Saturday, December 20, 2008

Day 6 in the Deep Freeze

BRRR....

Time to come clean. The real reason I haven't been blogging lately is my fingers are too freakin' cold to use my laptop's keyboard.

I don't have heat. I live four blocks from the beach...I've never needed it. If it gets a little chilly every now and then, I throw on a sweatshirt or put some socks on.

But this is getting stupid. It is FOURTY FOUR degrees outside in Pacific Beach.

And the deep freeze appears to have frozen some brains in this state. Judge Shellyanne Chang has decided that our kids in California aren't quite dumb enough:

SACRAMENTO — A Sacramento County judge Friday issued a ruling blocking a state plan requiring that all California eighth-graders be tested in algebra.

The ruling sidelines an ambitious mandate approved by the state Board of Education in July after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recommended it over the concerns of California's school superintendent and education groups.

The mandate would make California the first state in the nation to require algebra instruction at such an early level. The Schwarzenegger-appointed board took the step in an effort to meet federal testing requirements or face losing up to $4.1 million in funding.

But the California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators sued in September to try to overturn the requirement. They questioned whether the state had the money, staff and training.

In her ruling Friday, Judge Shelleyanne Chang said she issued a preliminary injunction because the board acted outside its jurisdiction and without public input. She added that plaintiffs would likely win if a trial of the lawsuit goes forward.

David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Association, said the algebra mandate would require 3,000 more teachers, as well as training another 1,000 teachers who are unprepared or teach other subjects.


Here's a simple concept. Stop teaching crap like global warming and Islam and gay marriage in our public schools and focus on basic skills like...maybe...Algebra. To ask 8th graders to grasp Algebra is not asking too much of them.

Perhaps it IS asking too much of public school systems here in California to drop their liberal agendas and start teaching math.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot about SexEd and how they make sure boys know how to properly use a condom.

And, quiet yourself about that cold. I'm the one who owns that privilege.

Anonymous said...

Funny story I just remembered.

We lived in OC for awhile. One winter day my boss came in wearing a big, down coat, because it was like 50 or something outside. I sat there looking at him when he walked in and said "you've gotta be joking right?" I was light-weight long-sleeve that day. You know you're spoiled when a 50 degree day is cold.

Nigel said...

Here's the basis for my complaint, Stacy...

1. You choose to live in a place where it's colder than $#%& 5 months out of the year. I live in SoCal because it rarely drops below 60 degrees during the day...especially by the beach. So I am just not used to this day after day.

2. All I've been hearing on the news, from Algore (PBUH), from every libtard everywhere, is that we are in the throes of man-made global warming. We are all going to die because us humans have so abused this tiny little planet.

Bullshit. I don't have numerical data at my fingertips, but it seems that right about the time the global warming hysteria reached its peak, it has suddenly become very, very chilly.

And I can NEVER remember in all my time in SoCal a two-week stream of brutal (for us) cold and rain such as we are going through right now.

If I wanted this weather, I'd live in Seattle.

Anonymous said...

If it makes you feel any better, I read a bunch of people of Atlanta bitchin today as well.

Nigel said...

Nah...doesn't make me feel better. Just more cold.

Another brutal day today...48 degrees and raining.

Which if extrapolated to Colorado weather would be your equivalent of 4 degrees and blizzard conditions.