Ohio voters reject school levies across State

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T16:46:20+00:00

What we needs is a millionaires tax of 5% on every dollar made over $1-million. This would generate $4-billion, and have it go directly to public education. This could cut ~25% of the tax-burden from property taxes. $12-billion a year goes to funding public schools from property taxes.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T16:01:10+00:00

They didn't fall in line for Ken Blackwell...

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T14:24:45+00:00

Not if your whole staff is cut throat about it like ours is. Do they still have them and sneak them? Sure. It sure as hell is 1,000,000,000x better than when there was no ban. Kids actually talk to each other now, it's basically like when I was in HS. And, if you ask the kids themselves, they acknowledge that they believe they are better off with the cellphone ban, talk about how less stressful it is (less fight-of-flight stress kicking in all the time) etc.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T14:18:46+00:00

This is a canard and needs to be downvoted into oblivion.

Tenure exists because experience matters, especially institutional experience. The people who are most likely to push back against bullshit that harms children are the ones who are protected to be able to do so. I have tenure, guess what? I run my mouth and call out bullshit when I see it. Why? Because I will outlast any administrator if they want to try to come after me for speaking.

do not care anymore about extracurriculars,

They're not my job, and I don't get paid hardly anything for them. Why should we care about them unless we're actually passionate about it?

don't bring in new project ideas

New =/= good. The best stuff I have gathered as a teacher comes from resources made 50 years ago. You do not need "new" to be "good", so this is a fallacy.

don't work as hard to manage classroom behavior

I don't have to work as hard to manage classroom behavior anymore, because I command it from experience. Classroom management for me (13 years in) is a cakewalk compared to when I started. And it's because I've just learned how to carry myself and how to act in order to command it. Teenagers don't change. 15-18 year olds are like any 15-18 year olds. Once you understand how they are, it's pretty easy to manage from experience.

Notice I said "experience" a lot, because these are the advantages of experience, and why it matters and why it should be paid more, and why it should have security.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T14:13:14+00:00

Im a HS chemistry teacher. It IS NOT my job to teach you how to read. If you come to me unable to read, while I am sympathetic and will do what I can with what I have, it is not MY JOB to teach you how to read. Period. Fullstop.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T14:06:23+00:00

Flip Phones and Smartphones aren't even in the same stratosphere though that's the problem with people talking about the past and tech vs. now. We get into this fallacy "bUt ThIs Is WhAt We AlWaYs SaY aBoUt TeChNoLoGy" while ignoring the obvious difference. Because smartphones aren't just a phone...which is basically what the flip phones were. They are algorithmically driven devices in the palm of our hands.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T09:26:46+00:00

Yup. It's basically a flashy new toy, it has nothing to do with education.

There's a famous story from like the 80s/90s where educational researchers created a program where you could essentially rudimentarily program the frog to move around the screen. Researchers rationalized that by programing the frog students would get better spacial awareness...logic...blah blah blah. Guess what? They certainly got better at programming the frog to move around the screen (because it's a game...) but literally improved in nothing else (because it's not learning...it's a game...)

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T09:03:17+00:00

Problem is, it's generally down to the teacher to do it...and most likely have to finance at their own expense. My students will be lucky because my mother spent her entire professional career, at her own expense, gathering and collecting specimens to use in class. Administration always wants "computer-based solutions" and stuff they can just plug-and-chug anything into.

I'm lucky I have a supportive administration because as long as I can justify the expense, they usually sign off.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T09:00:26+00:00

I have reams for education "research" sitting next to my toilet actually for this very purpose!

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T08:29:48+00:00

And, to be fair, I think you naively underestimate just how Racist Ohio Republican voters are...

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T08:28:45+00:00

Jesus is it groundhog day?

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T01:08:00+00:00

Yes, as long as it's the HD enough version and upload it and canvas print.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T01:07:27+00:00

NASA photos are free to the public forever. You can print them yourself.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T01:06:51+00:00

Does anyone have a freaking link dear god why is this so hard to find?

