Seems like some context would be nice. On both sides.

Education:

That sound you hear are all those college presidents' heels landing on their desks. "Keep up the good work, boys."

Wtf, Dime!

Plucked the following from a recent conversation in the Economy thread.

I am about halfway through Brave New World and I agree with GH and Burt that it’s trending a more accurate book to make my point than 1984 was, and after getting as far as I have I would put it more in the “Whoa what the fuck is wrong with education” category than Economy. This could go in any given politics thread, too, I’m sure.

I’ll report back when I finish the book. And if there is a more relevant thread to move this to, fine by me. I’ll take a soma and accept this post’s fate.

Finished Brave New World

I will have to re-read it sometime.

Creepy as fuck what with the predestination and the electroshock conditioning of babies.

Hooray for the return of prayer in Florida public schools!

This is why they gave you a PhD.

I had to google the spelling.

Do you think there's five votes on SCOTUS to overturn Wallace v. Jaffree?

You're a lot better at this sort of thing than me, but I'll play. Thomas and Alito are really good bets to do so. Based on what I know about her Barrett seems like an obvious vote as well, though we haven't really seen how she operates as a Justice yet. So I'll say there's 3 definite yes votes. I think Gorsuch could vote against this from a more libertarian-type position. Kavanaugh--I really don't know. I can make arguments both ways for him. He's Trumpier than Gorsuch so idk. Roberts...Idk. I still think he likes to save his nakedly conservative votes for things that matter and can shape policy in significant areas and he likes to vote more neutrally/liberally on stuff like this that don't really matter much in a broader way. In a way too early prediction I'd say that Roberts would uphold the law if the majority is striking it down and that he'd vote to strike down if the majority is upholding.

5-4 to strike down the Florida law/uphold Jaffree.

Your guess is as good as mine, and I think this sounds about right to me. My only quibble would be that I think Gorsuch will be more of a slam dunk to overrule Jaffree, with his state's rights libertarianism overriding his freedom of expression libertarianism here. I agree that Kavanaugh is the likely deciding vote here, and Roberts will go whatever way he does, something that I think he's going to do a lot to try to play the Warren Burger role of controlling who gets to write the opinion.

Anyway, it's pretty scary that we're seeing right wing governments passing laws that so blatantly and obviously violate existing Supreme Court precedent. But I'd certainly expect them to do so, no better time for them to strike than now.

Yeah, see that was my dilemma. I forgot about Espinoza so I thought about his opinions in Bostock and the Native American/Oklahoma case and went with him being small government/individual rights libertarian. But after your post I just looked it up and he signed on to Thomas's extremely anti-Establishment clause concurrence in Espinoza. I think we may have talked about that last summer. So yeah I guess he could probably be counted upon to reverse Jaffree as well.

More broadly, the bolded is one of the toughest things for me to figure out about Justices sometimes since it often depends on the specific right in question or the setting. Clarence Thomas dissents in Gonzales v. Raich (good for him!) and Scalia votes to uphold. (Talking this out rn I guess Thomas is probably pretty consistent in the states' rights camp. In this case it might be me whose inconsistent since I like his opinion in Gonzales but think his establishment and school free speech opinions are absurd. He's consistently in favor of deferring to the state in each of those, I guess. Oh well.)

Supreme Court justices, just like any other humans, can hold idiosyncratic views that don't abide by some doctrinaire holding to an ideology. In Scalia's case, he was notoriously anti-recreational drug (well, except for tobacco, of which he was a firm defender in his legal career and may have very well led to his earlier than anticipated demise). So in Raich you had him give an odd, nonsensical concurrence in the judgment because he couldn't bring himself to side with a cannabis user, while Thomas had no such qualms.

Keeping this in education, you saw the same bias strike again in Morse v. Frederick. Scalia joined onto an opinion among justices that clearly had a ridiculous hangup about teenagers talking about recreational drugs, while Thomas just ignored the subject matter altogether and simply said that minors don't have First Amendment rights at all (which is horrendous, of course, but is consistent with Thomas's jurisprudence).

It's funny you mention Espinoza though, because that reminds me that I might be on the verge of offering a fiery hot take in this thread, but I have to think through it more to decide whether I actually want to sign off on that fiery hot take, or just pose it as more of a devil's advocate argument.

I guess in about 3-5 years we will be able to better answer some of the question wrt education funding after this. When this was done in KC in the 90s the results were a massive failure but the advances in EdTech might help

Looks like it's mostly driven by an increase in mental health staff. Not the worst approach given everything going on these days, but with any education budget it's not just about how much is spent but where the money goes.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having councilors that can aid in customizing a students plan, like having IEPs for everyone, could really help kids

Um. Say waht nwo?