Comment Archives
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
@OTP
Your mention of Stanford University and its research into educational concepts like charter schools really got my attention. Of course it would, since Stanford is one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Does this article reflect te research results you were talking about?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03…
Re: “Beale's Club 152: "We'll take care of it," says Kevin Kane”
I visited this club one Saturday night in March 2013. It was evident that people were high. Even one of the Black bouncers on the 3rd floor bragged about the drug activity that was going on in Club 152, especially on the 3rd floor. He worked Thursday-Saturday nights in VIP. Stories of illicit sex acts and drug use, as well as the numerous fights were told by him. He even talked about how he could trade off some things to get other drugs at work. I figured he was an addict, because even he smelled like weed and alcohol. The club reminded me of the Titanic and how each level represented a certain status, where the so-called VIP 3rd floor was for primarily Caucasians (who really get in free) and celebrity minorities, the 2nd floor was an "enter at your own risk" and was primarily Black people and smelled like weed and was HOT and nasty, and the 1st level was for the younger, immature crowd, which was also primarily Black people. It was during spring break when I visited, and I know the club was at capacity, but they continued to let folks in. My friends and I left at 3am, and the lines were still out to the street. Needless to say, I would not go back there. And owners should be aware of what is going on with their investments, and they should just show up anonymously, so they can see how things really are and not just sitting back raking in the money. That's some hear no evil, see no evil kind of thinking. And just because you have children does not mean you're exempt from not being aware. If anything, that's all the more reason to be. Shut it down.
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
Tennessee may well be 47 out of 50. But that is all of Tennessee. Now let's look at individual schools ranking in the nation. I think Houston High and Collierville High are pretty well way up the ladder compared to say any of the MCS schools. Or am I reading the reports wrong and they are skewed by some conspiracy?
I hate to say it but I think EVERYONE is double taxed in Shelby county. My tax dollars went to MCS in a higher ratio than to Germantown schools yet I am somehow screwing Memphis citizens. I wish someone would explain that to a simpleton as myself. But please be accurate and post some sort of link and precise location in that link. It does not further ones position to say it's in the US tax rolls or something like that.
Mentioning that MSDs are just speculation is right. It is as much of a speculation as "Yes, things will be different for the next budget", "Vouchers, as it applies to Tennessee will probably never become a reality.", so it seems everyone speculates. Since the law has been passed, no speculation there, and there is a lot of precedent for it, no speculation there, and the buildings follow the children (precedent), no speculation there, And the CC8 lawsuit has no validity. But yes it is speculation because Shelby county could have an 8.9 devastating earthquake or be nuked by a North Korean or Iranian nuclear missile or a host of other disasters and then who would really care about MSDs?
Re: “Griz Get Spurs, Conference Finals Start Sunday”
Thanks, David. If the Thunder would have won, I think most of us would have rooted for them in the WCF and beyond. I know I did last year.
As for the Spurs, I think they're going to be a tougher opponent for the Griz than either the Clips or the Thunder. They're a more complete team with multiple contributors and both good bigs and guards. They execute their offense better than any team in the league. And they have 3 hall of fame players, arguably the best coach coach in the league, and a desire to revenge that playoff series loss to the Griz from two years ago.
As for player match-ups, it couldn't be much closer:
Gasol versus Duncan is a toss up.
Zbo versus Splitter should favor the Griz, but Splitter gave Zbo fits in the regular season, so this is a match-up to watch (of course, Collison gave Zbo fits in the regular season too, and we saw how that played out in the series against the Thunder).
Prince versus Leonard is another interesting match-up. Leonard is clearly the better player. He's a more dynamic scorer, a better rebounder, more athletic, and he is nearly as good as Prince on the defensive end, if not equal to him. But Prince has a lot more experience, an elite level BBIQ, and he doesn't have to chase around the world's best offensive player all series long.
Allen versus Green favors Allen simply because Green's offensive game isn't dynamic enough to counterbalance Allen's All-NBA level defense. However, this match-up may be similar to the Allen versus Sefalosha match-up in that neither player will guarding one another.
Conley versus Parker has historically favored Parker, at least in the regular season. If Conley can or tie this match-up it would be huge.
