All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Mister Mets]

From a bluntly pragmatic perspective, it depends on what your overall goal and philosophy about education is; there are some who lean more towards the idea of perfecting the most potentially worthy students and thus are fine with “winnowing out the chaff,” while there are others who see it more as trying to pull everyone up as much as humanly possible. Both see their goal as being one beneficial to both the greatest number of individuals and to society - the former school of thought seeking to cultivate and sharpen the elite (in terms of educational desire and natural skill) by slowly consolidating resources onto them, while the latter school of thought seeks to do a “rising tide raises all boats” by flooding all students with knowledge and e$ustion, whether they want it or not.

As a teacher myself at a public school, and the son of two teachers, I tend to believe in the philosophy of trying to pull everybody up. Yeah there are “trouble kids,” but enough of them are “troubled kids” that I’ve seen get their lives genuinely improved that I don’t mind the ones who choose to try and be “lost causes.” School cultures vary without any set design or type - and frankly, I’ve heard of enough sub-par private schools to think debate over probably depends on researchers with a lot of letters after their name.

There was one guy who gave a lecture at professional development I went to who had numbers he said argued that the “educate everyone to 12th Grade level” was a better economic and social model, with minimal damage to the “elite students” of not actually helping find more of them.

On charter schools, I will admit I’m a little conflicted in that I know that some are attempting to help troubled students and are finding some success, but that just as many have turned into complete failures that fall apart because it turns out that, shock of all shocks, running education like a business means you’re going to suck at education. And a lot of private schools and charter schools operate under faulty premises about “dangerous students” that do greater damage - busing and “forced integration” is proven to have positive benefits that people need to face up to instead of desperately looking to be afraid of. And a lot of “elite” (as in money) private schools are just as much about ensuring privileged kids coast to adulthood as anything else.

One of the questions is whether the tradeoff to the effort of pulling up all the trouble(d) kids: are the lost resources going to help you from helping others? Could those trouble(d) kids drag down others?

It isn't necessarily a binary. There can be an understanding that schools are too quick to push out difficult students, but this doesn't mean that it should never happen.

As for busing, that was a massively unpopular strategy. There's no indication that parents and society are on board, and I'm not sure how to make that happen.

You have to be able to administer discipline, and an environment where your position there is a privilege, not a right, controls behaviour a lot better. There is no point wasting energy on the 1% who really don't want to learn, than let the teaching of the other 99% suffer. It helps control bullying (to a degree), because again, you can kick them out.

To go with your 1 in 100 example, 1 in 100 people is a psycopath.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20180...as-a-sociopath

They're also not evenly distributed, which is going to complicate any efforts to make sure to lift up every student.

That sounds like a very American thing. I could be wrong. I don't recall schools here caring too much about that.


True, but that's a two way street. They are being paid by ALL students, and if a few are requiring more "attention" (RE: discipline) that also failing all the rest (who pay the same) to get subpar attention. Either way it's not 'fair', so I'd favour on the side of those there to learn, not those who don't want to be there.

Great point that it's not just about what's easier for teachers, but what's best for all the students.

My philosophy is education is a right and privilege, but it's not one you should keep indefinitely. Easier to say, harder to implement. Thank god I'm not the education secretary.

The arguments about education being a right have some interesting implications. Does this mean it should be easier to charge parents with educational neglect.

I think there is a middle ground. YES, you can increase the overall "team" by the better performances of the upper end raising the bar, and pushing and challenging the rest. But the most effective way to increase the most, surely, is sometimes chopping away the 1% who are seriously hindering the progress of the majority?

There may be better services for the 1% when they're with an administration with the specialized training to deal with them.

I guess if you see private and religious schools as businesses then of course they should be entitled to some of the stimulus pie that's going around.



In regards to religion, I'm not sure why private institutions receive public money to educate their people in a particularly dogmatic way. Religious education is fine of course, but isn't that what their family & church & community is for? If we're going to have separation of church and state then do it properly. Let's not forget the Catholic Church was involved in one of the largest instances of institutional child sexual abuse in history.

But what you say in the bolded is 100% spot on. It's not about academic brilliance - it's about networking and maintaining that status quo. Oh sure, there's gonna be a few people who pop up from public schools, but the majority will be the well-heeled. Which is funny, because where I'm from, academic results at university are no better for children who come from private schools as compared to those from public schools.

