Reply #1: One of the things I finally realized when I had

[SheilaT]

kids in school, is that teaching is harder than I probably knew. I'd always known that I would myself make a terrible teacher. And I am willing to criticize the incompetent teachers out there, but just to blame teachers for everything that's wrong with the schools is dumb. And wrong.

I was able to send my two kids to an independent (meaning private secular) school. I moved them from the excellent local public schools in my area for reasons that were pertinent to m specific kids. It became blindingly clear that small classroom size is the number one thing to make good schools.

And especially because the public schools must take all comers, educate all regardless of ability level or special needs, they should be very highly funded for that purpose.

If we can spend billions of dollars to kill people on the other side of the world, we should be able to spend billions of dollars to educate our own here.