As for the bench, the Griz bench bigs versus the Spurs bench is pretty much a wash. Arthur from two years was by far the best bench big, but he hasn't been the same player since the injury. On paper Davis is the best bench big on either team and would have the most value in a trade. But it's not clear whether he'll even get playing time. For the Spurs, Blair could be useful in spurts as a kind of Reggie Evans type player. The same with Bonner, who may be not be a factor but could be used to force the Griz out of what they want to do on defense. And Diaw can be a pest with his passing and outside shooting. I say even.
The Griz bench guards versus the Spurs bench guards is also pretty close, but the Spurs should be favored given that one of their bench guards is Manu Ginobli.
I still haven't figured out my pick, but I think whoever wins will do so in 7 games
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
ArlingtonPop
You can't take Memphis and Nashville, two of the largest cities in Tennessee out of the picture, for they are a sizable chunk of the state school system. You have to take them all for the state is the one who set the education guidelines and they must be followed by each and every school district in the state. That is like the captain of the Titanic saying that he wasn't responsible for the hitting of the iceberg because he was only watching the rear(aft) of the ship.
As long as the state constitution says that the state must provide a free, basic, quality education which has been further premised by the state supreme court that it must also be equal, the state will be limited in what it can do. Charter schools, in order to make their books look good take all students, then, along the way they find ways of getting the poorer students out of their schools. When the real tab of how much more the state is spending on ASD schools compared to public schools, there will be a hue and cry from the public and lawsuits filed because of the inequity in funding between those asd schools and traditional public schools.
So, AP, I am not worried in the least about the state and their experiments with charters and asd schools. The citizens of Memphis will not idely sit by and watch the state spend more on charters and/or asd schools vs the public schools.
You don't have to have an idea if those things will work or not. There is enough national and district studies out there that show that those concepts do not work and Stanford University is leading the way in those studies. The article on Ruby Payne says it succintly. You must have the right type of teachers to be effective in teaching poverty stricken students. One size and one set of criteria does not fit all.
As an aside, having new equipment and better glasses makes a world of difference in my postings. lol
Re: “The Comparison of Detroit and Memphis, Again”
ArlingtonPop
I agree 100%. Memphis continues to play bully with us and people here say we should come to their aid and forget about our cities. All I can say to Memphis is thanks but no thanks. From giving up their schools to giving up the inspection station. And let's not forget Memphis wanting to install a payroll tax to "GET" all these low down suburbia people that use up some of these "unseen" resources. And they want us to go with consolidation. All I can say about that is we will do as Dylan Thomas wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night"
JBrown
The metro area has grown but not Memphis. From 1980 until 2010 Memphis has grown 715 people. Not very impressive for 30 years.
A lot of people can't face the fact that when Memphis forces their will, annexation, on people the people will leave. At least that's what it looks like with all the thousands and thousands of people that were annexed Memphis can't show them on their tax roll. The people that can move, whether it is to Germantown or DeSoto County, will move. And it is unfortunate the people that want to move are not financially able to. A lot of people want to stay in Memphis, MadMerc, for whatever reason and that's great. But a lot of people move for an assortment of reasons, be it high taxes, high crime, bad schools, lowering of the property values that come with annexation, or what ever. One person here says it is subliminal racism. Who knows he is intelligent and probably knows more about subliminal thoughts than the rest of us. At least in my conscience mind that was not the reason to keep moving. It was the other reasons.
I have not seen a 2000 lbs gorilla in my conscience mind but who knows what dwells in the unconscience.
Re: “Future Planning”
Broadhead, don't let misunderstandings and misinterpretations and Jeff get in your way of dispensing God's truth. It has served the Church well these last 2000 years.
Bless you and forge ahead.
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
@OTP
I was not running off the mouth. I simply questioned your assertion that Tennessee was ranked 47th out of 50 states. I have not seen that report, but if so, on what criteria are the rankings based, exactly?
I also ask that if performance comes into play in the rankings, and if the Memphis and Nashville systems were taken out of the performance data, would Tennessee be rated higher? I made no comparison between Memphis and the suburban schools.
Seems to me a reasonable question if we are talking rankings.
