Reading is fundamental

Speaking of reading core documents, reading your job description is always a good idea. This is from the Oklahoma Democrats page.

Below is an email exchange that was a call for help from State Rep. James Lockhart (D) – Heavener who requested help from his colleagues at the Oklahoma State Capitol, but was greeted with an extremely anti-education response from Rep. Mike Reynolds (R) – Oklahoma City.

Lockhart to Reynolds
Subject: Re: Our brightest students…..

No but we sure give out tax credits to a lot of companies that I question whether or not they actually need them. Over 5 billion each year! 

What we are seeing is the first generation of Americans who will earn less than the previous, be less educated, earn less and have less access to healthcare.

Basically we are doing a poor job of improving the lives of the people we represent. That is pretty clear in the fact that most people think we either don’t care about them or are unable to do something about improving their standard of living. 

I am here to try to improve the quality of life of the average person in however small a way possible. 

I would suggest you do the same

The answer, sent a day later:

It is not our job to see that anyone gets an education. It is not the responsibility of me, you, or any constituent in my district to pay for his or any other persons (sic) education. Their GPA, ACT ASAB, determination have nothing to do with who is responsible. Their potential to benefit society is irrelevant.

It's not the legislature's job to see that anyone gets an education. Hmmm. Let's look at the OK constitution and see if he's right.

Section XIII-1: Establishment and maintenance of public schools.

The Legislature shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools wherein all the children of the State may be educated.

What do you want to bet he calls himself a "constitutional conservative."

Just how badly do we treat our teachers

This chart just showed up on my Facebook feed.

It's an odd chart, with no explanations. I think most of my friends will have the same reaction as I did, a resigned sigh over how badly we treat teachers in this country. Unfortunately, there were other reactions. Of the twenty or so comments I read, this is the stupidest.

Ryan Kaiser Lol just goes to show that all those extra hours they work do nothing for the outcome of our students and if they turned out more students with better skills I would opt to pay them more but until then keep slaving on teachers that are not producing and thank you to all those who are.

Mr. Kaiser's English and logic teachers need to hang their heads in shame, though perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, such as--oh, I don't know--overwork. I suppose he's one of those who think we need to kill their unions,raise the price of their insurance, take their pensions, and give them guns (logic teacher hangs head in shame second time).

The countries are selected from the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but several have been left out, Canada (if you want to comment on social metrics in the US, our slightly poorer, but culturally highly similar neighbor is usually a good data point to include), Sweden, Israel, and most East European countries. Why were those excluded? What's the deal with Sweden and Turkey? Is GDP per capita the best metric for pay? Why not compared to average or median income or some kind of cost of living index? We would do a little better on either of those measures. How did they determine hours worked? The 1500 hours they credit the US teachers as working is apparently based on nine months of 40 hour weeks. Most teaches I know would have a hearty laugh at the idea they only work 40 hours. Then they would reach for a glass of box wine and break down weeping. Is the hours estimate as unrealistic for other countries?

Who cares? As Mr. Kaiser says, "the floggings will continue until morale improves!