Pawn shop stimulus in Detroit
Old Trooper sent us a link to Detroit public school’s 40,000 laptops to be injected into the economy thanks to your tax dollars and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
That’s what under-educated kids need – their own computer to abuse. It seems to me that a kid who can’t read or write is just fascinated by the flashing lights and sounds that emanate from the computer. Garbage in, garbage out. I guess that’s why I’m not a teacher.
It’s funny how I figured out how to use this blasted machine with my public school education. I’ll bet most of you did the same without a minute in a classroom. The difference between us and them is that our teachers weren’t distracted by machinery that would cover up their shortcomings.
The closest thing to a computer I ever touched was one of those high-tech IBM Selectric typewriters in my typing class (Ronnie Stirpe and I were the only guys in the class, that’s why we took it…and the reason it was the only class I failed in high school).
Oh, where do the pawn shops come in? Well, a Detroit TEACHER tried to pawn her computer right before Christmas;
The DPS Office of the Inspector General investigation said Karen Drysdale-Oriucci, a DPS teacher since 1994, went to American Jewelry and Loan on Greenfield Road on Wednesday to pawn the netbook computer she received from the district on Dec. 17.
Store staff refused to pay the teacher for the netbook –- which is engraved with the DPS “I’m In” logo on its cover -– instead confiscating it and contacting DPS officials.
Drysdale-Oriucci was suspended Thursday with pay, pending a disciplinary hearing.
Yup she received it on December 17th and busted her ass getting to the nearest pawn shop. Now she’s suspended WITH PAY. Think this will slow down the district’s plan to hand out 40,000 more computers and peripherals?
Category: Schools
When in doubt, throw money at it. -Liberal Left mantra
Hell, a teacher in suburban GR got suspended with pay, pending trial for criminal sexual conduct(rape). He was terminated by mutual agreement, otherwise, they’d have to have had a tenure hearing to get rid of him.
So, don’t be surprised that this woman gets to sit home and get paid while they “investigate” her conduct.
Like my wife always says, “stay classy Detroit.”
There’s a lot of good, educational software out there. The school district here got a boatload of IT money in 2000 as a gift from Gore’s campaign. He didn’t win, but the kids and teachers did.
#2: he should have been in NYC. Spend 20 years in the teachers’ time out, collect full retirement and bennies.
@DaveO Was this how a city that mostly looks like a scene out of Mad Max got the money for 40,000 laptops?
John,
You’re showing your age. Did you use the IBM typewriter that had the ball to print with? Our school had them.
The next step will be for the school system to pay for the Internet service for the 40,000 kids so they can use their computers more effectively.
And not to mention that the school district will be taking photos of the kids without their knowledge like the district in PA was doing–wonder whatever came of that?
Look at pics of Detoilet & Hiroshima from 1945 and look at pics of the same cities today…
She’ll end up getting her job back too….
UpNorth,
There was a teacher just north of me in Leslie that was accused of sexual misconduct. He was suspended with pay pending the investigation as well. He was so distraught he killed himself. His accusers then admitted they made it all up….
Oh where to start? Obviously you guys aren’t educators, and have little appreciation for benefits of “one-to-one” computing. Read up on it. And yeah, Smorgasbord, they’ll need some kind of internet access, just like you have, duh! You would prefer perhaps that the 40,000 kids, many of whom have few advantages at home, get deprived of just one more asset their suburban neighbors enjoy? Let me get this straight – you want to raise the educational bar for these kids, but you don’t want to try anything new or spend any money on them. I think some of you just enjoy bitching….
And because of one sleazy teacher, you’re willing to condemn the entire program. Sheesh!
Stuff it Joe, if money were the answer to our education woes every kid in America should be educated to the eyeballs.
How is it a public school in my area can ‘spend’ $6k to $9k per student per year and pass kids on to high school that can’t even begin to pass fairly simple standardized tests while charter school, private school, or home schooled kids who generally operate on less funding and older equipment manage to regularly trounce their contemporaries?
I’ll tell you how, parent teacher relationships, realistic, common sense, and proven curriculum, and an absence of social/political clap trap in the classroom. There are plenty of students in the rural areas of my state that don’t have the technological ‘advantages’ or ‘assets’ that their urban peers have, that do absolutely great scholastically and are perfectly competitive as they move on to college. It’s not about money.
Please quit trying to figure out ways to get your fingers into MY pockets.
Jacobite,
Don’t you understand that charter schools cherry pick students, and select for students with the one most important advantage – parents who are involved in their kid’s education, leaving public schools to deal with kids who have fewer advantages? And that they also can underpay their staff, and often have a high teacher turnover rate, since some of their success comes on the backs of the teachers? No, you need to pay your share. It’s not jsut about your pocket.
I really hate agreeing with Jacobite, but I’m afraid I do.
