Grrr....
The stupidity at the DUmp boggles the mind. I guess by now it shouldn't, but it still does.
I'll admit, there are a LOT of problems with the public schools in America. But I'd venture to say that at least 90% of the time, the teachers are doing the best that they can, given the circumstances-which often means no materials, no copier, no help from the administration of the school, and on and on.
The idea of passing kids just to get them out of your classroom is alive and in practice, as I have witnessed firsthand. We were told that we were NOT allowed to give students the grade that they deserved. If they earned anything less than a 60% for their report card, we had to give them the 60. I had one student whose average for my class was a 38%. His midterm grade was somewhere in the 20s. I was 'encouraged' to pass him anyway, despite the fact that HE WAS FUNCTIONALLY ILLITERATE. When I went to the guidance counselor to tell them I suspected he had reading problems and wanted him tested, they refused.
The majority of my students (in 9th grade) could not point out their own COUNTRY on a map, let alone anyplace else. I spent the first two periods of the second semester having them do map activities. LOTS of them. With my juniors, I spent a whole week on how to write an essay-how to formulate a thesis, how to defend a thesis, how to write a summary paragraph, noun-verb agreement-and I was the social studies teacher!
It's all well and good to blame NCLB, but that's only part of the problem. The teachers-who are overworked and underpaid-get no backup from their administrators. Kids who threaten teachers are not removed-they show up the next day in class. Parents are not held accountable for their child's attendance. A call home is more likely to result in frustration for the teacher, because the parents just don't care. And the ones that do are so few and far between that most teachers burn out within 5 years.
I place the blame for this solely on the Democrats. The majority of school systems that have horrible, horrible problems are the ones who are in the jurisdictions of Democrat-run city and county governments. These are the ones that throw money at the schools (as in, the most money spent per-pupil) but the money somehow never gets to the students or the teachers...so kids sit in overcrowded classrooms, with no books, no heat in the winter, and we wonder why our kids aren't learning.