One thing about it, Buzz, is that I work in an "At Will" state with little or no union. Compared to other places with strong unions, there is good and bad to both. I am "tenured" here, but..., and this is a strong "but", I have to show professional growth and improvement to maintain that status. On the other hand, our weaker links do get kicked to the curb, so to speak. In fact, one teacher here that is weaker than all get out was shown the door this year, not because they couldn't teach the content, but because they didn't have the ability to relate well with students. (Note: I use the word "they" to not specify the gender of this person, not in a grammatical malaprop.)
Just remember this, you can't wave a magic wand at what is wrong in our society without a price tag being attached to it. We can't cure what is wrong in public education without it costing something. There are districts in America where the corruption and political agendas have completely taken away from the prime focus of educating our children. Corruption and mismanagement are not easy to cure.
NCLB was an attempt to put the focus on all children making benchmark standards and get away from the downward spiral in our urban school district's performance in educating children. The problem is, it opened the Pandora's box of problems in another direction.
Why do I blame Bush? I blame him for taking credit for this so called education reform package that was to solve all the problems in education with that wave of the magical legislative wand.
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Religion: The ultimate definition of verisimilitude |