Submitted by mhr, Jan 17, 2007 11:50

There is enough blame to go around when the subject is low performing schools. Teacher unions control the public schools and student performance is not high on their list of priorities- teacher pay is. I know middle school teachers who never take work home, ie papers to correct. The reason? That is not in the contract. Many teachers of my acquaintance chafe at having to follow state mandated courses of study so they simply do not. They spend more time on subject areas of their preference and skip over those they dislike. Current favorites are Islam and Western "imperialism." One teacher complainant before the LA Board of Education whined that he didn't have enough time in class to attack US policy in Iraq. When I taught in public secondary schools, my colleagues and I were liberal like everyone else was but it never occurred to us that our job was to spread anti-American propaganda.

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