for me to start missing the classroom? Driving hasn’t been – smooth. Six trips today and I averaged un $6 each. The extra $0.55 per trip from Lyft doesn’t make much of a difference. And Uber still hasn’t fixed the snafu that’s keeping me off their app. Pickups more than 10 minutes from my previous drop off does NOT make for a good day. And I’ve made the decision to return to HTHS instead of jumping to Bexley. Giving up $125 per week to be loyal and to go back to a known situation. Maybe after TWO years I’ll feel too “comfortable” and switch then. We’ll see. The plan has been to sub/drive full time until ’28 and then cut back to one day of either just for giggles. Should the current economic conditions persist that might not work out. At 66 2/3. Perhaps if I make it to ’25 two days a week will be enough.

That’s if I can gut out the crap. The soaring gas prices (doubled in the last 500 days.) The idiocy in the schools. Like this: A Missouri school district’s math assignment is mind-boggling.

The bar association is still trying to figure out how to eat itself: [S]tudies have consistently shown that LSAT performance is the single strongest predictor of academic success in law school….

Detroit is a particularly egregious case. While 72% of the city’s students are graduating from high school this year, only 8% of them are academically ready for college.

The bad news from the education industrial complex just keeps on coming.

I AM hoping I’m in a non-woke district. The local NAACP and local teachers association recently rallied for stronger school discipline policy from the Baltimore County Public Schools.  Local organizations like those are often pretty good on the issue.  It’s the inside-the-beltway, haven’t-seen-the inside-of-a-classroom-since-the-Clinton-Administration educrats who tend to do the most damage.  See The Department of Education’s Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline:  Wrong for Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law.  Alas, my understanding is that the Biden Administration is abandoning the Trump Administration’s approach and going back the Obama approach.

FL Principal Rants At Parents: ‘Quit Getting In Our Way’ I’m not sure you understand how this whole thing works.

In case you wondered: What Are College Students Paying For?

In his book Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson had scribed his ideas for public education at the elementary level. In 1817 he proposed a plan for a system of limited state public education. Public grammar schools. There would be three stages. Primary schools, which all children, regardless of their parents’ financial ability, would be able to attend for at least three years; intermediate schools, for students who excelled in primary school, as well as for children whose parents are willing and able to pay for it; and the university, for students whose parents were willing to pay.

Let’s DO this. School from K to 8. Reading, writing, math, geography, history (US and world), civics. If you do well and WANT to go further you can do four years of high school. Advanced levels of all of the foregoing, plus foreign language and science. Voluntary but paid for via public funding. Then one of the three E’s. Enrolled, employed or enlisted, for the uninitiated.

Get the kids that don’t WANNA be in school out of school. I’ve seen the results of this and it encourages increased learning opportunities by those who DO attend. My teacher friends ask what we’ll do with those who DON’T go on after Junior High.

Children Must Be Made To Work

This is NOT satire. Since the HS education is being made useless ANYWAY (A WAR ON TESTS IS A WAR ON EXCELLENCE:  “Rescuing ‘Virtue and Talents’ Amidst the War on Tests.”) let’s completely gut it. Fund the backpack, not the locker. It’s NOT getting better. There are I schools where I will not teach due to the culture of the school. It’s NOT getting better. Colleges are going to hell as well but that’s a different issue. HOW THE JACOBINS GOT CONTROL OF NORTH CAROLINA’S BIG 4 UNIVERSITIES. With an E.B. White quote I had never heard, but is increasingly topical: One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

And I’m done for now.