Samson's Wig

The insurance fraud story is pretty good. OP was robbed.

I feel guilty in some ways (some version of survivor's guilt, I suppose) that my kids are getting all the help they need despite attending public school because we have the means to ensure it happens outside of the school system, along with the time, energy, and know-how to ensure the educators directly involved are doing their jobs. We can also pull them out and put them in private school any time if needed, or simply pick up and move elsewhere without much fuss. I recognize that the vast majority are not in this position. I mostly feel bad for the poor kids in inner-city schools, though. Most of the people who vote for this nonsense live in areas where it doesn't impact them (big shocker there). Suburban school districts are flooded with resources that inner-city districts do not have (because inner cities have been paying to build up those suburban districts for three decades). This is the game these assholes are playing, and it's kind of hard to blame (although I still do) suburbanites for having their heads in the sand when they don't feel the direct impact of the twats they keep electing to office.

It would be challenging to imagine adults using special needs kids for political and monetary gain if we hadn't already seen it on full display in Texas. Fuck every last one of these people, and yes, they're exactly who you think they are.

Maybe. That game in Lubbock involved some absolute gifts from the refs to help the team get back in the game. Ultimately, despite the assistance, they didn't get it done on the field. The tiebreaker rules were what they were (although to be honest, I'm too many whiskeys away from remembering how all of that went down at the end of that crazy season). It's a shame that ESPN bought the SEC the next year, and things panned out the way they have since. Big 12 football in that decade was fun. It has been a complete shitshow since, so good riddance.

The Big 12 has protected the frontrunners (regardless of which team it is) for the last fifteen seasons at least, and really going back into the aughts. It became worse after the SEC rise and the Big12 became more desperate for relevance. TCU's big season a couple of years back came with a huge assist from the conference and the refs. This is nothing new. College football has always been more about the spectacle than a pure sport, and the imbalance of the leagues has always been insane, whether it's BMDs buying players in the old days or broadcasters manipulating ratings and playoff spots today. That's just how it works because it's not a real sport. It's closer to "pro" wrestling than a sport with enforced parity and actual competition on the field determining champions. No one should be surprised when any conference puts a thumb on the scale. There's too much money involved and too little structure.

Muddies the water a bit, doesn't it? I don't know any details about either kid other than the reports that they were both special needs, but anyone who has worked in education like yourself, or anyone who is the parent of a special needs kid like me, can form a general picture of what might have happened here. It's a tragedy all around. If the comment above that this kid threatened to do this very thing before turns out to be true, the school is going to be in some trouble and rightfully so. Special needs services at public schools in Texas are in dire shape. Between the well-intentioned but ultimately negative impact of inclusive classroom policies and the complete lack of funding, hiring of qualified individuals to work with these kids, etc. we're dealing with today, something has to change and dramatically. I wish I had any answers. EDIT TO ADD: Sorry if this gets a bit cloakroom-ish, but no group is suffering from state leadership's attack on public schools more than the special needs kids. Everyone from the Abbott to Morath to their buddies looking to profit from what's going on, can get fucked and die slowly over a fire, as far as I'm concerned. If there is a hell, people who fuck with special needs kids will be first in line.

Three possible reasons: You're a fucking idiot. You are trying to capture the attention of fucking idiots. Both 1 and 2. My money is on the third option.

I know I'm likely not a member of a small club with this one, but I still love that I once got to tell Tucker Carlson to go fuck himself. It's probably the most fun I've ever had at work.

I touched a nerve, I guess, but you clearly didn't bother to read what I wrote and just got hung up because I used the word "millennial." If you're relatively young and came up in Texas public schools, I appreciate you inadvertently bolstering my argument for me. I, too, said the job sucks. And yes, there have always been shitty teachers. For anyone old enough and involved in public education directly to have witnessed what things were in the past compared to what they look like now, there is, without question, a much higher percentage of shitty teachers today than in the past. Many factors are creating the situation, and it has been exacerbated mightily by the pandemic, so it's not a "young people are bad" thing. It's that young people, particularly young women, have better options now than they used to. The many high-quality individuals among Millennials and Gen Z are, by and large, not going into teaching. In contrast, it was a viable option (sometimes the only option for women) for Gen X, Boomers, and beyond. We're left with a bunch of folks who are barely functional adults working in these roles because that is all the job can attract. The turnover rate is high, so the experience level is extremely low (the lowest in America). That's not an indictment on the generations involved; it's an indictment on the specific people in those roles today and, more importantly, an indictment of the system itself. Saying the "job fucking sucks" and wiping your hands of it isn't exactly adding anything of value, and this is one of the most critical problems facing our country today. We're not going to solve it by blaming it on something overly simplistic and then ignoring it. That's what we've been doing and look where we're at. Brisket touched on the attacks from political nutbags on teachers and the system. Make no mistake, I am very much not in that crowd, not even a little bit. I also agree that the nonsense that crowd perpetuates is a massive part of the problem with attracting quality teachers. It doesn't mean we should ignore the reality that public school teaching quality has degraded tremendously in recent years. They're not a bunch of devils out to brainwash your kids, but a bunch of them are indifferent bums who don't care if your kid is educated at all. Blaming parents is shortsighted as well. Parents are more heavily involved now than ever, and by a significant amount. Half the teachers in the profession today wouldn't get their work done if parents weren't up there carrying half the load for them. Ultimately, we have to stop destroying our public schools for personal profit as our state leadership and their buddies are trying to do, but we also need to stop sanctifying teachers and find a way to return teaching to an attractive profession that draws in quality individuals. Because right now, they're hiring from the bottom of the barrel, and it isn't pretty. Nothing will change so long as one side exclusively blames the lack of pay and bad parents as the only problems or so long as another side demonizes teachers and administrators as indoctrinators or whatever weird crap those nutbags are worried about. This is a bottom-up rebuild situation, and it can only start in Texas by restructuring how we fund our schools. That is the ONLY place this discussion should be focused until it happens. Everything else is fluff, but nothing will change so long as everyone focuses on the fluff - which is precisely what state leadership wants. In the meantime, kids currently in school are getting an inferior education from the lowest quality group of educators in the history of public schools. Find yourself one of the quality teachers left in the profession, and you'll find someone who agrees with me.