If they really believed that throwing money at the problem would fix what’s broken, they’d have spent half as much building computer labs and the remainder of what they spent on teachers’ salaries.
It isn’t about educating them, it’s about making them beholden to the holder of the funds- in this case government-funded education.
Jam it up your ass, Joe. Over the last 50 years, even when adjusted for inflation, we spend FOUR TIMES as much money per student each year than we did in 1960.
And how’s Detroit’s graduation rate again? Oh yeah–25 percent.
Laptops are fine – IF the students use them, with appropriate supervision, at limited times. Ditto computer labs. However, I suspect that this will not be the case for the majority of students in the Detroit system. You will have to load the units with a great deal of blocker software in order to make sure they only access “age appropriate sites,” which will also cut down on their utility. And how many of the students, if allowed to take the computers home, have internet access so they can do homework on-line, or research? The district would do a lot better by using the cash to gut and re-do the curriculum and require students to master English literacy, basic math, some history and basic sciences. Then allow them to play with computer technology, et cetera.
By the bye, one-to-one computing programs have been shown to have secondary beneficial effects for students. On some level, when you hand a kid a new netbook, they appreciate the investment you’ve made in them, and there are many reports of formerly irresponsible kids becoming more conscientious because of this investment. Also, if all the other kids are on their laptops and you’ve broken yours due to misuse, you become kind of an outcast, a status most kids don’t want.
Joe,
I was in fact, an educator. Kids do not need a laptop of their own to take home and lose or stuff in a locker never to be opened like their textbooks. Having them available in a classroom where a teacher can supervise is one thing, each kid having one is another…..amazingly my students did just fine without them, that’s what a good teacher can do…
Yeah, OldTanker, that’s another part of the equation, good teachers. But good teachers can be made as well born. Read about Doug Lemov’s taxonomy of 49 techniques that almost any teacher can master.
The disturbing thing about these posts is how willing you guys are to consign all the kids in the Detroit public school system to permanent underclass status. Their parents may be on hard times thru bad decisions or thru no fault of their own, but don’t take it out on the kids. Black, white, brown, they’re still little kids who deserve better.
Old Tanker, the teacher I referenced pled guilty in the case, he was boinking an under-aged student, and pled to one count. The point I was making was that he was suspended with pay, and the expense would have been doubled or more if the school had had to go through a tenure hearing.
But, your point in #18 will be totally lost on Joey, why, if someone can’t tax someone else, what good is the idea, or program? Oh, and Joey, WTF is “one to one” computing? Is that e-mail, chat, twitter, or what? But, I’m sure you want to raise the taxes in inner city Detroit to provide internet access(porn)to “40,000” kids, right?
In fact, I could never understand the idea of giving a computer to kids who get robbed by other kids for their shoes. Hello? anyone home? If you increase the opportunity for someone to steal something of more value, don’t be surprised when it gets stolen.
Joe; are you now telling us you are a teacher? IS that why you said this “Obviously you guys aren’t educators, and have little appreciation for benefits of “one-to-one” computing”. So, if you are a teacher, and we’re not, which gives us zero credibility when commenting on educational threads; right? With that in mind, since you never served in the military; can we expect you never to comment on a military thread?
As for throwing money at education….thie biggest lie has always been “we need more money in order to teach the children”. BS. In my state, the education budget takes 47% of the state budget. That’s right, almost half (some say it is half, but I’m being conservative) goes to education. Now, where’s my return on investment? If we are spending half our state budget on education, then there damn sure better be little geniuses coming out of our schools, but that ain’t happening. In fact, they are getting dumber every year. Why?
No Joe, most charter schools DON’T cherry pick their students, my son has attended two and he wasn’t ‘picked’ in any fashion, he was enrolled by me. Charter schools are required to follow the same admittance rules as the regular public schools around here, and so long as there is room they are ‘required’ to take students that apply.
Additionally, the successful charter schools around here do NOT have a high teacher turn over rate, and the quality of the teachers is one of the greatest things about them. Generally older and more experienced educators, they don’t bring a bunch of new aged social awareness crap to the classroom, and still at least try to control their school environments with a certain amount of reasonable discipline, and high behavioral expectations for the students.
And yes Joe, everyone needs to pay their fair share, but that does not mean a blank check traded for failed programs and policies. If standard public education can’t get the job done with the funding they currently have, it should be de-funded and solutions found. Solutions exist, but unfortunately most of those solutions take the money control out of government hands and take power away from the NEA, two things that power hungry politicians and cultural Marxists will fight to the death to prevent, a good education be damned.
Go pedal your pap to some young starry eyed leftist education major, it aint workin here.
“Go pedal your pap to some young starry eyed leftist education major….”
If you can get them out of the frat house or local bar when they’re not in their remedial reading class.
