yeah--I don't think we're disagreeing about charter schools, really. I guess my point was just that we need to look at what specifically is working in successful charter schools rather than just declaring charter schools to be the answer. And I know that's what you were doing in your post--looking at individual schools and how they've gotten good results.

I think there are approximately a gazillion different issues being talked about here (I'm good with big numbers like that because I'm married to a math teacher ;)). For one thing, more money isn't being thrown at education right now. In most places, education funding is being cut, big time. DH has 4 furlough days this year plus, as always, an increase in health insurance premiums. Other places have it much worse. Schools with rock climbing walls are not the norm. DH's school certainly doesn't have one, and it's a brand new school in a relatively affluent district. Class sizes are getting bigger every year. Teacher salaries and benefits make up the bulk of spending, and they're the first thing that gets cut. As good capitalists, we all believe that you attract higher quality employees by paying more money, yes? You're not going to, in general, attract people who are experts in their fields with the money teachers are paid, particularly in math and the sciences. DH is there because he wants to be and because he's not interested in a corporate job. He could be making much more money elsewhere. There are individual examples of charter schools (and traditional public schools) that are doing a great job, but overall charter school test scores are not higher than traditional public schools, including in NJ: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/playing-with-charter-numbers-in-nj/ There are more things to look at than test scores, of course, and I'm not anti-charter school. From looking at my husband's relatively wealthy suburban high school, I can tell you things I've noticed. This is the same school district I grew up going to, incidentally, but it was much more rural then and had less money. I'm constantly appalled at how low the expectations are for these kids. DH regularly gets e-mails from parents asking why their kids aren't doing well in class, often with thinly veiled accusations that it's all his fault they're not (if not open accusations). Almost invariably, part of his response is, "your son/daughter's homework average is 30/40/50%. I grade homework on completion, not accuracy, so doing the homework regularly is one easy way to bring up the average." When I was in high school, I freaked out if I missed ONE homework assignment; not doing HALF of them would never have entered my mind. And if it did, I can't imagine my parents complaining to my teacher about my grade without first making sure I was doing my homework. He just had one of these e-mails the other day. Instead of saying, "oh wow--I'll make sure she does her homework from now on," the parent is scheduling a conference and saying she doesn't think the review sheet had everything on it that the test had. I also don't remember feeling entitled to a review sheet before every test in high school; maybe that was because I did my homework and could use that to review. So I think there's this huge culture of entitlement. I remember it when I taught college freshman in grad school, and I think it's only gotten worse. And the administration supports it. DH has administrators who don't want to deal with angry parents, period, so they tend to give them whatever they ask for. DH can't even get the administration to back him up in cracking down on cheating. One assistant principal actually told him, "I wish my kid cared enough to cheat." It boggles the mind. And, remember, this is a "good" school. If DH has a high failure rate, he's the one who gets in trouble; never mind that none of the kids who failed bothered to turn in their homework 80% of the time. There's very little he, as an individual teacher, can do to change this and raise expectations, because the administration won't back him up if he does. So I'm agreeing, really, much as I think teacher salaries could be more competitive (and, realistically speaking, making teacher salaries higher isn't going to be a priority in this economy), that money isn't the big issue. I think parents and communities are. The charter schools that I've seen do well are the ones where parents are deeply involved in all the right ways, see themselves as partners in their children's educations with the teachers instead of as adversaries, and where there's a very strong sense of community and "we're all in this together" in the school.

I take the dog on a 35 minute walk pretty much every day, weather permitting (i.e. not pouring rain).

I wouldn't focus on low-fat at all. From what I've read, I'm very skeptical of claims that a low-fat diet is necessarily better for you. Add in my family history of diabetes, and there's no contest.

