Tennessee Lawmaker wants to tie welfare to good grades...

[BringBackFergy]

Not to worry, Banning guns will prevent violence.

There's a run on steak knives at Walmart...people are stocking up.

[Joe Miner]

Not to worry, Banning guns will prevent violence.

 

So would banning violence prevent guns?

[Magox]

There's a run on steak knives at Walmart...people are stocking up.

 

[We Come In Peace]

I'm not exactly a lefty but I tend to agree with Jon Stewart on this issue.

+1

[Juror#8]

You can't make this stuff up.

 

http://www.foxnews.c...to-good-grades/

 

I think that it is a wonderful idea providing that there is some kind of exception for willfully truant children, or for parents who can demonsrate meaningful time and effort towards ensuring that their child attends school.

 

The only way to assuage generational dependence on public assistance is to attack it at it's root - which is a lack of a quality education.

 

But the state also has an obligation to provide an environment where kids can go to and from school safely, employ competent teachers, and have teaching environments that aren't repurposed utility closets with crumbling walls, using school text books from the early 90s.

 

No child should have to endure Dante's first cantica to get an education. And those who think that is just as easy to go to Anacostia highschool as it is to go to Walt Whitman are fooling themselves.

[TakeYouToTasker]

I think that it is a wonderful idea providing that there is some kind of exception for willfully truant children, or for parents who can demonsrate meaningful time and effort towards ensuring that their child attends school.

 

The only way to assuage generational dependence on public assistance is to attack it at it's root - which is a lack of a quality education.

 

But the state also has an obligation to provide an environment where kids can go to and from school safely, employ competent teachers, and have teaching environments that aren't repurposed utility closets with crumbling walls, using school text books from the early 90s.

 

No child should have to endure Dante's first cantica to get an education. And those who think that is just as easy to go to Anacostia highschool as it is to go to Walt Whitman are fooling themselves.

The state has no such obligations.

[Juror#8]

The state has no such obligations.

 

I wouldn't think legally either.

 

But I'll tell you this, if the state begins tying state welfare eligibility to school attendance/performance, it's going to implicate a de facto responsibility by the state to ensure that the cities and communities have the resources they need to facilitate a student's ability to fulfill that requirement.

 

Most municipalities generate monies for school funding through tax revenue. In abjectly poor areas, and areas where public assistance is the main income source, it frustrates that locality's ability to care for the health of its school infrastructurally and otherwise. That is when the mayor and the local government administrators are on the phone to the Governor communicating the following message:

 

"You're taking **** away from our people unless their kids go to school but the damn walls are crumbling in the classrooms and hoodlums are using the school annex as a place to slang rock because, since you cut county appropriation by 9%, we cut OT from the police force.

 

Now kids are scared to walk to school out of fear of being bullied, beat up, forced to use drugs or conscripted into some crew, and those who do come to school are wondering which will come first, the bronchial condition, the school stabbing, or lunch."

 

Once you begin understanding more about local government, you'll understand that states don't impose things, that have a proximate effect on the livelihood of their individual counties, without some promises and guarantees.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Juror#8

[TakeYouToTasker]

The obligation to provide better schools falls to the communities those schools are in, and then, only if they choose to be obligated.

 

It certainly does not fall to the state who, under your senario, would confiscate my money to build infrastructure and pay unions neither of which I have any use for; as a prerequisite to confiscate even more of my money in order to give it to useless people I have no use for.

 

If folks in the inner city want to improve, they can do it themselves.

[Juror#8]

The obligation to provide better schools falls to the communities those schools are in, and then, only if they choose to be obligated.

 

It certainly does not fall to the state who, under your senario, would confiscate my money to build infrastructure and pay unions neither of which I have any use for; as a prerequisite to confiscate even more of my money in order to give it to useless people I have no use for.

 

If folks in the inner city want to improve, they can do it themselves.

 

The states give money to individual counties and cities that then gets used for education purposes, school improvement, school infrastructural projects, etc. They just do. I don't care if you like it or not. It happens. If you need proof, call your local government administration building, comptroller, or revenue office, and ask. It's a free call and it will take you a minute of your time.

 

If you don't like it, call your governor's office and complain.

 

If a state mandates a program that requires that in order for impoverished families to receive public assistance from said state, their kids have to go to school and perform at a certain level, said state has an obligation to ensure that the place that they are mandating that the kids attend, in order to maintain funding, is not a death trap.

 

That might just entail some basic improvements.

 

But if the state enters into the arena of community education, they then obligate themselves, in a de facto way or otherwise, to ensure that the pieces are there for folks to be able to comply.

 

And the more I think about it, I can think of a couple of ways that such legislation would legally compel a state to provide education funding in some capacity.

 

I'm not talking about what you think is right or wrong, or what comports more with your vision of prudent tax appropriation; I'm only talking about what would likely HAVE TO happen IF the state mandated a metric/outcome-based academic policy tied to public assistance.

 

If you really don't like it, like really really, then tell your state not to step into the community education arena at all.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Juror#8

[TakeYouToTasker]

I'm making a philisophical argument in opposition to your statment about hypothetical obligations. Don't shift the goal posts.