“If we are spending half our state budget on education, then there damn sure better be little geniuses coming out of our schools, but that ain’t happening. In fact, they are getting dumber every year. Why?”
Yes, that is the $64,000 question. No easy answer. Again, I like Doug Lemov’s take – you’re never going to recruit 4 million brilliant teachers no matter what free-market incentives you use. There simply are not that many out there. So work with the ones you’ve got to make them better. His 49 techniques is a start. Teacher specialization and expertise in subject matter at the secondary level is a complimentary tactic. What to do about the biggest problem, overworked or negligent parents? Require a license to procreate?
#5 George: I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that many schools and districts maintain a grant writer on staff. The US Dept of Education (aka Uncle Sugar) has made lots of money available for such things as computers. There is also a non-profit, and for-profit industries focused on getting computers into schools. Detroit, or YourTown, USA can get computers if they’re willing to put the time and effort into it. Me personally, would like to see our national government taken out of the equation.
40,000 laptops, at $2K per laptop (at the high end of the price spectrum), is $80K. Or the price of 2 Chevy Volts.
I was gonna do a bit of math here, if for no other reason than to (slightly) correct DaveO’s not carrying the zeroes.
We’re dealing with $49 million for 40,000 laptops. Let’s also assume that there is some basic software installed on them, etc…and some support peripherals like printers, scanners, and the like.
Even so, we’re still dealing with over $1200 per unit. There are perfectly capable and versatile laptops on the market with Wi-Fi installed for $250 each retail. 40,000 of those would come to $10 million, leaving the rest for, well…whatever.
Potatonomics at its finest. Oh, any my understanding is the dipshit teacher in question tried to pawn the laptop at American Jewelry and Loan. For those unititated, that’s the shop featured on TRU TV’s “Hardcore Pawn.”
God I hope the cameras were running…
But good teachers can be made as well born
Complete BS… I don’t even no where to start with that…
no=know……hey, I taught chemistry and physics!
Well, OldTanker, we’d better hope that good teachers can be made (as opposed to born), because you are not gonna find 4 million “born” teachers…..
“can be made as well born” = Feel good policy making.
And it IS bs, the same kind of bs the Army has been spewing for decades now about leadership. Good leaders and teachers alike are far more likely to be born than to be made. When training up a new teacher or leader there has to be a kernel of quality there on which to build, overwise its ‘shit in, shit out’.
Read about the state of Maine’s technology initiative with one-to-one computing (a laptop for every single kid in the state), started in 2002, and come to your own conclusions: http://www.metiri.com/NSF-Study/ME-Profile.pdf
Perfect – no. Promising – yes. Is there some reason kids in Detroit don’t deserve the same benefits as the kids in Maine?
I could really give a rats ass about what’s happening in Maine or Detroit, I live in Arizona.
Sound cold hearted? Tough. Education is a State and local comunity responsibility, let Detroit figure out how to care for their own. Some times bad things happen to the innocent, I don’t lose sleep over it, it’s life, there’s never going to be a utopia. If you lose that much sleep over what’s happening there why don’t you pack yourself, your fortunes, and Doug Lemov’s system off to Detroit and work on the problem yourself? Allow me to work on my own neck of the woods, and I’ll be happy to do it without your money, thank you.
“Is there some reason kids in Detroit don’t deserve the same benefits as the kids in Maine?”
Well, let’s look at who pays for these benefits. According to http://www.metiri.com/NSF-Study/ME-Profile.pdf – “Still, Governor King’s one-to-one computing initiative – which proposed that $65 million ($50 million of state money and an anticipated $15 million in private contributions)…” From http://www.freep.com/article/20110104/NEWS05/101040378/Detroit-Public-Schools-40-000-kids-to-get-laptops-from-stimulus-funds – “Detroit Public Schools will spend $49 million in federal money”
If MI wants to pony up its own cash and contributions for an experiment, so be it. But I, as a NH resident, have absolutely no incentive to provide dollars to support it, and the federal government has no business in taking my money to be spent in that manner.
“…the federal government has no business in taking my money to be spent in that manner.”
I think you’re wrong, gbodge. Ever hear of the phrase, “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble of the Constitution?
Jacobite: I disagree with you on who is responsible for education. It is the parent(s)’s responsibility. Government, at any level and location, fails when it sets a standard for, and determines the body of knowledge to be taught. Parents should set the standard, and the body of knowledge to be imparted.
Joe, do you honestly not see the hypocrisy in your lamenting the state of education as due to negligence and lack of parental involvement while calling for those very duties to be taken up by government?
Dave O, I understand the Libertarian position on funding education and actually am sympathetic to it, but I also understand how the community’s best interests are served in providing a solid standard education. I guess I look at it from the standpoint of a community investing in schools rather than in a larger police force or correctional system.