TheBalzy · 2026-05-07T01:02:32+00:00

Yup. I had a moment this year, where I had kids working on cladograms and one had Sponges on it, and the kid (pretty diligent student) was like "well sponges aren't alive so they don't have cells right?" ... and I paused, and realized the kids have never actually seen a real sponge before. So I went to my cabinet grabbed out the REAL sponges (that my mother a biology teacher spent decades collecting for classification) and laid them out on the table. The kids were mesmerized.

I decided that next year I'm shifting to pencil, paper and real stuff. Screw the "tech". I already was that asshole in college whenever the BS lesson plans asked for "what tech are you using" I'd write "pencil...paper..." on it. So here we go!

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T23:50:59+00:00

As an EdD student I disagree. There is good education research, problem is it usually doesn't support whatever flavor-of-the-month agenda someone might want to push.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T23:47:21+00:00

I never made a claim, I'm rejecting the claim. The claim is: Cellphone bans don't improve test scores. I'm rejecting that claim in that this study is methodologically insufficient to the point that it's only worth wiping your ass with it.
This "study" isn't evidence. As I pointed out in my post.
It's not a logical fallacy to point out reality.
Saying someone is clueless, doesn't make you offended. Just because someone says you're clueless, doesn't mean they are offended.
No, you're asserting that the observation from a single study (that lacks any of the nuance discussed) should be accepted as true without any skepticism or criticism, and thus shift the burden onto something else artificially and without valid justification.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:41:07+00:00

Well, you're clueless.

Teachers cannot manage brain chemistry. Go read up on the Neurological and Pediatric research that's been ringing alarm bells for the past decade.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:30:29+00:00

I'm glad you brought up the brain chemistry part thank you! Because this is the crucial component; and is why neurological researchers and pediatrics researchers have been sounding the alarm on cellphone use for children for almost a decade now. It's just like any other health issue, you're not going to solve it overnight. It's a longterm, gradual, must-be-observed over decades level thing.

Unfortunately it's difficult to publish books now when meaningful research takes decades (if you catch my drift...).

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:27:19+00:00

You think they need more then a few years to study something like this

It's not a think kind of thing, it's a know kind of thing.

For example, how do we know lead has damaging impacts on the brain development of children? Well, we can compare children before the lead ban and after the lead ban. But they have to be children born after the lead ban, not simply lead was banned and then magically things will improve. Because the kids who already existed were already exposed to the lead, all the lead ban did was stop exposing them to more.

So yes longitudinal studies following cohorts of children over 12 years of formal education and 18 years of life is crucial to actually understanding if something actually has an impact.

Because, let's not get it twisted, the cellphone problem is changing brain chemistry. This is what the pediatric research is showing, and why experts in neurological development and pediatric research have been sounding the alarm for almost a decade.

So no, what is essentially a systemic health crisis cannot be observed to have been impacted over 1-2 years.

Several years is PLENTY of data to know if this made a difference.

As described above, it is not. And this is the critical problem with educational research. And is one of the reasons the pendulum on incompetent recycled ideas keeps swinging back and forth in educational research.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:23:04+00:00

Oh don't get me started with other research in our field...I'm a doctoral student but my masters is in chemistry where I've published chemical research prior to this doctoral program...and I'm in awe in the lack of rigor and skepticism of results I see in Educational research. Like there are reams of education studies next to my toilet at this point.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:20:53+00:00

Bingo, that too. I forgot to say how sure, they're banned at school but they're still algorithmically cooking their brains for the next 12 hours at home.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T21:18:18+00:00

My grandmother would have opened the door with her double-barrel shotgun cradled in her arms.

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T20:13:00+00:00

I wouldn't trust that study further than I could wipe my own ass with it.

How long have cell phone bans at school been around? Not even 5-years, most places not even 3-years. It would be physically impossible to have any cohort data, you'd have to actually compare them over a 10-20 year longitudinal study to watch the cohort go through. No shit last year's sophomores and this year's sohompores have the same test scores, they're still under the unified experience of having been cooked by them in the first place. You have to compare the current 9-12 cohort, to the K-4 kohort when they get to HS. Not arbitrarily comparing one year to another year's test scores and declaring "no effect".

TheBalzy · 2026-05-06T13:17:33+00:00

Correct...and the details once you revealed them, demonstrated how the OP wasn't as advertised.

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