The only thing "Head Start" and "No Child Left Behind" accomplish is an unbelieveable waste of taxpayer dollars(billions and billions).

Teachers(?) benefit students suffer. These programs more or less guarantees employment for teachers regardless whether the students learn to read let alone add.

Rick I beg to differ. HS and NCLB cause headaches for teachers too. We wind up teaching the test rather than focusing on things that really matter. The constitution is taught in a squed way leaving the students to believe that big government is the way to go. Most of the teachers I know abhor this approach. Yet we are required to teach this way or find ourselves on the street. As for teaching reading THAT is taught in school. However the reasearch shows that kids that have their parents reinforce the reading in the home read better and more widely. If the reading is not reinforced in the home the child is "left behind" because He/she does not have the skills to keep up. Don't put it all on the schools, parents have responsibilities too. During our "meet the Teacher night" I am lucky to have 1 parent show up all evening. Education is a three way split parent, child and teacher.

Liberal progressives tell us that the Constitution is a living document and must keep up with the times.If they used the same argument toward the education of our most precious gift,our children,they would agree that the system is broken. Test scores have proved over the last 45 years that the public school system is a poor place to learn. We are becoming a Country of under- educated people who can be spoon fed what ever the elitists and political class want us to know. It is easier to control a bunch of "dummies" than people who are resourceful. It is harder to "lead" people who have learned the skills that lead to critical thinking, and we can't have that!

Just want to support Jack's comments... I am a school volunteer and spend a lot of time with the kids and the teachers. Of course all generalities are false, but these programs only benefit the government (including the state and federal Departments of Education who love the power). Any benefit to children or teachers is an accident. Most teachers are frustrated over the system and it's a compliment to them that the kids actually learn in SPITE of programs like NCLB.

One of my best days as a volunteer was when I got a special ed student to do something he never had done before. When I reviewed it with the teacher, she told me how lucky I was because I get to "go where the kids are." Her entire day is objective and curriulum-based. She's busy achieving what the mandates require.

Don't blame the teachers... and I wouldn't totally blame the parents, either -- although it is very easy to tell which kids have involved parents. The system is the problem. Fix that (or get rid of it) so teachers can teach and parents can parent.

Freedom to choose. Free market. Our average per pupil government school cost is sky-high. Give parents 2/3 of that amount to choose their own school. Government is the problem, once again.

Jack, I must disagree. NCLB does not "force" you to "teach the test." Teach what you should, teach it well, and the tests will take care of themselves.

No, that's not naive. Truth. I and my wife have our teaching degrees, and did teach. The system and whining Parents not helping teachers teach "that's their job" mentality. She left the school system and is now homeschooling our children. Much better benefit. We also co-op for others who don't have the facilities to teach certain areas.

Time for a "change" is right. Vouchers so good teachers continue, bad teachers goto.....Congress?!!

God Bless and help you in your teaching!!!

I think you're all missing the bigger point here, but g.wegmann touched on it a bit: The reason for government run schools is not to educate our children, but to indoctrinate them. Revisionist history and "man-made climate change" make for pliable automatons

Impossible to have Freedom and Gov't controlled school system . Thats why They don't want what works, daha .

GWegman and Brian have it exactly right. Our public schools have become de factor propaganda mills. And the propaganda is largely anti-American, anti-Capitalist.

A teachers' union boss said when the kids start paying union dues then he'll make them a priority; until then his concern was with teacher benefits.

I've always been rather puzzled with the objection that standardized testing requires teachers to "teach the test." First, we can disagree on the effectiveness of a particular test, but can't we all agree that some sort of standardized test is needed to make sure kids are learning what they're supposed to be? So the test measures material the kids are supposed to be taught. That material was already required. How are we to discover whether kids really do know what they're expected to know if we don't test them?

Second, testing does not constrain teachers. It does not say "you must teach this and nothing more." Teachers can still teach material above and beyond.

Third, this whole objection is a relatively new phenomenon -- but standardized testing is not. When I was a kid in the 70s we had several different kinds of standardized tests, and nobody complained then. I never heard a teacher complain about "teaching the test" when I was a kid. I didn't hear that term until my own kids got into school and our state implemented standardized tests. The schools here acted as though the concept had just been invented.

The only reason we can't choose which schools our kids attend is because the teachers' unions oppose the idea. Proof of that is the fact one of President Obama's first acts was to kill the DC voucher program even though virtually everyone thought it was highly successful. But the unions hated it so he killed it.

Mr Stossel is absolutely correct. These unions are the biggest obstacle to education excellence in America. It's long past time we showed them the door.

A lady from New Jersey called a talk show to relate what happened to her son who received a zero on an assignment on global warming (how does global warming affect you?)because he answered, "no, it does not affect me - it is a hoax," and proceeded to provide supporting evidence.

The mother met with the teacher to ask why her son received a zero. The teacher came with a union representative to the meeting and explained that the curriculum was mandated by the state of New Jersey and so was the politically correct answer, "yes it does and explain how," therefore the grade of zero was valid.

Indoctrination anyone?

When my daughter was in elementary school, the first day of class in second grade, parents were asked to express their concerns for their children's education.

I knew we were in trouble when several mothers were concerned solely with free lunches as opposed to their children's achievement in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some parents have abdicated their responsibility share in their children's education to the schools and the indoctrinating curricula. They don't care what their kids learn or don't learn in school as long as they are fed and out of their hair.

Our local school system, like most in the country these days, runs its own pre-school program. My wife is a director at one of their pre-school sites, and it frustrates her no end that she and the other teachers are not allowed to *teach* the children. They aren't even allowed to have a "letter of the week". They can't teach the kids the alphabet. They can teach them the alphabet song, but they're not allowed to teach what the song means? Is this not ridiculous? Public education has one of the same problems as public sector jobs: namely, it's too easy to get a government job, and it's hard to lose a government job. I remember when I got out of high school, lo these many years ago, that a government job was for when you couldn't get a real job. Of course, the same people who couldn't get a real job still work for the government, there's just more of them, which explains a lot. Only now, they're better paid. And if a union leader ever told me that my kid didn't count until he started paying union dues, he'd be going home with a fat lip. Maybe a fat lip and a black eye.

If any one is interested in an eye opening view of our compelled(read forced) gov't education system I would heartily recommend Johntaylorgatto.com and read The Underground History Of American Education. It's there chapter by chapter free. Read first Chapter 1 section called Braddock's Defeat. It illustrates the ability to think for oneself which is gov't schooling deviates from.

What about times when teaching the test fails? When my son was in year 7, his math teacher skipped the geometry chapters because "it wasn't on the test". Furious, I taught my son year 7 geometry at home using worksheets and information from the Internet. It turned out to be adventageous to more than just his learning when 13 questions on the standardized test were geometry-based! Well equiped, he passed all those questions. And the school wonders why it kept a D rating for many years in a row. I just wondered why it was still operating and getting taxpayer money year after year.