The "no child left behind program" has good and bad points. Unfortunately, all that most people hear from the left is that it was an unfunded program pushed through by Bush. That's not quite true. This is a nice topic for a separate threat because I doubt that this can be intelligently discussed in this thread. There is IMHO no shortage of money in public education. One of the problems is how the money is allocated.

It's also a myth that teachers are all liberals, the NEA certainly is, but the rank and file (especially the older ones) are quite often conservative.

Another major problem in education is also one that I see on display in most malls and restaurants, kids today have little or no discipline and parents that don't know how to discipline their children. The result is that kids aren't prepared for the structure of school. To combat that parents look for medical excuses and prescription drugs. You can't go back and fix these problems very easily. A lot of parents at this point just figure it's the school's problem to deal with. I've watched this for most of my life, through the eyes of my parents who were both 30yr+ public school teachers (both republicans). My mother who has already retired and decided to go back to work to teach 3rd grade spends up to half her day dealing with the few chronic discipline problems in her class to the point that it takes away time from the others.

We spend the most money per child on students that will likely drop-out as soon as they can either voluntarily or through expulsion. Why do we do this? Why is it that private schools seem to do a better job? They don't, they just don't have to take deal with the bad apples, they get tossed out.

Well, so much for starting a new thread.