Anybody notice we had a financial meldown caused by greed on Wall St? Harper has a massive deficit as well. His solution? Stay in Afganistan, buy billions of dollars worth of jets and build prisons like crazy.

“The man who opens a school closes a jail.”

Victor Hugo

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/nyregion/10klein.html?_r=2&ref=education
Magazine executive to run NYC schools

New York City’s schools chief Joel I. Klein, a former media executive who carried out an overhaul of the nation’s largest school system, announced his resignation Tuesday. Klein—who will stay on until the end of the year—served for eight years, during which he sought to boost student achievement and hold teachers accountable for student learning. He will be replaced by Cathleen P. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, who—like Klein—has no background in education and will become the first woman to preside over the city’s schools.

I would say Klein was forced out when it became clear that all of his test score increases were a fraud.

Does it surprise anyone at all that “Dean” as “Doug” over at the Retired Educator(linked here) was soundly scolded, and rightly so, by Ms. Crux when he attempted to pull the same line as he did here in his first post?

Same nonsense being tried here. Time to say bye-bye to Dean/Doug.

Simply not responding to the dude might be another idea but seriously this guy doesn’t need a forum. He’s got his own.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/11/joel-kleins-resignation-its-about-time.html

Not being able to manage money is a symptom of poor math.  Here’s a comment from Educhatter’s Blog from one poster, Hypatia:

“I hope you don’t mind me weighing in here. This is one of the blogs that I follow regularly and enjoy.

“I have read the book by Zwaagstra, Clifton, and Long and I think that they are right on with many of the points they make.

“My expertise is in math and, while Canadian students appear to do well on some international competitions, such as the PISA test, this can be quite misleading. The PISA test, for instance, tests on math literacy (eg. here are three triangles – which do you think has the largest area?). There was a recent article in University Affairs (“Big drop in math skills of entering students”) about the decline in basic math skills of university students (I can attest to this because I teach them). Unfortunately, some of the weakest students in math are those in the faculty of education – our future teachers. The Vice President of the Canadian Math Society recently wrote an article in the June issue of the CMS Notes about the sorry state of math education in Canadian elementary and secondary schools. This is a real problem and I don’t think that parents are entirely to blame for this.

“My daughter is in grade 3 and I cannot believe how much time is spent on meaningless arts and crafts projects etc. (more art – no thank you!). Children’s capabilities seem to be underestimated and academics do not seem to be a priority at all. There are too many games, not enough practice of basic math skills (as a result many of the kids in my daughter’s class cannot even add two digit numbers!), and weak curricula (at least in math, which is the one I have looked into extensively).

“I think that many of the problems could be fixed using ‘common sense’.”

http://educhatter.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/fixing-our-schools-whatever-happened-to-common-sense/

I agree.  You can see it in people, how poor their math skills are.  I also agree that if the math skills were improved, that budgeting would come naturally, because then it would simply be common sense.

I don’t think the national financial situation is result of the fact that the politicians and bureaucrats like Harper and Flaherty cannot count.

It is a result of the fact that people want services but do not want to pay taxes to receive them, especially but not restricted to the wealthy.

If you really ask people to prioritize (or priorize) their preferrences they choose services way over taxes. We need to break the resistance to paying for what we want.