School Consolidation

In the 1930's the cost to educate one child was around $400 per year. Now, its around $8000 per year. Ya ya, times have changed, we all know that. But that doesn't deter us from asking if school consolidation has really returned good benefits, or if there might have been a different approach to educating children.
Recent studies on school consolidation--its been happening since the 1920's---have suggested that the drivers for school consolidation were two: efficiency and quality of education. So, how have each faired. This report goes on to say that at first, efficiency was gained by consolidation, but then lost as large districts got to be more bureaucratic and government loaded them up with new requirements. So far, that does not intersect with the quality of education---get to that later.
Efficiency improvement might have been achieved by a different route: Some parts can be consolidated into central management, like purchasing, but that would not mean that local control has to be lost. (more on this later)

Comments

Aermotor Windmill Lives

The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise. Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill. W e erected the windmill in Fulshear. It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged. For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes. After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...

St. Josephs Church Picnic in Yoakum

Off on this nice day to visit the old town of Yoakum. Yoakum is like many towns of this size, they grew to moderate size in the mid 1900s, then plateaued and now are not growing at all. Yoakum has a central area that consists of old brick buildings that are mostly unoccupied or are occupied with marginal businesses. We attended a church picnic in Yoakum a year ago, but that was the Lutheran Picnic and this one is sponsored by the Catholic church. We first drove directly to the Church, but this was not the place where the picnic was held---it was at the Community center in the old part of downtown, along the rows of warehouses paralleling the railroad tracks. This town was once a shipping center for agricultural products, like especially tomatoes. Now there is little of that produce and so the warehouses sit there rather bleak looking. The dinner was the usual, beef stew, sausage, smashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and bread. And don't forget the desserts...

Cause and Effect

We have this great world atlas book published by the National Geographical Society, which by the way, we bought at the local library used book sale for $2. Probably this low price of the book pains the Society but it sure makes my reference to maps an easy task without having to wake up my computer. The book occupies a permanent spot on a book stand in our breakfast room, standing ready to supply map information on request. The book happened to be open to the page showing the whole of Antarctica featuring all the outposts and even some commentary of scientific significance. One such comment was on ice coring data of historic temperatures and carbon dioxide content. I can understand how the CO2 content of the ice can be preserved over many centuries at varying depths, but I am unsure how the prevailing temperature of some thousand years ago can be preserved in the ice cores--but that's another issue that we will not get into here. So here is the comment on the data of the ice...

NQ99HQ

Search This Blog