states is less than 8 percent of a state's total education budget. If what the federal goverment requires is so horrible why didn't they dump the federal funds and just raise taxes to make up the difference? Oh wait, that's right, school board members are elected, they are accountable. This isn't lost on Congress. Ask your Mom and Dad how they feel about vouchers and charter schools. I have yet to meet a career teacher or administrator who is hot on the idea that those programs do away with the state monopoly on education and let the free market determine where the dollars go. Congress tried to come up with an overhaul of No Child Left Behind, but they came up with two seperate bills that are completely different. My answer. Require any legislator, federal, state or local to send their kids to public school. Cap legislator's saleries at the median teacher salary in their state or the District of Columbia for federal. Mandate that their pensions be a part of the teacher retiremnt system foe their state or in the District. They take as much time off as teachers do, if not more, that is perfectly fair.

ok. But the point I wanted to make is that any real education has to be done outside the official school. Compared to a typical school curriculum, a kid can learn 5X as much on his own time. Government education of the masses (doesn't matter which level of government) is a process of meeting THEIR goals. K-12 + JC is designed for training docile worker bees. Cogs in the wheel. Look at how silly and superficial the history is that kids learn in school. Useless comes to mind. Get your kids to be avid readers, then help them select reading lists that will enrich their interests. Do this for a year or two to get then kickstarted and they will be unstoppable - no matter what politicians are doing with schools. I am trying to wrap my head around this concept and understand what you are suggesting. Should we eliminate schools and set kids in front of a commputer monitor and let them go at it? In a supervised and safe enviorment of course. Who teaches them to read? Or do we keep the schools and swtitch everything to a self paced system, the "teacher" only monitors/approves what they teach themselves on the computer? Are they graded? Periodically assessed? The concept of a 12 year-old child left to his/her own devices and free to direct what they are interested in learning is kind of a scary thought. Plato believed we were born with all knowledge, it was a matter of just being able to bring it out, anamnesis. Others, like Locke, believed that we are born a blank slate, a tabula rasa and we must learn everything. Still others think we are pre-wired for somethings, like spoken language, but not others, like written language. There are a lot of people who are "self-taught" in a great many fields. However, I am not aware of anyone who is completely self taught. Abraham Lincoln would be the closest that comes to mind, but he was taught to read and spend abour 18 months is one form of a classroom or another. He is the shining example of what you say about having kids love to read and what they can learn on their own. Lincoln in fact loved to read, and would walk for miles to borrow just one book to read. There is a pretty strong correlation between how much a country spends on education, and the wealth of a country. I don't see states chucking out their school systems and leaving it to the kids to teach themselves.

All those things are fine but remember when your child goes to school and what you have taught is at odds with the schools agenda, now you are confusing your 8 year old child, I also feel like this confusion is a HUGE reason kids start to resent school, and eventually begin to give up Our boys are ahead of the curve exactly because we do teach them at home, of course the schools take no notice of there levels and the bore the hell out of them for hours on end going over the same thing or confusing the hell out of them with this type crap................. This is another MAJOR problem with "COMON CORE", Teachers have an agenda for their kids to do well on the tests set forth by the government. There is ABSOLUTELY no initiative for a teacher to HELP an advanced student with their studies and as a matter of fact it is counter productive for a teacher to push a kid who is smart into a higher grade level as I was, because it is going to effectively bring down their grade as a teacher. The Federal Government needs to get the HEIl out of Public Education. Roger Common Core is not a federal program. It was prompted by the private sector being concerned about the quality of education of potential workers comming out of high school back in 2007.. The private sector partnered with a national organization of scool administrators, who brought on the National Association of Governors (or is it NGA?). Common Core is adopted, rejected, or repealed, state by state. Forty something states have adopted it, three, I think, have repealed it after adoption. Some states, like Texas, rejected it from the beginning. Testing is a byproduct of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was passed in 2001 which was an overhaul of the 1965 ESEA. Congress is in the middle of a major overhaul of NCLB. There is consideration of the elimination of standards and testing. This is from the NCLB back in 2001: Standards and Testing The centerpiece of the bill is the requirement that states develop and implement "challenging" academic standards in reading and math, set annual statewide progress objectives to ensure that all groups of students reach proficiency within 12 years, and then test children annually in grades 3 through 8, in reading and math, to measure their progress. The bill specifically prohibits any "national testing" or "federally controlled curriculum." It is up to the states to select and/or design their own tests, and to make sure that the tests are aligned with the state curriculum standards. States will receive federal funds to help develop their tests, and a "trigger mechanism" specifies that states are not required to develop the reading and math tests for grades 3-8 if the federal government fails to provide the necessary funding. The NCLB required that "students reach proficiency witiin 12 years." That would have been 2013. Did they? They held one Conference meeting to reconcile the two bills prior to the summer break. It does not look like anything is currently scheduled for a second conference meeting, and so it may be dead. The Senate Bill had major bipartisian support, the House bill narrowly passed, by something like two votes I think. Testing and standards are at the heart of both bills. It appears that the status quo under NCLB will prevail for at least the forseeable future. Travis:

