What is the root of the education problem? Well, it’s not unions, it’s not teachers, it’s not even those big bad administrators who (wink wink) are just there for the coffee and a big fat paycheck that they didn’t earn.

It’s about expectations. We as a nation have decided that EVERY child will receive an education…and not just an education up to 3rd grade, or 5th grade, or even middle school…EVERY child will receive a high school education! Now, add illegal immigrants to the mix. Students that have special mental, emotional and/or physical needs. Homeless students. Students who are severe behavior problems. Our schools are REQUIRED to educate them all to the 12th grade level, and this can take an increasingly large amount of resources and funding to accomplish.

We have the NAEP, the TIMSS, and other tests that measure our students against the rest of the world’s kids. Here’s a better idea: let’s test our kids with severe special needs, kids with significant physical or situational impairments, with other countries’ kids.

If you can even FIND those children in the other countries to take that test, I guarantee you U.S. children would be first on those tests by a landslide. We take the tired, the poor, the weak and the downtrodden, and we educate them ALL.

Our best and brightest do just as well as other countries’ kids. Our most significantly cognitively and physically challenged kids would do as well or better than any other country. The key is the “average” kid – who is the average kid? For us, it’s everybody. For many other countries, the “average” has ruthlessly pared the tired, the weak, the physically unable to perform away from the group.

Do your research. Take a look at what is expected of a typical public high school. Better yet, sit with a principal for a week – heck, sit with a central office person in many situations – and you’ll see the Sisyphean tasks ahead of them. And by the way? Yes, I was educated in a public school.

the type with an “opinion” that you spout as fact. you know nothing about the realities of how to educate a child, yet spout off things that make no sense as “common knowledge”

and when people ask you to provide research based facts (the only kind we can rely on) you spout off more garbage.

Dangerous because people who think like you are already tearing down education.

Charter Schools are not an answer, they are an escape valve for parents who are afraid of the bad kids that stratifies society.

your entire post is basically a rant against the value of education, since all we need are jobs and business and entrepreneurship.

be sick at this topic all you want, but the working conditions of the teachers, are the learning conditions of your students.

I like your enthusiasm.