Fellow synesthete here. For me, it mostly involves visualizing time ias spacial (along with color), and that has not waned with age. I also associate numbers with colors. I do not, however, share your photographic memory. My memory has always been good, but not that level. My neurospicy son has synesthesia as well, manifesting in lots of interesting ways. It's incredible how differently people experience the world, yet we're all, at times, a bit guilty of assuming everyone sees things the way we do (or at least not offering some grace for when they don't).

I agree with that, of course. We couldn't just dump them all at once. But we would need mechanisms in place for weeding them out, or we'd just end up with higher-paid loafers whose primary skill seems to be doing the bare minimum to not get fired. The slightest increase in responsibilities and/or accountability would likely have most of the running for the hills reasonably quickly. The phrase "work-life balance" is too often misused as a euphemism for sanctioned laziness by that crowd. It will be a huge hill to climb, and I'm not confident it will happen in our lifetimes, if ever. I don't see the social will to fix it, and no figure in leadership has proffered anything other than gutless money grabs like voucher programs, which will do nothing but make things worse.

"Last wife" tracks.

Once upon a time, I subbed quite a bit. It's a tough gig. My mom was a public school teacher for 50 years before finally retiring in 2022. She also managed the academic UIL program for her school, which was one of the best in the state. Even in retirement, she is still brought down to Austin to consult on academic UIL activities, testing standards, etc. She worked her ass off her entire career, and I know well what a quality educator looks like. I spent much of my childhood hanging around at school until 7:00 at night while she prepared lesson plans and put in the effort required to properly educate students, all without ever being paid nearly enough for it. I completely understand that side of the argument, but those types of educators are rare anymore. Daily, I witness teachers at my kids' middle school stumbling in at the first bell and racing to see who can get in their car first at the last bell. There are still a few good ones, of course, but the pandemic was the final straw for most of the experienced talent, and they're gone now. We're left with young teachers who don't know what they're doing and are some of the laziest people I've ever dealt with. I don't see how any of them would function in any other career where they would be allowed to do basically nothing all day and still keep their job. I guess the tech industry has some crossover there. I agree entirely with the general notion that teachers should be paid more, just not most current teachers. That nuance should be involved in any discussion about pay raises. Giving this lot a pay raise across the board would be foolish, as you would reward many people who work fewer (and easier) hours than a part-time fry cook. High pay should be attached to job performance (and no, I don't mean test scores). I also agree that what kids are getting these days is the direct result of years of underpaying teachers and generally treating them like shit. As you said, it attracts shitty teachers, and that's primarily what we have now. It's all moot as the state isn't going to do shit, especially when the only way to fix it starts with completely restructuring the funding system and stopping the theft that happens from inner city taxpayers. I am tired of the sanctification of teachers anytime these conversations come up. That argument may have carried some water thirty years ago, but right now, the conversation needs to shift away from "Those poor teachers, they work so hard and get so little pay!" That's just not a factual statement, and besides, it hasn't gotten us anywhere in decades of muttering it. One can argue that many of the teachers are overpaid based on performance, even though a small percentage of talented teachers are indeed underpaid. They need to be targeted and rewarded, for sure, but lumping in the dead weight with them won't fix anything. We need a complete restructure of the education system, and yes, that should include higher pay for teachers but should also include a purging of the absolute crap workforce currently in place. We need to encourage more of our best and brightest to want to teach. Misogyny benefited us for a long time when attracting capable talent because women had very few options for work. By default, many of the brightest and most competent women became teachers and kicked ass at it (what better options were out there?). Those same types of women today have many options in any field, and we're left scraping the bottom of the barrel for the bare minimum of qualifications for new teachers. It's a pathetic state of affairs. As for coaches teaching classes, that is an abomination, and perhaps the biggest indictment on Texas public schools there is. Anyone who ever had a coach for a teacher knows what a joke it is. We value competitive athletics over academics to a degree of complete stupidity, and boy, is it evident in the education level of the public in this state. Until we fix our academic woes, I think that competitive athletics should go by the wayside in public schools outside of intramural activities. If competitive sports stick around, they should be privatized, and coaches (outside of one or two PE-type coaches to teach physical fitness at each school. perhaps) should be removed from the public payroll. It's insane that the highest-paid individual at any public school (including universities) is a fucking coach. And we think we will continue to thrive in the future when our priorities are this out of whack. We're fucked if things don't change.

Most of us will likely be dead before they're finished, but it's a good project.