Comments on: Starving the (wrong) beast: San Diego Unified throws the baby out with the bath water

By: job at home

job at home — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:34:55 +0000

Just have bookmarked your site, and waiting for the next interesting post

By: San Diego Artificial Turf

San Diego Artificial Turf — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:22:34 +0000

Great post.. thanks for taking the time to write it, keep up the good work.

By: Briget

Briget — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:41:12 +0000

Yep. It’s not just California – unfortunately it’s Nationwide. The state of public education and public apathy and public idiocy leaves me gasping.

And…I love your plan. check, check, check. This is stuff I’ve been thinking (and saying) for Years.

By: aaryn b.

aaryn b. — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:40:50 +0000

Certainly my plan isn’t perfect. But it’s way better than what’s on the table. I can’t get the numbers right now but it costs MILLIONS to administer those useless tests. Millions.

By: ~annie

~annie — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:51:21 +0000

To Frogdancer – we give free lunches to the children whose parents have low incomes and sometimes no food at home. Hard to believe such a thing is possible in America, but it’s true. There are so many things broken in this country. Of course Aaryn’s WTF Plan is not perfect, but we need more people like her to speak out and get the thinking going.

By: Jenn @ Juggling Life

Jenn @ Juggling Life — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:03:34 +0000

While there are a couple of your specifics I disagree with, overall I agree with the sentiment–we’re fucked. I can’t wait to try and get a job as a teacher next year. That ought to be easy.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:52:33 +0000

HEY… how ’bout we have a lottery to fund the schools?
Funding education with GAMBLING money is so much better than mary jane money…

(oh. nevermind. that was done already.)

By: Aaryn

Aaryn — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:06:09 +0000

@John Stimpson: Sir, I didn’t waste your time. You, apparently, wasted your own time. Without question,you wasted space here with your rude comment. But I’ll let it stand because that’s how I roll. AnywayS, bottoms up, friend.

@Robert: With all due respec, just because weed may adversely affect cognitive skills (hello, alcohol!) is no reason not to legalize it and use the funds to benefit society, in particular to improve schools. Some of the money could even go to educate kids about the deleterious effects of choosing to use drugs, marijuana or alcohol or what have you. Like I said, kids are going to smoke it regardless of it’s legal status and to think otherwise is to delude ourselves. I don’t think there is anything backwards about using money from the legal sale of mj to improve our schools. Or, like your friend said, we could just blow it all up and start again. I wonder how we’d pay for that…

By: California High School Sports News for 03/19/2009 « California High Schools

California High School Sports News for 03/19/2009 « California High Schools — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:35:40 +0000

[...] Title: aaryn belfer. – Starving the (wrong) beast: San Diego Unified … [...]

By: Robert K

Robert K — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:02:32 +0000

I know a person who worked as a teacher/principle in the SDUSD for 25 years. We’ve talked several times about the best way to “fix” it and their opinion is simply, “blow it up and start over from scratch”. Kind of depressing.

As for Plan WTF… not that weed shouldn’t be legalized, but somehow funding an educational system via legalization of a drug known to adversely affect cognitive skills seems a bit ass-backwards. (e.g.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16572123 )

Not to put too fine a point on it.