Tea at Trianon: Maryland's Blueprint Promotes Students As Commodities

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Maryland's Blueprint Promotes Students As Commodities

From Jan at The Easton Gazette:

There are many issues with the Blueprint for Maryland's Future education funding law, formerly called the Kirwan Plan. School districts struggle to fill some non-classroom positions while having to get rid of classroom teachers, in some cases hundreds of classroom teachers. They attempt to structure their budgets to support all the changes.

County governments struggle to fund education under the Blueprint while still providing other basic services and not increasing local taxes beyond the capacity of their constituents. The total bill statewide potentially will be 3.8 billion dollars, pre-inflation, by 2032. And that number may be low since it was determined years ago

Each pillar has a specific cost on its own:

Pillar One - Early Childhood - 1.1 Billion

High Quality Educators - 1.1 Billion

College and Career Readiness - 1.1 Billion

Resources for At-Risk Students - 0.5 Billion

What many citizens of Maryland don't know is that not only does each pillar have a specific price, but so does each student enrolled in the public school system based on certain "characteristics." Maryland officials try to spin this as giving counties the most money for those students who need the most assistance.

While that may be true in some progressive theory, the simple fact is that some students will be "worth" more than others. If a child is average or above and comes from a middle class or higher family, that student only brings the system the "Foundation" or base amount of $8310.00 (as of FY 2023)

The stark reality is that this "funding formula" is the commoditization of our children. Here are profiles of three hypothetical students and their associated "income" to the systems where they are enrolled. Notice how the base amount can double if student's have certain designations. (Read more.)