It seems there's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't argument on private schools. One would argue that if private schools are a business, they're not entitled to funding for educational services. Someone else would find some reason to argue that private schools shouldn't be entitled to funding for small businesses.

Read some of the previous posts. People are in effect saying that difficult and poor performing students at public schools should just be kicked out and left to fend for themselves. Bad apples. That's not the kind of liberalism I'd subscribe to. I'd try to ensure that nobody gets left behind.

But isn't it also social darwinism to force the other students to be in classes with the "difficult" kids. And we should be clear what "difficult" means. These are students more likely to be disruptive, to threaten violence, to engage in hate speech, to be violent, to bring drugs, to destroy school property, to steal, etc.

One can also argue that difficult students have more incentives to behave if there are consequences to sexual harassment, cyberbullying, vandalism, etc.

[Tendrin]

I'm sure Biden will win the popular vote but I feel he'll lose the electoral vote. I wish the US would do away with that.

People keep saying this but the reality is that Biden is set to outperform Hillary in the swing states. Trump has gone to war against Michigan, which now has a Democratic governor and is a pivotal swing state. His approval ratings is underwater in all of them, and states that are not reliably in the Democratic column have Biden polling well ahead of where Hillary was. Trump's win was a narrow squeaker and he's only lost support since then.

70,000 voters across three states. No one is saying it's a given, but to pretend that Trump is likely to repeat the run he had in 2016 seems mistaken, as is the idea that he'll somehow manage to crush Biden.

I mean, multiple polls show Biden reliably ahead by 3-5 points in Florida, a state that Trump has zero chance of winning the presidency without. Turns out old white people don't love it when you ask them to die instead of asking poor brown people to do it in their place.

[The no face guy]

From a bluntly pragmatic perspective, it depends on what your overall goal and philosophy about education is; there are some who lean more towards the idea of perfecting the most potentially worthy students and thus are fine with “winnowing out the chaff,” while there are others who see it more as trying to pull everyone up as much as humanly possible. Both see their goal as being one beneficial to both the greatest number of individuals and to society - the former school of thought seeking to cultivate and sharpen the elite (in terms of educational desire and natural skill) by slowly consolidating resources onto them, while the latter school of thought seeks to do a “rising tide raises all boats” by flooding all students with knowledge and e$ustion, whether they want it or not.

As a teacher myself at a public school, and the son of two teachers, I tend to believe in the philosophy of trying to pull everybody up. Yeah there are “trouble kids,” but enough of them are “troubled kids” that I’ve seen get their lives genuinely improved that I don’t mind the ones who choose to try and be “lost causes.” School cultures vary without any set design or type - and frankly, I’ve heard of enough sub-par private schools to think debate over probably depends on researchers with a lot of letters after their name.

There was one guy who gave a lecture at professional development I went to who had numbers he said argued that the “educate everyone to 12th Grade level” was a better economic and social model, with minimal damage to the “elite students” of not actually helping find more of them.

On charter schools, I will admit I’m a little conflicted in that I know that some are attempting to help troubled students and are finding some success, but that just as many have turned into complete failures that fall apart because it turns out that, shock of all shocks, running education like a business means you’re going to suck at education. And a lot of private schools and charter schools operate under faulty premises about “dangerous students” that do greater damage - busing and “forced integration” is proven to have positive benefits that people need to face up to instead of desperately looking to be afraid of. And a lot of “elite” (as in money) private schools are just as much about ensuring privileged kids coast to adulthood as anything else.

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma. There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing. Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

It is of course all about funding. Misbehaved students with attention deficits require more support in the classroom, which in turn requires more funding, and potentially higher taxes. I also believe that bright competent students should have the option to fast track through the grades and finish early. Overall though, I find the idea of shuffling all the bad kids into one quagmire classroom where they learn each others bad behaviors repugnant...I would definitely consider that a failure of society if it were allowed to happen.

[sammy_hansen]

It seems there's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't argument on private schools. One would argue that if private schools are a business, they're not entitled to funding for educational services. Someone else would find some reason to argue that private schools shouldn't be entitled to funding for small businesses.

But isn't it also social darwinism to force the other students to be in classes with the "difficult" kids. And we should be clear what "difficult" means. These are students more likely to be disruptive, to threaten violence, to engage in hate speech, to be violent, to bring drugs, to destroy school property, to steal, etc.

One can also argue that difficult students have more incentives to behave if there are consequences to sexual harassment, cyberbullying, vandalism, etc.