There are several more short Roald Dahl books (and plenty of longer ones, too, of course); I haven't read most of them myself, but my son tore through all of them when he was around 7 (and now his brother is reading them). DS7 just read Esio Trot the other day. Oh, and DH read The Fabulous Mr. Fox to DS4, and it was a big hit. Other books my almost 5 year old has liked as read-alouds: Charlotte's Web My Father's Dragon Tale of Desperaux Stuart Little Winnie-the-Pooh

In Georgia, it's 30 years (but DH says very few of his co-workers actually retire when they're eligible to, and he probably won't, either. Well--it might be too early to say that, but assuming he's still enjoying it and not completely burned out on the bureaucracy, he'll probably keep teaching for at least awhile after his 30 years. He'll only be 58 then).

that's one of the big reasons other countries do more with less. All those countries you see with higher test scores and lower costs have health care and other benefits provided by the government instead of by employers (in this case, it's by the government either way, of course, but you know what I mean--it doesn't come out of the education budget). A decent retirement system is definitely one of the benefits of teaching, and we're grateful it's there. But it's a benefit that compensates somewhat for lower pay. My husband is a math teacher. He has a degree in math from a good college, with a minor in computer science. He spent the first few years out of college doing web development for a large non-profit. He's been teaching for 7 1/2 years now, and it will be several more years before he gets back up to the salary that he left behind to go into teaching. The retirement benefits at his teaching job are better than what he left behind, but we actually pay considerably more for health insurance. DH isn't in teaching for the money, clearly, but he does need to make a living wage in order to stay in teaching; his salary doesn't leave a lot left over for saving, so the retirement benefits are a pretty essential part of us being able to afford for him to be a teacher.

Not here, they don't. For a couple of years, DH got a $100 gift card at the beginning of the school year to spend on classroom supplies, but that went away when the economy went south.

It feels wrong to me NOT to put the comma in. But then again, I'm a big fan of clarity.

The one time I sent one in without a white sleeve, they never figured it out...I had to wait forever and finally report it lost in the mail.

We go to my paternal grandparents' house and then to my Dad's on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning my mom/stepdad and brother/SIL come over to our house for present opening. Then we go to my other grandmother's in the afternoon. Last year a friend had an open house Christmas evening, so we went by there, too. I don't know how we'd manage if DH's parents were local.

My kids are getting a kitten (shhh! It's a big surprise). Or, well, they're getting a box of kitten stuff and a note that they can go pick out a kitten at the shelter after Christmas. At least one of them asks me pretty much every single day if they can have some pet or another (they already have 3 dogs, 1 cat, and 9 chickens, so they're hardly deprived in that area), so I'm pretty sure they're going to be about as excited as it's possible for them to get. I think the kitten will so overshadow all other presents that it won't really matter what they are...but they have also all requested Totoro hats, so I guess I need to get on Etsy or ask a friend who knits and get that done. They're getting some Harry Potter lego stuff from grandparents. DH and I agreed to just do a couple of small things for each other and then set some money aside to do a couple of weekend trips this year. I know he's getting Toy Story 3, though, because he has declared it his favorite movie EVER.

A little AAM and my experiences growing up attending a Baptist church: my Dad was raised Baptist, but my mom was Catholic, and my brother and I were raised Catholic until my parents divorced when I was 10. By the time my stepmom became a Christian and I started going to a Baptist church with them, most all of the kids my age had already been saved (in the evangelical sense of the word), so I was immediately an outsider. In all the evangelical churches I'm familiar with, getting saved--this one time moment of conversion--is an all-important event. There's an altar call every Sunday; conversations in Sunday school regularly made it apparent which kids had been saved and which hadn't (like when we went around the room and told what we were thankful for; every kid in the room except me and my brother said "salvation."); people I barely recognized would know that I wasn't saved and would tell me they were praying for me. It was very, very uncomfortable for me. So I, personally, wouldn't put my kids in that situation--where they're being taught very clearly in church something completely different from what I believe and what I'm teaching them at home. I didn't even realize until college that most protestant denominations don't subscribe to evangelical beliefs about salvation. All of this with the disclaimer that I know nothing about this particular church and its beliefs; but the sermon you describe would set off red flags for me--are your kids going to be coming to you with questions about whether their father is going to hell?

