SENATE BILL: Atlasian Institute of Teachers Act (Law'd)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor: Simfan34

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Senator you have 24 hours to start advocating for this bill.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Status: Pending Feedback

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1. Is it really a position that should be playable, or would it be better of simulated by the Game Moderating Team.

2. There is a real crisis in Education that so far hasn't been adequately addressed. One of many aspects of that is that we have too many teachers who aren't academically qualified to be in the classroom. A glaring example of this is that so many tend to come from the bottom of their college classes. I have read to two books that examine this issue closely (amongst many others) and offer a list of solutions to that speficic education sub-issue or sub-problem. Mitten's, "No Apology" and Bill Bradley's "The New American Story". I had a third one temporarily for a project back in 2010, but I no longer posses.

What I find amazing is you have liberals who (like the guy who wrote the 2010 book) have no problem with school choice, but won't even contemplate performanced based pay systems, and then you have Bradley, who actually incorporates a kind of merit based pay system into his overall plan, while looking down and being very critical of school choice (he kind of setup a strawman of Conservatives based on a vouchers only approach, with some local control concerns spliced in here and there. Never seen a conservative approach that narrow really). The one thing they all agree on, Mittens, Bradley and I believe Wagner was the guy's name, is that the first step in teacher quality improvements and getting applicants from higher up in their graduating classes, is to raise base pay.

I don't recall Simfan ever stating that this bill of his would be a complete fix to the problem, but I do think it may act as a first step.  Having standards and accountability are an important part of this pie to be sure of.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Honestly, I'm inclined to think these issues could be dealt with on the regional level instead of creating more federal bureaucracy. Maybe have the regional education boards deal with administering the federal test.

I sympathize with the concern for many reasons. In his book Bradley, is very dubious about local control because they say they lack the resources to among other things, resist the unions, but also to ensure proper standards in terms of textbooks, as opposed to "getting sold" on the latest thing peddled by Prentice Hall or McGraw-Hill.

There may be a solution to these issues though. A solution that would allow for local (for our purposes regional) authority to be preserved because of the assistance of, rather than prevention by, the federal gov't. Many people tend to think that local control is an excuse for the feds to do nothing and the local people to underperform and/or fail  in their task because it is overwhelming. You can still have federal leadership and involvement, while preserving local control. You provide standards upon which to assess textbooks, you can do research in curriculum and other education siutations and thne make those available and even help the regions implement those. You can provide certain resources regarding issues such as transportation, information technology, or ways to deal with legal liabilities so that concern doesn't weaken the experience.

What is needed is some kind of indepth advocacy group that can detail and organize this, articulate what the Regions should do, how the Feds can help, draw upon RL sources from different sides of political divide come up with a comprehensive approach to reform that then can be used to push the Regions to reform and monitor those that have, can push the feds to act where and when needed, while opposing them where its not, etc etc. Doing that here, where most of the people are just coasting and get bored and disappear rather quickly is difficult, though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is needed is some kind of indepth advocacy group that can detail and organize this, articulate what the Regions should do, how the Feds can help, draw upon RL sources from different sides of political divide come up with a comprehensive approach to reform that then can be used to push the Regions to reform and monitor those that have, can push the feds to act where and when needed, while opposing them where its not, etc etc. Doing that here, where most of the people are just coasting and get bored and disappear rather quickly is difficult, though.

When you say "here," do you mean Atlasia or the senate? For our purposes, do we really need an advocacy group? To me, now is a great opportunity to come up with a few standards that we can export to the regions without adding a lot of costs.

