I doubt 85% of all Americans need more than 8th grade education. 60% can get by with a 6th grade education. So let's dial back the requirement, end mandatory education at age 13 and split them into vocational and, if they wish, academic tracks. Save your money.

I was laughing like a loon--went through all this in DC. We went to the private schools even though we knew we could not afford them--I sat next to Judy Woodruff in the waiting room of Georgetown Day. Like my kid was getting in! She was wait listed (means nada) at a school where an older African American man in a waiter's jacket was setting the tables for lunch for these little tots. I couldn't see it. Finally, she ended up in a DC kindergarten--I moved to get her in that school. That lasted 5 yrs--they didn't teach multiplication tables--that's arithmetic, not math, we were told. Then she went to parochial school--which cost. When it came time for Junior High, I was scared of the nearby school and moved to AZ, where she immediately leapt into a bad crowd and became the ringleader. I toughed it, I loved it, I didn't love it--at 26 she is still here, unemployed, hated all school so much she would not even consider collitch, and now has legal issues. So...school is just the beginning, folks--but take your best shot! You may look back on private school interviews as the high point of your parenting experience.

The only thing I can do with a jungle gym is fall out of one and sprain an ankle. My kid sister, on the other hand, took a look at the abysmal excuse for the rec area/parking lot in her San Francisco elementary school,and decided that her kids and their friends deserved a play space that was more than the oil covered asphalt between the teachers' cars.

I don't know how she did it, but in 8 weeks this past summer, my sister, Patricia, found a discounted playground complex through an organization called KaBoom!, got a corporate sponsor, Washington Mutual, collected matching funds from some parents and local businesses, gathered about 150 volunteers and borrowed jackhammers, shovels, wheelbarrows. The school board, the city permit office and the garden club - a group which met to complain to each other about the lack of public money for a garden - balked at every step. Each of the blockers had "reasons" why it couldn't happen, even though it was, clearly, happening.

In exasperation, Patricia contacted every too busy vacationing member of the school board and threatened to take the energy she used for this project and devote it to ousting them. She nodded at the "garden club" then went ahead and put in donated pretty, drought resistant plants the garden club said couldn't be found. My sister's combination of will, organization and faith got something done in a very short time.

I have other siblings, all of which argue that the reason to send their children to private, Catholic schools is for the discipline, the parental involvement and the moral authority. I suspect that it's none of those things, that it's these parents' belief that their children are safer if held fast in the fantasy that the public sphere is dangerous. Outside, as in a public school, is dangerous to these parents, not because their children will be harmed, but because a wider view, a view that's different from theirs is threatening.

Going public means being out there and doing something. It means not leaving moral education to moral authorities, but finding moral value in social interaction. Family values are constructed in a social context, so redesigning that social context means rewriting those bureaucratic contracts so they do something useful.

Having your mom build a playground for you shows a pretty spectacular moral commitment to family values. As a side effect, she created a community of parents who now know that things can get done. Calling out the school board for being invested in process rather than projects will have continuing effects. Patricia built a playground and changed the world.

We live in one of the most acclaimed mid-size cities in the Midwest that is highly acclaimed for its progressive nature and liberal residents.

So the reaction we got when we told some of our neighbors and acquaintances that we were sending our kids to the public school was a surprise.

They couldn't believe it. "That place is high poverty with a transient population": read, a lot of minority kids go there.

"Don't you worry about the behaviors?": read, your kids could go all ghetto on you!

It's crazy. I love that our kids have friends from all economic and social groups. The class sizes are kept small through federal grants (not available to "better" schools in town with much larger class sizes). Our principal is involved. Our parents are involved. Our kids are flourishing. And the closet racists still can't believe we're "sacrificing" our kids to public school.

Now that we are finally on the topic of public schools, I would highly recommend the article in the current issue of Harper's 09/08 - Tyranny of the Test, by Jeremy Miller. As a thirty-five year veteran of the public and university education systems, I have an opinion or two on the state of education, particularly post-NCLB ("No Child Left Behind".) Saving the Public Schools requires a great effort on the part of all who recognize the necessity of informed and open discourse in a democratic state. Please forgive my tendency to rant - I propose only questions here and hope for a rich diversity of response.

In my Bachelor of Education classes I frequently introduce students to a discussion of just what it is that we really want our public education system to accomplish in light of the many changes that have happened since John Dewey first revolutionized the north american classroom. I begin by asking them to list all of the incidental skills - those beyond the specifics of content - that we commonly learn in school. The list is lengthy and includes things like raising our hands to speak, listening passively as someone else determines the topic and the answers, a subjects context and its value, asking permission to go wee-wee, neatness, competition, summarizing, etc. -On and on, we've all been there. The students who are comfortable with this and survive the biases of formalized learning and testing, do well. Those who approach information with playful independence, by choice or cultural/genetic predilection, typically find it difficult to perform (note my choice of words). As the discussion with my students evolves, we compare these skills to those required by employers and big business. (Clearly, these are desirable traits in certain many job markets.) I then introduce the question of what kind of behavior and learning we might require in a healthy democracy; qualities like good judgement, independence of mind, creative solutions, empathy, a deep understanding of the socio-economic lessons of history and contemporary culture. Inevitably, we come to consider how what happens in most of our classrooms typically discourages informed active questioning and participation in actual social events by the majority. Instead, we have shaped the education of our young citizens to encourage indifference and involvement through distanced content and methodologies. Meaningfully "Informed discourse" belongs to the text, to the media, to the teacher, to the "smart" kids, to everyone but the majority. If, as a disenfranchised "average or challenged" student, I sit passively and in my seat for six+ hours a day, six days a week, I can safely assume that someone else will inevitably carry the ball and maintain the status quo. Big Box schools add to this indifference by creating big box communities that reinforce my lack of public worth and my political impotence, offering choices in the form of prepackaged comodities.

So what have we done to further this with NCLB policies? We've distanced our children from active intellectual participation by reducing knowledge to information and teach to tests that in themselves are merely a means for isolating test scores as the measurement of success and "learning". To worsen the situation even further, we farm out testing and curriculum to billion dollar for-profit corporations (like Kaplan Corp. or The Princeton Review or Newton Learning) at exorbitant expense to our education budgets. Again, we undermine the status of our teachers ( those who work directly with our kids), elevate the status of experts and abdicate our responsibilities as citizens to the values and interests of corporate inefficiency. We might here at least ask a few questions. Do articulate, ethically engaged, reasonable human beings threaten or compliment the interests of our poitical and economic systems? What ends should education really serve? Whose interests? What is it worth to us to respond to this challenge of educating informed responsible citizens rather than producing mere consumers and trained employees? And one last question, please - Is there a journalist out there who might enquire more deeply into this?

Thanks, I feel somewhat better now.