Any honest look at the strengths and weaknesses of the American public school system must contrast differing achievment levels between races and economic classes. Most Americans whose children attend public school in overwhelmingly white, affluent or moderately well-off communities are quite pleased with the education that their property taxes pay for. Same goes for parents who send their kids to urban Catholic schools, for different reasons (including, perhaps, those schools' ability to expel troublemakers?)

Another thing that I find interesting as a reform-minded liberal is that K-12 public education has always had very little direct federal involvement, both in spending (presently less than 8% of all pre-collegiate spending is federal, if I am not mistaken) and in bureaucratic meddling. With authority so firmly entrenched at local and state levels, it is surprising how screwed up things are, given what conservative dogma teaches us about how innately superior private, local and state institutions are to the feds.

43 percent of current school-board members planned to seek another term.

And it Texas it's going to get worse. A bill is pending that would require full open book financial disclosure of anyone serving on a school board.

"it is surprising how screwed up things are, given what conservative dogma teaches us about how innately superior private, local and state institutions are to the feds."

And your point being? That locals can screw it up as bad as the feds? Sure. That's one of the "benefits" of teachers' unions - and many teachers - being more concerned about their members' paychecks than they are about teaching students.

Any honest look at conservative and liberal philosophies regarding education shows conservatives support improving education by demanding accountability through testing - both students AND teachers - as well as competition in the forms of charter schools and vouchers. Liberals, on the other hand, believe the main reason our schools are failing is because we simply haven't loaded up enough dump trucks full of cash and left them at the school door.

Wouldn't you agree that the GOOD teachers are underpaid? Years ago most of the teaching profession was made up of the smartest women who chose to pursue professional careers. These days, a woman with similar aptitude is much more likely to decide to become a lawyer. (Over half of law school students are female today.) Can you give me one good reason why we shouldn't pay the best public school teachers, particularly those willing to teach our most difficult students, the same wage that we are willing to pay a federal government lawyer?

I agree that teachers unions and the Democratic party have been much too inflexible with regard to merit pay, voucher experiments and some other innovations. Unfortunately, we don't have public financing of elections and so the Democratic party has grown much too dependent on teacher union dollars, as well as on teacher union support during the Democratic primary process.

But when bashing teachers unions, keep in mind that many of the states with the lowest student achievement rates are in right-to-work states, mostly in the south, where union membership is optional, and teacher unions, as a result, have little or not involvement in negotiating contracts.

The whole school board scheme is a joke. In Cleveland, they voted that the mayor would be in charge of the school system instead of the school board as it makes it much easier to assign blame.

"Wouldn't you agree that the GOOD teachers are underpaid?"

Honestly, no. Both of my parents were K-12 teachers in Washington state and are now retired. While we weren't rich when I was growing up, we never suffered. And nobody complained about the two-week Winter break, 10-day Spring break, the nearly three-month Summer break .... not to mention the mid-winter break some districts have now. Or in-service days, parent-teacher days, training days ....

Where is it written that everybody should be paid whatever they think they should be paid? And if not, to constantly complain about it? I worked for several years in radio, enjoyed the hell out of it and got out when a better-paying job came along. Didn't strike. Didn't pull "legislative ACTION days." Didn't use my grade-school listeners as pawns to help me with whining for more money.

Yes, there are some under-paid teachers (the new ones) and the Washington state Legislature attempted to address that problem a couple years ago by specifically granting larger pay raises to those within their first few years of teaching. Know what happened to that money? During the next round of contract negotiations, dead-wood, old-guard teachers in several of the districts rolled all the money into one pot and got larger raises for themselves.

Again, when teachers become more concerned with teaching kids instead of their paychecks, I suspect the quality of our public schools will increase.

For the record, I'm back in school, going after my Masters ... so I can teach post-secondary, preferably at a community college. I know it doesn't pay as much as a government lawyer. Doesn't pay as much as a pro baseball player either. Oh, well. That's life. Got other things to worry about then what everybody else is making.

"Got other things to worry about then what everybody else is making."

Than. Than! :o

Not to pile on here, but find me a better example of just how screwed up the union's priorities are than this:

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20030731/southsound/65274.shtml