I know this because my oldest is in TAG, and she is going to miss it next year. Her TAG teacher is now unemployed, and is going to get her doctorate, with the thesis being "The Gifted Child in an Elementary Setting", or something like that. I know we have some public school teachers on this board. How do you guys feel about TAG teachers being let go, yet you guys keep all of your ample PERS benefits? Is that an admission that you're going to accept concentrating your teaching to your dumbest students, while your gifted students sit there rotting in boredom?
Studies show that the majority of TAG students only go on to be PERS loving teachers. It's about time we stop the madness.
Isn't this one step closer to dismantling the evil public sector so we can all have wonderful privatized education... Oh wait, it affected you directly, thus you suddenly care...
I pay my fair share, old man. I've probably paid for your share too, as well as Sug's and barfo's shares.
Doubtful. If your two kids are in school, you are probably not paying your share. How does it feel to be a leech on the public teat? I, on the other hand, with no kids in school, am clearly putting more money into the school system than I am taking out. barfo
I'm an alumni (the one year I went to Portland Public Schools). I wish there were more emphasis on getting gifted kids some challenge, rather than playing to the lowest common denominator and making everyone participate.
Both my sons were in the TAG program, and probably would have had no reason at all to attend Jr. High without it. The standard curriculum has been dumbed down about 4 grade levels to reach the future dregs of our society, rather than bring them up to an acceptable level of learning. Back in my day, struggling students were rare, and special programs were designed for them to catch up. Nowadays, stupid kids are the norm, due to over-worked parents who rarely have time with them, as is the enormous burden of non-English speaking immigrants, and the school system has been forced by the legislature to expend the bulk of their funds on coddling them. PapaG's rhetoric killed TAG. Now he wants to have his cake and eat it too.
No, greedy teachers who won't restructure their absurdly inflated retirement packages are killing the schools.
i was in gate in california and tag in oregon my whole school going lifetime. fucking improv classes and abstract thinking workshops, trips to the modern art museum I am not special. I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake
It doesn't work that way these days. They test for IQ and academic ability, and develop a plan for each individual student based on their interests. My "TAG" program was being moved up a grade, which sucked because it hurt me in basketball. Luckily, Legion baseball existed, and I was able to do that even after playing college ball my first year. Talking to our TAG teacher, it now sounds like each gifted child will be able to have access to a counselor who comes around once in a while. Looks like it might be time for a charter school,, or even private school.
Or you could teach them how to use a library and the internet so they could teach themselves. Any parent who doesn't encourage self-education is a child-abuser IMO. We both know SlyPokerDog is way too cheap to send them to a private school when they get free education from the government, otherwise he'd have done so long ago. Maybe you should rant and rave about private teacher's salaries, since they are much higher than public teachers.
Nowadays it's more important to teach them civics, patriotism, sex is bad, drugs are bad, males are bad, listen to a speech from the campus policeman who's a fully paid policeman who just sits around the Principal's office all day making molehills into mountains... than it is to challenge them with tough courses, flunk out a fifth of them between 9th and 12th grade, and educate special needs kids outside of mainstream schools.
why only flunk them in 9-12th grade? If a child can't read or do arithmetic, they have no business being in 3rd or 4th grade. Our school systems allow for children to repeat grades.
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