Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge OT - I wanna whine about taxes.

Right on the money JC. neither party wants to do anything that would make the other look good.

The parents can only do so much.
Now, many are able to participate in their children's education and be sure they do what they should.
But there're a lot of single parents out there trying to do the best they can, but sometimes that's not enough.

Then there are the parents who shouldn't be, but are. Their kids get no parental guidance.
I'm sure we could come up with many examples of children who are marginalized in our society.
And they go to school. And they get drugged and passed along because no one wants to deal with the facts.
Politicians pass laws so they can say they are doing something about it, but all they're doing is exacerbating the problem by creating unrealistic standards that the teachers (already overwhelmed with regulations) have to meet.

No child left behind. What a joke. Teachers have to teach the children how to pass the tests, doesn't matter if they learn anything.

Merit pay for teachers. How do you compare the accomplishments between teachers in a well to do school with those of a teacher in a class where no student who starts the year is there at the end of the year? In fact, some teachers have had up to three complete changes of students during one school year. Many students are there for only a few weeks before their family moves somewhere else.

I don't know if there are any full solutions, but those that will help cost money. A teacher with fifty children in one classroom simply cannot teach them all, so one step is more schools and more teachers.
People learn differently. One child who seems to be distracted and restless gets labeled ADHD because it's easy (Not saying ADHD doesn't exist, it does. It's just overdiagnosed), when in fact the child may be bored because what's being taught is too simple for bright children. So we need to identify the abilities of children and get them in programs that can keep them interested and teach them. More money.

These are the things that most teachers want. But most education budgets are spent on management frills (they're not union by the way). Just like the private sector, those in management seem to feel that they are a privileged elite and will resist any attempts to change their comfort level.

And so they dismiss any calls for positive change as "throwing money at it". That way they can avoid facing the fact that they are the problem.

I guess the rest of the industrialized world has beaten all those problems. They all spend much less. Most have much larger class sizes, older facilities, fewer resources and virtually no support staff but somehow they are ahead of the US in nearly every measure of academic achievement. Before you repeat the standard cant of the education establishment perhaps you will look at the rest of the world and explain how they can do so much better with less. Within the US, why do the lowest spending states routinely outperform the highest spending states? I agree with you that ADD or whatever is massively over diagnosed. Somehow teachers used to keep order with larger average class sizes and no drugs. My knuckles were rapped and my butt beat on more tha one occasion. Much better option than filling a kid with behavior/mood altering drugs.

http://www.alec.org/task-forces/education

8.5% - call that a tax - 17.5% VAT now THATS a tax

Ah Taxes, my favorite subject.
Here in NH we have no sales, nor income tax. But Cathy works in Maine so we have to pay their income tax on her money for basically nothing. Just property tax, that comes in State, County and local flavors. The majority is what you pay to the town you live in. And 85% of that local tax bill goes to the school. The problem here is that the quality of the school depends on what your town is like. We wanted good schools so we moved to a town with good schools knowing our taxes would be higher.
We pay 5300 on a 220k eval. Now that I'm a selectman and an playing with budgets, I now know that taxes are inevitable and while I don't want to pay more it is needed.

I didn't intend for this thread to descend into a general discussion of politics. I only wished to point out that this "use-tax" includes even things purchased at "garage sales," and even Christmas gifts that are sent into this State (Washington) from another State that doesn't have a Sales Tax (or is less of a Sales Tax). Even if the item is used (a depreciation schedule must be attached).

This means that even the BA.com classified board trading is subject to this "use-tax" (don't forget to file that depreciation schedule folks).

This is utterly ridiculous.

-BT

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I didn't intend for this thread to descend into a general discussion of politics.

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But you should have known

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I'm not sure which countries ALEC has studied,

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And of course, they have no political agenda