Tuesday, April 04, 2017

Genius at work in DC and Illinois

First, it appears that a college degree will now be required to work in a daycare center in the District of Columbia.  So apparently, a guy caught smoking crack with a prostitute is a safe bet for the mayor's office, but a person without a college degree can't be trusted to change diapers.  Along with draconian regulations on homeschooling and firearm ownership, this is a great case for removing self-rule from the District.  Common sense simply doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for being in government there.

Next, the state of Illinois has decided to punish straw purchases of firearms about as harshly as they do murder and rape.  Now to be sure, a big portion of Chicago's horrific murder and assault rate is because straw purchases and the like were--apparently by the direction of former President Obama--not prosecuted. 

However, the new law won't help things, because here the key problem is that for whatever reason, prosecuting straw purchasers wasn't going to fly in Chicago, and punishing straw purchases as harshly as murder isn't going to help.  The simple reason is that when a punishment is deemed too harsh--like 8 years plus deportation for a green card holder voting illegally--it will not generally be imposed.

There are a lot of good things that can be done to curb Chicago's murder rate--community policing to regain trust, punishment of minor crimes with appropriate sentences, encouragement of traditional families, etc..--but I don't think this is one of them.

5 comments:

Maea said...

I suspect a lot of the low-skills jobs request a degree as a class qualifier. No, it's not fair, but a lot of daycare providers from what I've seen are requesting certified teachers and other people with degrees because it represents a caliper of people in the workforce. A person with a degree working in a daycare is very likely to come from a higher class compared to a person without the degree. The same thing happens with office managers and administrative assistants. They also do it because they can.

Bike Bubba said...

Could be, but if true, all it means is that there is no need to require degrees by law.

Thanks for the visit!

Unknown said...

Is the degree required a 4-degree or a 2-year degree? A 2-year degree in early childhood education doesn't seem unreasonable to me. A 4-year degree, only for the director.

Unknown said...

It is not as outrageous as it seems. Only lead teachers will need an *associate* degree in early childhood education and they have until 2020 to obtain it. Assistant teachers only require a Child Development Associate certificate, which is about one year of community college education. There are also scholarships available, mostly funded by the D.C. government, to assist staff with the cost of their education.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/district-among-the-first-in-nation-to-require-child-care-workers-to-get-college-degrees/2017/03/30/d7d59e18-0fe9-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.aa7a00ad0d40.

Bike Bubba said...

Here's a place where I discuss the evidence for higher degrees and intensive daycare/preschool. More or less, the highest cost, most intensive programs....barely beat welfare families, and did not even come close to matching the average.

The DC plan sounds good....only until you start looking at the data. Then it sounds like throwing money down the toilet, something that DC is all too well known for doing.

http://bikebubba.blogspot.com/2013/02/on-benefits-of-preschool.html