I mean Atlasia as a whole, not the Senate.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You didn't understand my point. I wasn't talking about the underlying bill and structure it seeks to create, I am talking about a think tank type group. My point is that without such an independent and non-govermental, "coordinating force", the federal gov't would be more likely to step in and take over more and more as problems persist. Such an organization could provide solutions to the various and complex sub-problems to formulate a comprehensive reform in each region. There are no silver bullets and there is no quick fixes to the problems in the education system and ultimately, someone will be seeking to address this because our competition isn't going away. I would prefer it if that doesn't come in the form of workaholic, "fixer Senator", with a  red avatar from PA or OH, to the rescue (glances at two obvious Senators ).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I object to the Amendment. I would like to Amend the bill to strike the line "but its President shall be appointed by the President of the Republic of Atlasia subject to Senate confirmation" entirely. Hopefully that will reduce concerns over government control and ensure the AIT is a more professional and independent organization.

Will you be officially offering that soon?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: Hostile
Status: A vote is now open on the above amendment, please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I object to the Amendment. I would like to Amend the bill to strike the line "but its President shall be appointed by the President of the Republic of Atlasia subject to Senate confirmation" entirely. Hopefully that will reduce concerns over government control and ensure the AIT is a more professional and independent organization.

Will you be officially offering that soon?

I am officially offering that.

Nay on the amendment.

Can you please put in into a more processable form?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

OF COURSE, NAY!!!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Wait are we voting upon the bill already?

No, I am leaning towards supporting the underlying bill, so why would I be voting nay on that.


The topic line on the first post didn't update for some reason when I changed it on Saturday morning. It does that sometimes.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: Origination
Status: Pending completion of vote on Amendment 52:17.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

OH now, don't tell you peopel started to vote based on the wrong  amendment now?

slams keyboard

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is what we are voting on people:

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Sponsor Feedback: Hostile
Status: Currently at vote!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nay?

My amendment is friendly, of course.

You don't judge origination amendments. It is a given you accept it as friendly.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

OH now, don't tell you peopel started to vote based on the wrong  amendment now?

slams keyboard

My vote was for the correct one.

I was fairly certain you had, but their are 3 or so others that need to verify theirs now.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Amendment 52:17

Aye (3): Oakvale, Marokai Blue, and Snowstalker
Nay (3): Ben, NC Yankee and Simfan34
Abstain (4): Averroës Nix, Franzl, HagridOfTheDeep, and JulioMadrid


With three votes in the affirtmative, three votes in the negative and time having expired, the vote is tied and the Vice President shall have to break the tie.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor Feedback: Origination
Status: Senators have 24 hours to object.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The amendment has been adopted of course.


Debate on this is slackened some. Are there any other areas or concern here that need addressing? (When I ask these types of things it is kind of meant as request to review the text for actual problems, not assume nothing is wrong when you haven't checked or whatever. ).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I was saying. I mean come on its education for christ sake and important part of it and that is teacher quality.


Since no one wants to talk about content, I will talk the process.

I am beginning to think that both from experience of dealing with the comprehensive social security thing that Franzl did, the Healthcare Law change and then the budget, that the best to do "Education Reform" or whatever it is, is to break it up to component bills addressing certain aspect. I think we sort of back are way into doing that with the immigration bill and I think the final result is that rather than have one bill take six months, we got three done addressing two component aspects of it, the Dreamers and STEM. We are working on another for high skilled workers currently. I think it would best to continue in that strategy, rather then to go "comprehensive", wihch we have neither the resources and as we learned with CSS and other things, and take months.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I now lean toward supporting this. The AIT seems like a relatively hands-off, low-cost means via which the federal government can improve the effectiveness of primary and secondary education in Atlasia.

I agree though on the flip side, I don't forsee much mileage from this on its own, unless it is coupled with subsequent and further action. It is such a deep sub issue but an essential one in order to seriously fix our education problems.

Shouldn't we establish some kind of standards or guidelines for these NTLE tests? Or atleast detail a process of who creates and administers them, not to mention who pays for it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Come on people. Who is making up these tests and what guidelines will be followed? Who will make those guidelines? Who administers it? Who will pay for administering it? It ain't Christmas yet, start talking to me.


If this group does it, then should that be stated in more detail?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We are heading in the right direction atleast now.


Simfan, what do you think?