[Overpaid Slacker]

I believe the difficult, politically suicidal reforms (eviscerating teacher's unions, trimming the staffing bloat, and discarding tenure-which has got to be the largest moral hazard in history) would vastly improve education more than sticking cattleprods up parents' asses. But, given the state of the world, a HS diploma would still be useful only as a baseline entry credential for other schooling.

For some reason, we've got this sentimental attachment to teachers and it's taboo to criticise their sinecure or the neat little racket they've got going w/ the union and tenure. So when a presumptively right, caring educator says "it's the parents, it can't possibly be us!" we turn on the parents like a stabbed rat. The parent situation is insoluble; period -- so it provides a convenient perpetual excuse for poor educator performance.

Educators (these are all generalizations) are not among the most intelligent people I know; not among the most dedicated people I know, and sure as ***** are not among the hardest working people I know. Why this fawning, blinding deification?

If the foregoing paragraph read as though I'm being harsh to teachers, I'm really not -- it is likely that you are used to putting them on a pedestal, and any statement that pulls educators down to the level of normal people seems heretical.

Where I'm going is -- why all the incredibly preferential treatment for practitioners of a fairly mundane profession. The treatment itself guarantees sinecure, sloth, virtually total lack of accountability and almost no incentive to try hard, much less to aim for excellence. W/o those qualities evident in our educators themselves, how are they going to be conveyed to their students?

Also, I agree w/ Tabby about bucking the PC curriculum revisionist bull*****. This is where parents could be most helpful -- pressuring their school districts to drop "zero-tolerance" policies and adopt policies that are reasonable and still effective.

JP