I've been using it for a few months, and haven't noticed my computer running slower. Like someone else said, it's not a great search engine, so I don't use it for complicated searching. Mostly I'll just search for the site I'm going to go to on there and then click on the link rather than typing the URL directly. I don't usually look for codes or follow any other links, and I've never messed around with referrals, but I still get a $5 giftcard every 3 weeks or so just from searching.

sometimes we do this, as a french fry alternative: melt some butter in a baking dish (enough to cover the bottom of the pan). cut potatoes in round slices, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick and put in a single layer in the pan. Add salt and pepper and whatever other seasoning you want. Bake at 425, flipping once, until browned and cooked through (about 30 min, depending on potato thickness).

We did...last September. We did Disneyland and then Legoland, but if I had it to do over I'd reverse the order. Legoland was fun, but, well...it's no Disneyland. 7 and 4 are great ages for it, though. My oldest was 8 at the time, and he was on the verge of finding a lot of it kind of boring, I think. When we went (Thursday in September, I think), there were almost no lines at all. We were very often the only people in line for rides. The only place that was a little crowded was the water area; but it was a very hot day, and we didn't make it there until afternoon. You should be able to cover the whole park pretty easily in a day.

We rented a Penske truck and drove ourselves, but we hired movers to load up the truck (we unpacked ourselves at the end). I think we paid for 3 hours, and they got all the furniture (including a piano) and most of the smaller stuff loaded in that time (this was 8 years and 2 kids ago, so we had less stuff than now).

How easy would it be to adapt "So You Really Want to Learn Spanish?" to Latin American Spanish? Is it mostly a matter of leaving out the vosotros form, and, if so, would that be pretty simple to do? DS9 has had quite a bit of exposure to Spanish through various classes, programs, DVDs....but he's been in weekly classes regularly since last fall. His teacher is Latin American, so that's what he's learning in class. I'd like a grammar heavy program to supplement with at home, but I don't want to confuse him by having him learn different stuff at home than he is in class (not to mention that I learned Latin American Spanish in HS/college, and I don't want to confuse ME, either ;)). So. Do you think the Galore Park Spanish would work for us? And/or what other late elementary/middle school programs are out there that have an emphasis on grammar (we've tried Spanish for Children, and neither of us liked it)?

Mine's up--link in sig! ETA: umm, no it's not. oops. something went wrong! mine will be up later. E(again)TA: okay. NOW it's up :)

Well...MaryElizabeth pretty much summed up most of the problems I have with the kind of Baptist churches I grew up in. I won't get into it in more detail than to say that it's my very firm belief that no one but Jesus has any business telling anyone they're not really a Christian, and that the us vs. them mentality at the churches I went to growing up is exactly what turned me away from church at all for a long time.

Yeah, that's the thing. There are big UCC churches, but not so much in the south, particularly not outside of large cities. Our church in Atlanta was pretty much the big UCC church, and I think it averaged something like 150-200 people on Sunday mornings.

Baptists are diverse, almost by definition, as they're non-creedal. That said, IME, they tend to be very conservative. My Dad and stepmom are Baptist and tend to change churches a lot, so I made the rounds of quite a few Baptist (mostly independent) churches as a kid...certainly none of the churches we visited then are ones I would be comfortable in today, either socio-politically or theologically. We're in Georgia, and I'm very familiar with the church-hunting problems you describe. For several years we drove almost an hour to go to church in Atlanta. We finally left for various reasons, but one of the big ones was to find somewhere closer to home. We weren't terribly successful, and we've finally landed at another church that's only a bit closer (35 minutes vs. 45-50). We don't seem to be able to find a good fit any closer than that. ETA: have you checked to see if there's a United Church of Christ near you? Also potentially more liberal denominations are Lutheran (ELCA) and the church we're going to now is a Disciples of Christ church, though my understanding is they are usually more conservative (ours is most definitely not conservative), but open to disagreement about theological issues.

We've only had the Mammoth, and I wasn't really a fan. They got stinky really fast, and everything stuck to them (leaves, dirt, etc). Theoretically, you can take the liners off to wash them, but in practice it was a big PITA to actually do. In fact, I never quite figured it out. I finally tore the lining out so they could wear them without it.

I heard a story on This American Life awhile back about a young woman in this situation, and they mentioned a proposal that's been floating around congress for years, but nothing's happened with it. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

Oh dear. I guess if MCT comes out with a geometry book, we should definitely pass on that one ;)