About half of Detroit can't read

State subsidies? Funding education with taxes other than property? I mean, that has to be the case with that white spot in the south, right?

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No, it’s Barron Trump. That kid is really good at the cyber, you know.

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Whoops, bad edit, Can’t figure out how to revert post!!

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There is an extreme pettiness and short-sighted streak in humanity … I notice that seems to go along with voting republican.

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I’ve heard that theory time to time but it’s much more likely he could be dyslexic than anything, I dunno. Regardless of how I feel about the guy, it’s a very murky thing to say about someone in that position

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I’d go with dyslexic, but I wouldn’t believe he’s completely illiterate.

Dyslexia doesn’t explain his rather small vocabulary. It’s one thing to be unable to read those $0.50 words correctly, but something else all together to not know any. He could have a combination of dyslexia and functional illiteracy.

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All the best words are short.

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Hey, that’s a bit unfair! What about the Libertarians?

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I wonder what percentage of people who identify as such actually do vote GOP because they see it as the “lesser of 2 evils.” Because it’s far more evil to tax people and provide services for everyone including the working poor than it is to let people die of easily curable illnesses.

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The circumstances of birth are the single greatest determinant to life outcomes.

Generally speaking, you are most likely to be of the same social class when you die as when you were born.

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This is nothing new! Growing up in the 90’s in NE Ohio, the Cleveland Scene (alt-weekly up there) would occasionally run stories about the illiteracy “championship,” wherein Cleveland or Detroit would claim the mantle of “most illiterate major city in the U.S.”

IIRC it was back n’ forth, like a good basketball game.

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Par4t of the point of UBI is that it gives a little more negotiating power to the employee. They can resist exploitation more easily because they won’t starve while trying to find another job; this means that employers have to offer better conditions or better pay or both in order to attract workers.

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Fun fact: an elephant’s trunk is called “Rüssel” in German. And weevils are called “Rüsselkäfer”.

This doesn’t explain anything. Especially not why in one of the richest, most scientifically advanced societies on this globe communities like Detroit seem to have alphabetisation rates slightly higher than some of the poorest countries in the world.

I want this data by age groups, BTW. I simply cannot fathom it

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Detroit’s in the US, the answer is right in front of you: racism. Do a quick internet search on the history of the city from the end of WWII onward, and you won’t be able to un-see it.

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Ahh, Alabama. Leading the way again.

As the daughter of a teacher, right out of the teacher’s pockets.

http://www.teaching-certification.com/salaries-benefits/alabama-teaching-salaries-and-benefits.html

Edited to add, here’s how they get paid where I live now.

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I’ve lived in racist societies. I lived in some of the poorest countries of the world. I’ve lived with (not really in, as a white, overeducated and comparably rich visitor) societies with had an alphabetisation rate of well below 20 percent. I know how this works in other countries.

But I still can’t wrap my head around this.

If this is typical for the US, then the US are doomed, in my opinion.

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Yup, nailed it.

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And the cost of living in NYC would make living on $55k/year be living in poverty.

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For all the folks wondering about how children get through the educational system without skills, the following are things I’ve seen as a volunteer, therapist, wife of an alt ed teacher, and daughter of a 30 year public school teacher:

  • Social promotion: In order to keep kids from social humiliation, keep them in a developmentally appropriate cohort, keep parents happy, etc., children are “passed” into the next grade despite a lack of academic skills. Common in elementary schools.
  • No remediation: If children don’t catch up on their own, there is no remedial education option. The idea is that by offering remediation, schools would be admitting that there are children who were passed along without the required skills.
  • No “fails” policy: Children are not failed as a matter of philosophy (idea being that more resources will be funneled to struggling students, the reality is that everyone passes regardless of performance), or principals & counselors collude to change failing grades given by teachers.
  • Testing: Grades are ignored in favor of aggregate testing data, as in “The average test scores are okay, that’s what gets reported to the district, don’t worry about grades.” This is because principals and their schools are evaluated based on test scores and graduation rates. If they don’t correlate, it looks worse than if there is a consistent lack of improvement in scores.

These are just off the top of my head… Curriculum can be another mess that impacts students in unnecessarily terrible ways.

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