I think it's kinda hard to tell a child that there's consequences to cyberbullying and sexual harassment when you see who the President is and what he's doing. There's obviously a line a child will cross where they are a danger to other students. But extolling the virtues of private schools by saying it's a good thing they can kick out "bad apples" and therefore that's what's wrong with public schools because they can't is just wrong. It smacks of defeatism.

There are numerous reasons a child could be disruptive - he could be being abused by his drunken father, and self-medicating with illegal drugs. I think it's a really dangerous path we go down where we give up on the most needy.

If one thinks private schools are a business (which I do - they have profits and losses at the end of each year) then you can't really argue against them not receiving stimulus money that is intended for businesses. Now, it's whether these same schools should be receiving any public money in the beginning which is the real ongoing issue.

[sammy_hansen]

I tend to agree with your philosophy, the "bad apples" are usually students who have underlining conditions like ADHD, executive functioning issues, learning disabilities or home trauma. There is something about the private school process of deleting them and shuffling them under the rug that I find disturbing. Though I do not have statistics to back up my opinion, I would like to think that a competent public school teacher, surrounded by strong kids who are leaders provides a sense of stability and classroom community to the process.

It is of course all about funding. Misbehaved students with attention deficits require more support in the classroom, which in turn requires more funding, and potentially higher taxes. I also believe that bright competent students should have the option to fast track through the grades and finish early. Overall though, I find the idea of shuffling all the bad kids into one quagmire classroom where they learn each others bad behaviors repugnant...I would definitely consider that a failure of society if it were allowed to happen.

Not much different to a "correctional" facility, eh?

[worstblogever]

I've seen arguments that if Trump loses in the next election, he'll run again in 2024.

He'll have a hard enough time staying out of jail for tax fraud or election fraud (paying off Stormy Daniels illegally). SDNY still is sitting on sealed indictments, and waiting for him to be out of office to unseal them.

State crimes. Not federal. Even if he resigned with 2 days left in his administration to have a President Pence pardon him... it wouldn't absolve him.

[The no face guy]

Not much different to a "correctional" facility, eh?

Lol, no. I'm sure the private prisons in the States would love that teaching model though, as it would supply them with their future customers $$$.

[Tendrin]

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/s...16086711848960

Biden ahead in Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and nationally.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

WHO Warns Of ‘Second Peak’ In Coronavirus Infections If Restrictions Lifted Too Soon

“We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now it is going to keep going down.”

**********

Veterans Affairs Gives 1,300 Vets Unproven COVID-19 Drug Touted By Trump

Hydroxy*********** has not been shown to be effective against the coronavirus and may even lead to fatal side effects. The notion of vets being used as guinea pigs infuriates me!

**********

Fox News Doctor Points Out Major Flaw With Trump’s Plan To Hold RNC Amid Pandemic

“The bottom line is putting a lot of people in a small area is definitely not good for us right now,” argued medical contributor Nicole Saphier. This presupposes Trump cares about that. Newsflash: he doesn't.

**********

Protesters Hang Effigy Of Kentucky Governor Outside Governor’s Mansion

They were accusing Gov. Andy Beshear of tyranny for his efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Stay classy, Kentucky!

**********

Drive-Thrus And Drive-Ins: Muslim Americans Celebrate Eid Amid The Coronavirus Pandemic

Despite the lockdown, Muslims across the country find ways to celebrate the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

**********

Fox News’ Brit Hume Face-Mask Shames Joe Biden; Twitter Goes Bonkers

Apparently the cool factor trumps the nearly 100,000 dead in America from COVID-19.

[Robotman]

Isn’t hanging a political figure in effigy considered a terrorist threat?!? These knuckle dragging protesters have gotten away with far too much already and they seem to be getting more brazen. I know they’re just looking for a fight but enough is enough.

If they aren’t going to be met with force they damn sure better be having their names put on the FBI watch list. Ruin their lives and make them pay in some form.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Isn’t hanging a political figure in effigy considered a terrorist threat?!? These knuckle dragging protesters have gotten away with far too much already and they seem to be getting more brazen. I know they’re just looking for a fight but enough is enough.

If they aren’t going to be met with force they damn sure better be having their names put on the FBI watch list. Ruin their lives and make them pay in some form.

I think governments are afraid to clamp down on these clowns for fear of catching flack from Trump/Faux News/right wingers for infringing on their First Amendment rights. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that's the case.

