Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "BOE - who are people voting for?" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. There have been a number of threads about the upcoming Montgomery County Board of Education election. An earlier thread discussed which candidates were entering and what posters thought of them. Another thread focused on one of those candidates, Bethany Mandel. This thread takes off where the first one leaves off. Now that the slate of candidates has been settled, the original poster wants to know for whom others are voting and why they are making those choices. This is a rather long thread, as have been the previous ones. As a result, I haven't been able to read the complete threads. That has left me a bit confused about a couple of points which may or may not have been explained in the threads. For instance, on May 14 a primary election will be held and voters will be able to choose one At-Large candidate, one candidate for District 2, and one candidate for District 4. All voters will be able to vote in all three races. To me, this seems like three At-Large races because despite being a representative of a specific district, those board members will be accountable to the entire county, not just voters in their district. Similarly, while this is a "primary" election, it is non-partisan. As far as I know, only one winner in each race will be selected. Therefore, the November general election will not be a run-off, but simply a race between the primary winner and any candidates that enter the general election. Since this is a non-partisan election and there is not a run-off, I really don't see the reason for having a primary. Perhaps someone can enlighten me in the comments? As for the candidates, there is a fairly large number. The At-Large contest has six candidates and District 2 has five. District 4 has a relatively paltry three candidates. One thing this thread has done well is help group the candidates according to various factors. For instance, each race has an incumbent who basically represents the status quo. Each race also has an "Apple Ballot" candidate who is endorsed by the the Montgomery County Education Association. Finally, each race has one or more "outsider" candidates who is essentially a bomb-thrower that wants to shake things up. One of the biggest disputes in the thread is over whether, despite a seemingly widespread desire for change, the outsider candidates would be actually be effective at bringing about reform or would instead simply be disruptive and interfere with any actual work being done. Two of the candidates homeschool their children, raising questions about why they would strive for leadership of a school system they have rejected. I assume that we can look forward to approximately another month of this thread being active and then on to the general election.

The next most active thread was the thread I discussed yesterday about Iran's retaliation against Israel. I'll skip that today and discuss the next thread which was posted in the "Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)" forum. Titled, "Equitable access to advanced math", the original poster argues that the Fairfax County Public Schools system should adopt a policy such as that used in Texas that enrolls fifth graders who score in the top 40% of a standardized math test into advanced math. The original poster then goes on to quote from a report saying that students who take four years of math in high school have a high likelihood of obtaining a postsecondary degree. I was appalled to see that among the first responses to this thread was a full-throated endorsement of Eugenics. I am disappointed that nobody bothered to report that post, which instead received positive feedback. Some posters claim that their schools are already doing something similar to the Texas program. However, it seems that access to advanced math really depends on the availability of resources. Schools that don't have the appropriate teachers or classes for advanced math are obviously not able to offer it. The original poster made a poor choice of words by describing this as "equitable access" because "equitable" has become such a loaded term these days. Many of those responding fixate on "equity" and allege that students are prevented from pursuing higher math classes because racial groups would not be represented equally in such classes. However, other posters argue that this is not the case and that students are not, in fact, prevented from taking higher math classes. The connection to "equity" in the original poster's proposal is that underprivileged families often don't know about advanced math opportunities and, therefore, don't pursue them for their children. By automatically enrolling kids that have done well on standardized math tests in advanced math, qualified kids who otherwise might not have known about the opportunity will be included. A considerable amount of this thread is taken up simply by arguing about terms. Posters cannot agree on what constitutes "advanced math". They disagree about the grades in which algebra is taught. In recent years, at least in Northern Virginia, math has become political. Much of this is due the to Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI) which was aimed at strengthening math opportunities and increasing equity in math education. Equity was to be achieved by raising the lower end classes but this opponents wrongly claimed that higher level opportunities would be eliminated. This was the source of many long threads on DCUM and was revived in this thread with posters rehashing the same arguments from years ago.

Next was a thread titled, "Why are people leaving starting families for later? Should I say something?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that she was 34 when she and her husband began trying to start a family. However, it took until she was 37 before they were successful. She has several friends and a sister who are in their 30s and who are putting off starting families. She is concerned that they may run into the type of fertility issues that she encountered and wonders if she should say something to warn them. The second poster to respond asked the original poster how many times and in how many ways she was going to start the same thread. Therefore, given the large number of trolls in this forum, I thought I should do a troll check before getting started reading more of the thread. It appears that this poster has started a number of threads dealing with women's fertility. In addition to posting as a married mother with friends in their 30s as in this thread, she has posted as a mother with daughters in their 30s and as a young single woman who is dating. Later in this thread she posted in the guise of "one of those adults ‘waiting’ to have children". She also posted as a third-party who called the OP "naive". The original poster's second obsession appears to be other people's finances and how they are able to purchase homes and so on. At any rate, just add this poster to DCUM's collection of nutjobs.

The final thread that I will discuss today was also posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "DH furious that we texted him during a job interview", the original poster and her daughter both inadvertently texted her husband and interrupted him during a job interview. The original poster says that she knew that he was going to have an internal job interview, but was not sure of the day or time. She was trying to file their tax returns and ran into a problem with his pin number. They exchanged a few texts and her husband didn't mention the interview was about to begin. Then she texted again because she needed further information and her daughter also texted both of them about some news she had, provoking an exchange of messages between her and the original poster. Eventually, the original poster's husband responded very angrily because his interview had been interrupted by the flurry of texts. The original poster also needed his assistance with some medical forms which he helped with very reluctantly, eventually using a profanity to tell the original poster he was not going to help further. The problem with this thread is that everything seems very simple in hindsight. As a result, nearly every poster has advice that is obvious now and not particularly helpful. For instance, many posters tell the original poster that she shouldn't wait until the last minute to do their taxes. Their taxes were done earlier and the only problem was with filing them and that was due to her husband providing the wrong pin number. Hardly the original poster's fault. Many posters also suggested that her husband should mute his phone. If he hasn't figured that out by now, he is not going to. More helpful were the posts offering explanations such as both the original poster and her husband being in stressful situations and things just taking a bad turn. Some posters were determined to find fault with the original poster, criticizing her for everything from working on her taxes and health forms while she was at work to being too reliant on her husband. The only surprise for me in this thread was that posters didn't immediately recommend divorce since that is the standard advice for almost any situation in this forum. It took until the fourth page before that came up an then was only suggested once more.