Nice post, Jeff.  I think everyone can agree that we should be striving for some sort of accountability from our educators but how do we go about that?  But then maybe we're all too often making teachers the scapegoat when we should be focusing more on the parents of failing children.  In many of those cases you've got parents who either don't care or don't have the skills necessary to help their own child...a very sad position for the child to be in.

I recall watching a documentary of some sort, maybe a dozen years ago about the Kansas City public school system.  The gist of the program was that they had pumped an additional 2 billion dollars into the schools but hadn't noticed any improvement in grades.  They went on to compare the public schools with local parochial schools which operated at significantly reduced levels but achieved better grades.  I can't remember what conclusions if any they reached but my guess is that the parents were more involved.  It's hard to put a price on that.

Kevin g