[JackDaw]

Isn’t hanging a political figure in effigy considered a terrorist threat?!? These knuckle dragging protesters have gotten away with far too much already and they seem to be getting more brazen. I know they’re just looking for a fight but enough is enough.

If they aren’t going to be met with force they damn sure better be having their names put on the FBI watch list. Ruin their lives and make them pay in some form.

Why would hanging an effigy by itself be considered a terrorist threat??

It strikes me as a deeply unpleasant thing to do...and obviously I’d expect police to ensure any demonstration is peaceful..but I also think some one would need to do more than that before putting them on FBI watch list, let alone deliberately ruining their lives.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Tom Goolsby, a former North Carolina State Senator and comb over enthusiast who in his time in office, supported massive cuts to education, a state constitutional ban on same sex marriage, voter ID laws that disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, voted for a law to prevent climatologists from North Carolina from being able to discuss climate change, was the sponsor of the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, and was the man who snuck an amendment onto a motorcycle safety bill to turn it into one of the most radical pieces of anti-abortion legislation in the country. When his legislative agenda began to create weekly protests at the state capitol, known as Moral Mondays, for being led by the Reverend William Barber, Goolsby took the very adult approach to take out an opinion editorial in the local paper to call them “Moron Mondays”, in which he lied about there being no members of the legislature among the group’s numbers. Goolsby lasted less than two terms in office, resigning in August 2014 shortly after being sued by the rest of the law firm where he worked for financial fraud, which makes him even harder to elect.

On this date in 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Mike Coffman, who prior to going to Washington, D.C., had a career in Colorado state politics that went all the way back to 1989. Back in 2012, Mike Coffman was at a campaign fundraiser when he volunteered his opinion about the Birther conspiracy, saying, “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” Well, word of this disgusting moment leaked to the public, and Coffman was forced to apologize. Mind you, robotically repeating that apology to local news reporters in Colorado who chased him down for comment might not have been the best way to make it seem genuine. He apparently doesn't like the negative publicity about it, since he was caught having his Congressional staff trying to edit the fact that it ever happened from his Wikipedia page, earning him top honors in a Buzzfeed article about members of Congress wasting taxpayer dollars to have paid staff scrub their Wiki pages. But in terms of policy, Mike Coffman isn't any less of an extremist. Say, for example, his repeated support for Congress trying to make fetal Personhood a thing, and make life start at conception. Coffman voted to do so as a state legislator in 2008, and again after hitting Washington, D.C. in 2010 in the Tea Party Wave. In 2011, he also sponsored legislation that tried to redefine the legal definition of rape, specifying whether it was “forcible rape” or not. As you might expect, Coffman's also is a climate change denier, believing scientists' research cannot be trusted, and there's financial pressure on the scientists to cut their funding unless they produce studies that say it DOES exist. And THAT is a decidedly different paranoid conspiracy theory, right there. But it's far from his only one. In October of 2012, Coffman told reporters he believed President Obama would engage in a last minute military engagement to cement his bid on winning the presidency over Mitt Romney (and spoiler alert, nothing of the sort happened). Believe it or not, in spite of Mike Coffman having a history of voting for conservative interests, Colorado's 6th Congressional District held it for four terms after the Tea Party Wave, even though it has a +1 Democratic lean the Cook Partisan Index. After two years filled with disastrous town hall appearances for Coffman where constituents lambasted him for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or how in the wake of the Parkland shooting, they demanded gun control… Mike Coffman got bounced from office in the 2018 Blue Wave by Jason Crow, who bested him by 11 points. As his career now seems to be over, we will retire his profile at this time and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 873-45, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Trey Hollingsworth

Welcome to what is the 873rd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the sitting U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, Trey Hollingsworth, who was first elected to office in 2016. He is the 12th wealthiest member of Congress as of this article’s posting, with a net worth of over $50 million. He self-funded his first campaign for Congress, having carpet-bagged his way up from his home in Tennessee to end up getting a seat in Congress.

And what immediately brought Trey Hollingsworth near the front of the queue of people we had planned on profiling was his recent comments on Covid-19, where he came out hard in favor of reopening the country, considering thousands of people dying “the lesser of two evils” when compared with the GDP being lower:

”The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on," he said. "Our GDP is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter. It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say more deaths is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."

To which, we have a fine rebuttal to say, “Go f*** yourself and your ‘big boy pants’, Trey. People’s lives matter more than your stock portfolio.”