Get real Joe, “promote the general welfare” has been grossly misinterpreted over the last many decades in a totally transparent, and disgustingly successful, bid to garner more power to the centralized national government. The Founders are spinning in their graves I guarantee.
I don’t know what to do about negligent parents, ROS, do you? The influence of parents is probably the single most important variable in the equation, yet there is not much we anyone can do to make parents face up to even the most minimal responsibilities. So lacking a way to control that variable, I suggest we do the best we can with all the other variables.
I think you’re wrong, gbodge. Ever hear of the phrase, “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble of the Constitution?
All the time, and let’s look at that. It says “promote” not “provide” as it does for the common defense. Why? Well, it is up to the federal government to establish an atmosphere where the “general welfare” can be obtained. It is the responsibility of the federal government to defend its citizens. Now, what is “general welfare”? It is what is good for all citizens, not a select few, and not “welfare” in the current form of the state providing for individuals. Which leads me back to my original question – how does the federal government taking my personal wealth and giving it to the city of Detroit provide for my general welfare?
Joey, Joey, you actually read the preamble? Wow, color me shocked. I know you haven’t read any of the rest of it. But, I digress.
Let’s address your non-point, “promote the general welfare”. How is it promoting the “general welfare” if Detroit Public Schools, AKA DPS, gets $49M, and (insert your favorite city), for instance, gets $4M? Is there a disparity, and why is there one?
You claim to have read the preamble, and yet, you begrudge every penny spent to “provide for the common defence”. Can you explain that conundrum?
Yeah Jacobite, the way they’re spinning about “a christian nation”, the Citizens United decision, Texas textbooks, and on and on…..
You didn’t answer the question, Joe. I asked if you didn’t see the hypocrisy, not if you knew how to make parents involved.
UpNorth, UpNorth, I don’t begrudge “every penny” spent in common defence, but I do begrudge the military-industrial complex Halliburtons, et al. Read Eisenhower’s last speech as president.
ROS, gotta go, but in leaving, I don’t see the hypocrisy in trying to help kids, esp. underpriviliged kids, get a decent education and an equal shot at success.
And exit stage right…….err, left.
Another drive by lecture from Joey. Hey, Joey, who’s going to make those “underpriviledged kids” show up and sit in the classrooms, so they can get a “decent education and an equal shot at success”? And, I suppose we’ll have to have affirmative action to ensure they’re successful, right?
This is the City of Detroit, now and likely into the future. This what the Progressive, liberal, entitlement ideology and culture that is breed into the City and its inhabitants by people who preach that liberalism is the only path to a greater life. “Poverty Pimps” such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson love to have cities like this so they have a pulpit to spread their own type of ideology.
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/01/tour-of-detroit.html
http://www.notsopuremichigan.com/?p=34
TaterSalad,
WTF does that have to do with anything? You take one of the biggest manufacturing cities in the world, then a) thru gross mismanagement by the big three auto companies over 50 years, they forfiet their huge lead in US auto sales, qnd cause massive factory closings, and b) thru laws that encourage sending US jobs to maquiladoras in Mexico and elsewhere, causing massive factory closings, this is what you get. So what’s your point. Go take a tour thru ALlentown, PA, or any other steel town, and you’ll see the same thing. And don’t say it’s the fault of unions. Germany has stronger unions than the US, and somehow they managed to maintain, and grow their auto industry by taking care of their workers and their industry. You guys just have it out for Detroit for obvious reasons I won’t even mention. I have never heard a single one of you stand up for the innocent children that have to grow up in this man-made disaster.
“thru gross mismanagement by the big three auto companies over 50 years, they forfiet their huge lead in US auto sales, qnd cause massive factory closings”
Joe Joe Joe, WRONG. Should read “thru the intense greed and power hungry tactics of the UAW over the last 50 years……etc”
And let’s compare apples to apples shall we? I’ve spent time working in Germany, and frankly the blind obediance of the majority of their people to civil authority is chilling, absolutely something we do NOT want here in America. It’s an incredible insult to the American concept of freedom and personal determination. This is not Germany, and we are not the German people.
I don’t have it ‘out for Detroit’ at all, I plain don’t care about Detroit. There are enough things in my own neck of the woods which require attention. Go play that race card somewhere else.
I mean really, if that’s the way your mind works, that race must be a factor since no one here is agreeing with you, then you are far more in need of proffesional attention for a potential personality disorder than you are in need of any attention from this blog.
#37
Jacobite,
Just thinking about who controls the levers of power when it comes to education. Parents want the best for their kids, usually, and will set the bar higher than the government. Government is charged with finding the lowest common denominator, and so kids will go out into the world educationally starved.
Taking your words, I’m defining community as the families that exist there, not the govvies that rule.