I was a little curious, so I looked it up. The model you propose would actually be legal in Texas, however, it is one of about six (6) states that have little, or no, regulation of "private schools." From a Texas Home Schooling Legal Collition: "You may also send your children into the home of another parent or use a tutor for instruction. The courts have determined that Texas home schools are private schools for the purpose of compulsory attendance. As such, home schools are not regulated, do not require teacher certification or third-party curriculum approval, and they are exempt from compulsory attendance laws. Local school officials do have the right to make “reasonable inquiry” to determine whether your school-age child is in attendance in a private school. A 2010 letter from the Texas commissioner of education gives direction to school districts on how to legally make “reasonable inquiry.”

Is that legal in any state. A school in a home? I know teaching your own kids, in your own home is legal in some (many?) states, but I don't think any states allow people to teach other people's kids unless they are licensed and approved by whomever licenses and accredits schools. Preschooling, ages 3 to 5, can be done under your model, but I think once they are age 5 everything changes.

Which is a state and/or local system. The percentage of state money to local money varies from state to state. New Hampshire used to have highest percentage of local money.No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2001, it started the testing requirements. It was a reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Currently, right now, NCLB is in the process of being overhauled by Congress. Both Houses have passed different versions, the Senate in July by a vote of about 80 to 20 if I recall. It remains to be seen whether anything will come out of Conference. Every issue regarding education discussed in this thread is up for debate and will be impacted by that legislation, either by sweeping changes, or no action. Yet, it isn't discussed at all, or just in passing here. The time for parents to have the most input on federal involvement in public school education was this Spring and Summer, but there is still time left. I think that anyone who has a child in elementary, middle or high school should know at least what highlights are in the two versions and what they think is best for their situation. Travis

How is education funded in other westernized countries? How much donthey spend in GDP on education, and the amount per student? Don't westernized countries, especially England and the Commonwealth require rigorous exams in order to graduate and go on to college?

The Constitution and most Historical Records are in Cursive...... Pretty important to be able to READ that stuff lest you be another Liberal Sheeple drinking the Cool-aid and blindly believing in your leaders rhetoric don't you think?? Roger I have seen the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution several times, easily at least 10 as I make it a point to always swing by when I am there, and the style was do different, almost impossible to make out in some cases. On top of that they are both badly faded. An early copy if the Magna Carta is there as well, Old English is impossible to read.

Here is a general article about the decline of cursive being taught in schools. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/cursive-handwriting-disappearing-from-public-schools/2013/04/04/215862e0-7d23-11e2-a044-676856536b40_story.html

They don't teach cursive writing anymore, not for at least the last 10 years, at least in most states. Email, texts, etc. were seen as the replacement for cursive writing and therefor no longer necessary to be taught. I don't think that was well thought out.

Do you take pictures? Ever mess around with file photography? Have a projector?