I don't disagree about the correlation between socio-economic status and performance.
What I am saying is that solving socio-economic problems of that magnitude is well beyond the scope of the legislature's power.
So they are going to do what they think they have the power to do, which is to encourage charter schools to proliferate, use vouchers, and establish state run districts to try and change the educational experience of these poorer children.
I have no idea if all those things put together will make any difference. I have no idea if any of those things will work at all.
What I am sure of is the legislature is going to give it a try and see what happens.
Re: “The Comparison of Detroit and Memphis, Again”
@AC
Interesting last paragraph.
I don't know how you can make that work. What you are describing is a situtation where the suburbs must be willing to put their own interests (not just short tem interests) aside and work toward helping Memphis, with the idea that in helping Memphis they are in some manner helping themselves.
I respectfully suggest that the present political climate makes that an impossibility.
It takes trusting partners to make something like that possible. The well is so poisoned right now that any politician in the suburbs would be drummed out of office if he suggested such a thing. The City and their allies on the SCC have fought us tooth and nail on the schools issue. The have sued us, threated us, and as we speak, there is a lawsuit pending that calls us racists. Actually uses that word.
Memphis is the biggest boy in the room. If they continue to choose to act like a bully, and continually point fingers at us, they won't get much economic cooperation.
If Memphis wants us to be partners, they can start acting like our friends rather than our enemies.
Re: “Westboro Baptist Church Takes on the NBA, Ignores Elvis”
I see there's an idiot who commented on the article without having read it first...
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
ArlingtonPop and Staythirsty
Look, you two are trying to talk about school performance and have no earthly idea what you are talking about. You talk about how bad the Memphis Schools are compared to the suburban schools, etc.
Well, here are two articles that may help explain what I am talking about when I say charter and ASD schools are not the answer and that poverty and the lack of teachers who know how to teach to poverty stricken teachers is the answer.
http://www.educationnews.org/articles/an-i…
http://www.njea.org/news-and-publications/…
There are many more articles and studies in the same vien. Like I say, you two are running off at the mouth without anything to back you up.
Re: “Westboro Baptist Church Takes on the NBA, Ignores Elvis”
I see there's always an idiot in the crowd trying to be an Elvis impersonator. Did he look in the mirror? Seriously YUCKY, just saying!
And the other idiots went elsewhere to spew their hatred....good riddance!
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
I had my kids look at the staffing data that was posted this morning. I have no idea who puts this together, but they are woefully inept.
Add up the current staffing for SCS high schools. They are off by 73 teachers. That's a function the excel spreadsheet will do for you! That was the first mistake we found in a matter of minutes.
I would really like to know what the MCS "staffing model" was. The MCS high schools run anywhere from 32.8 to 11.1. I'm thinking the 11.1 is something abnormal, so I took it out and the numbers still had a range of more than two standard deviations.
If you run the model they are putting out to the public, they will have to add more than 340 teaching positions in high schools alone. Yea, that isn't happening. They say they are adding 200 positions in the middle schools. And they want to drop 170 elementary school teachers.
This is just plain stupid.
They will be revising this over and over between now and 29 July. I'm sure the Whitehaven principal is salivating at the thought of hiring 26 teachers! Poor guy, I wonder if there are that many qualified in the area
Re: “The Comparison of Detroit and Memphis, Again”
AP-
Actually that information is out there thanks to the Census which provides data such as population weighted densities within municipal boundaries which accomplishes what you are describing. Compared to the cities noted earlier, the densities found in the urbanized areas within the municipal boundaries of Baltimore, Detroit and Dallas are all remarkably higher than found in Memphis. The population weighted densities in Charlotte and OKC are very similar to Memphis while Atlanta (minus the immediate downtown area- specifically Buckhead), Nashville, Birmingham and Little Rock all show lower population densities within the urbanized areas of their local municipalities. The point here is that the correlation between the density of a municipalities urbanized area does not necessarily correlate with that communities financial stability or economic growth. There are other issues at plat here that obviously trump density which means that the whole de-annexation approach is not necessarily appropriate nor would it automatically equate to a more healthy financial outlook for the city.