Rest assured, his belief that the stock market is more important than human lives is reflected throughout his voting record:

• February 16th, 2017: Hollingsworth votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Trey Hollingsworth votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• May 4th, 2017: Hollingsworth votes for the GOP's healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, post-partum depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions". Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Hollingsworth would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Trey Hollingsworth votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• October 3rd, 2017: Hollingsworth votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: Trey Hollingsworth votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
• February 18th, 2018: Rep. Hollingsworth and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and votes for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
• January 22nd, 2019: Hollingsworth can’t be arsed to vote for HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• January 27th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth votes against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attack Hollingsworth our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
• February 28th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 7th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 17th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 17th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Trey Hollingsworth is running for his third term in office in November, and while he has no less than five Democrats lined up to take him on in the general election. Indiana’s 9th Congressional District has a pretty advantageous +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, but with Democrats looking at a +8 to +9 advantage against generic candidates… we’d like to think that if they ran ads against a carpetbagging millionaire who talked about letting thousands of people die to “put your big boy pants on” and save the economy would perhaps still be someone who could be sent packing in the fall as the body count continues to grow, and could exceed 200,000 by Election Day.

[Kieran_Frost]

Hmmm, I suppose their is quite of a difference between the UK and Canada, as you are much farther along on two tier systems in health care and education. As a result, in part of our Francophone influence, Canada does seem to swing further to the left than the other big Anglophone countries (the USA, UK, Australia) For the most part, our private schools are either for the very wealthy or for religious affiliation, there is not much in the way of private middle or working class schools in Canada, it's seen as sort of a big no no.

That's a shame, as they can offer great benefit to a great many people.

But were consistently ranked as one of the top achieving education systems in the world, so our public schools are doing something right, for now at least.

Can I ask, how big are your classroom sizes, on average?

Putting it another way, I was friends with a high school math teacher when I was in my thirties. I mentioned that one of my regrets is that I never took any math beyond the most basic. So he said he would teach me algebra. Three weeks after we started, he gave me a test and said, "Congratulations, you've just learned a year's worth of high school algebra". I was astounded. He said, "Teaching high school isn't teaching. It's babysitting. Look at you. It took me three weeks to teach you what a high school class would have taken nine months to learn and mostly because you weren't sitting in a room with a bunch of people who were wasting your time and mine".

That was very nice of your friend. I think there are several things that need factoring in:
- you were a lot older, more focused and knowledgeable at the time; which helps
- maths in school (certainly mine) was far more than just algebra.

It is much easier to tutor one-on-one, agreed. But that's just not feasible to deliver when it comes to a nation of children.

Read some of the previous posts. People are in effect saying that difficult and poor performing students at public schools should just be kicked out and left to fend for themselves. Bad apples. That's not the kind of liberalism I'd subscribe to. I'd try to ensure that nobody gets left behind.

You can't save everyone, esp. when they won't accept the help. That's just the reality of life.

One of the questions is whether the tradeoff to the effort of pulling up all the trouble(d) kids: are the lost resources going to help you from helping others? Could those trouble(d) kids drag down others?

It isn't necessarily a binary. There can be an understanding that schools are too quick to push out difficult students, but this doesn't mean that it should never happen.

100% agreed. And it needs to be a case-by-case basis, but I don't think anyone's arguing it shouldn't be. It should just be easier for schools to remove disruptive, abusive and dangerous pupils without a colossal hassle and board meetings and sanctions, and decisions made by those not in the school, etc.

The arguments about education being a right have some interesting implications. Does this mean it should be easier to charge parents with educational neglect.

It's a difficult one, working out is the child not behaving because of home life, or because they are a bad apple? I don't think charging the parents will change anything.

There may be better services for the 1% when they're with an administration with the specialized training to deal with them.

While I understand this, you have to think how much money and effort is being diverted to that 1% to "help them" because they can't be bothered to learn and behave like everyone else. Ultimately you're now spending more money on those who don't want to try, and how is that fair? This is where apprenticeships and practical education would help. If the student doesn't work academic, let's put money into teaching them a trade, so they can go into the wider world with some chance?

And we should be clear what "difficult" means. These are students more likely to be disruptive, to threaten violence, to engage in hate speech, to be violent, to bring drugs, to destroy school property, to steal, etc.

THIS! Not every "difficult" pupil is a poor lost lamb who just needs a hug.