Free Public Education For Everyone?
I know I mention this idea frequently, or a version of it. But it’s an ongoing smack-my-forehead obvious thing to me.
Financing one’s education is ridiculous in a county with so much wealth. We can and should revamp our entire system to encourage free access. Extraneous programs should be eliminated; private schools should be available to compete with subsidized education.
Washington Count Arkansas Public Assessor Link for Property
AR County Data Site
This isn’t just a way to snoop. Your government thinks this is useful information to have available. The lawn service I used goes to public records for all clients to properly size the lots it services for mowing and leaf removal. Do you have a troublesome neighbor but don’t know how to contact the landlord? Do you want to know how your house compares to your immediate neighbors? Lost someone’s address? Do you want to know how your tax value compares? What school district a house is in? There are all sorts of legitimate uses for this type of site.
The above link if for Washington County, Arkansas, but most places have a similar and free method to look up anyone who owns property. In most states, you can also have visit just about any courthouse and look up someone’s information. Using the above link, by putting in first and last name only, once you get search results, just click on the “more info” button. You get a diagram of the house, a map, all the tax information and much more. You can also look up any address, too, so if you want to know all the information about an address, who owns it, how much it cost, whether it has central heat and air, you can simply look it up.
Using the top menu and the “real property” tab, you can choose a different county, too.
If you aren’t sure if your place of residence provides this type of information for free, then call your local assessor’s office or tax collector and ask if real estate information is provided online. It almost always is.
I’m constantly startled by the number of people who aren’t aware that they have no privacy when it comes to the information about their houses. It’s almost ALL public. Unless you are using a business to conceal your ownership or some other intervening method, your information is out there. Whether you are a politician, a prison security guard or just enjoy your privacy, you really don’t have much in this regard.
Zillow.com and Trulia.com are also great real estate sources.
I’m a huge cheerleader for CLEP. It is a great way to save money.
More importantly, it can save you a lot of time. I’ve never understood the need to basically take the same class 1, 2 or even 3 times through high school and college. CLEP allows you to take the class at a lower level and then demonstrate that knowledge for college and avoid the wasted time and money taking a class again at the university level.
I took and passed several of these classes. At one employer, I convinced them to shift their academic policy to allow for CLEP exams to be reimbursed the same as traditional college courses. They are much cheaper and in many cases, allow you to demonstrate that you have the required knowledge of the course.
(Sidenote: I am convinced that much of our education system is radically flawed. For many college-level courses there is no justification for the brick-and-mortar system of attendance, traditional study and testing. If you can prove that you know the subject matter, you should be able to get credit for it, regardless of how you have learned it. To insist otherwise is intellectual snobbery, in my opinion. Requiring tedious traditional classroom presence is more of an adherence to sheer methodology and perpetuation of the previous educational model.)
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 