This also supports the fact that a smaller, less dense population with very high property values will in turn generate a larger property tax windfall than a large poverty stricken population living at higher densities in areas with very low property values. The maximum yield results from high population densities AND high property values.
Re: “The Comparison of Detroit and Memphis, Again”
@Barf - two quick things.
1) Density alone isn't the issue - density compared to the infrastructure is. Memphis has built infrastructure to support much higher density, and is stuck paying for that infrastructure even though it is operating significantly below capacity.
2) Density/capacity is just one factor in a city's success. It can help or hurt, but it won't make a break a place on its own. I know this is a simple and obvious point, just throwing it out there because so often people can only consider one variable at a time (e.g. taxes,) and fail to comprehend that there are myriad factors that contribute to the success of a city or state.
Re: “George's Reunion This Weekend”
When I visited Memphis and GDI on the River - Names that come to mind are David Daponte and his partner ( ? ), Christopher McKell ...
If anyone knows where these people are today ..please let me know .. jjcork@hotmail.com - Australia
Re: “The Comparison of Detroit and Memphis, Again”
@ArlingtonPop - I generally agree this is the root of the problem. And I'm fine with passing the buck to the county, which essentially accomplishes the same thing as consolidation without the political costs or the efficiency gains. And maybe avoiding the political costs of consolidation is worth it for that, but this is all assuming that de-annexation is even legally (and politically) possible.
Ultimately, I think the only way Memphis can ever compete on taxes is by spreading the costs of sprawl out - either through de-annexation or consolidation. And I don't have any problem asking the county to pitch in, because even though it was annexed by Memphis, the entire community has contributed to it (especially the county commission during the desegregation era).
But even if we spread the cost, there is another problem. We still have too much housing for too few people. We need to do whatever we can to discourage new suburban development and encourage infill development. We also need to coordinate on economic development to help create more demand for housing. The problem is, most suburbs are not interested in this because it limits their growth. They are focused on their own short-term interests (which benefit them the most politically and financially,) and the potential long-term problems caused by sprawl and Memphis' decline is either ignored or written off as not their problem. Again, it all comes back to recognizing that having a declining Memphis is bad for the entire region and committing to act in the best interests of the region even if it means a short-term loss for suburbs and a short-term gain for Memphis. We as citizens of this community have a lot of work to do to repair the damage caused by our predecessors, and we need to focus on that rather than simply fight amongst ourselves for scraps of what we inherited.
Re: “George's Reunion This Weekend”
I visited GDI on the River with guest performer HOLLY BROWN around 1988, does anyone remember this time and does anyone remember me "John" from downunder Australia ?
jjcork
Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
ArlingtonPop
Most reports, so far, on charter schools have shown that they do no better than the public school system in large urban areas. Similar reports also have shown that state takeovers of schools does not increase the performance of the same schools in question.
Vouchers, as it applies to Tennessee will probably never become a reality. It is a minefield when you try to navigate the waters of diversity in certain counties, especially Shelby County.
You have to understand, AP, that unless the underpinning reasons for mediocre education performance is not adequately addressed, you are not going to solve the problem.
To some people that equate the quality of a school district to the high school graduation rate, that is a simplistic mistake. The attendance ages for students is codefied in state law. If a student reaches the age of 17 and, for whatever reason, it is really not the fault of the school.
Actually, student performance is more tied to the family structure, socio-economics, than to what happens or doesn't happen in the classroom. Even before Brown v. Board of Education, school systems all accross the nation have tried different schemes to improve performance by poor, urban kids and none have worked. What the nation has not done is to work on improving the condition of the parents stuck in poverty and dispair.
So, AP, stop doing what you often say I am doing, being overly simplistic.
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Re: “Two Cheers for the Unified School Board”
@OTP
Thought you might like to see more from Stanford about those children in poverty and Charter schools. Here is some language from a Stanford study.
It is important to note that the news for charter schools has some encouraging facets. In our nationally pooled sample, two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system: students in poverty and ELL students. This is no small feat. In these cases, our numbers indicate that charter students who fall into these categories are outperforming their TPS counterparts in both reading and math. These populations, then, have clearly been well served by the introduction of charters into the education landscape.
Here is a link to the whole study so you can see it in context.
credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE…