I don't think that there's one right "side" to this.

I don't see what's racist about allowing for a voucher system. I don't like the idea of a teacher's union so powerful that it has veto power over citizen-backed reform proposals. I don't like the hurdles that so often get put in place to require credentialing for teachers.

I think that teachers need to be reasonably well-paid in order to attract well-qualified people to the profession, and that superior performance ought to be rewarded. I think there's too much emphasis on curriculum subjects that have nothing to do with improving learning skills.

Despite the fact that I think that California would benefit from replacing Proposition 13 with a more rational property tax system, I don't think that public school system funding should be linked to property taxes.

If it were up to me, I'd attempt the experiment of linking a high school to a day care center on one side, and an assisted care home for the elderly on the other.

I think that legal crackdowns and fear-driven repression in the name of social conservatism have done a lot more harm than good in this society, and most of the people advocating those measures have no idea how their programs play out in real life. But I also think it's imperative to pop the bubble of suspended isolation and minimal responsibility in which American society has enveloped its teenagers. To make myself plain, I think a great many of them need experience at connecting with a wider society than their fellow suckers in the "youth market." Hence, my suggestion above. It's shorthand, not even an outline. But I hope that readers see what I'm getting at.

Of the letters that I've read, the ones with the least insight are the ones trying to place the blame on "integration", "diversity", and "multiculturalism" for declining performances in some American schools. Integration, diversity, and multiculturalism were bound to be features of post-1945 American life, no matter what. By the time I was in 3rd grade in 1963, I had black American, Japanese, and Jewish friends, as an indirect result of that multicultural social engineering program known as the US Army.

The oft-cited lack of community values in contemporary American life probably has more to do with the transience of Americans as a population over the last 50-60 years than anything else. Between the fact of a huge transglobal military garrison whose personnel face constant transfers to different duty stations, business-related relocations, family break-ups, and all sorts of other complications of modernity, it's tough for many of us to find community, or even to know that there is such a thing. This is not the fault of the schools, but it does produce challenges that make it tougher for them to perform well. And that's the way it is.

Out of curosity, did you happen to go to university at EC? Your description of your school's requirements and analysis of current education trends sounds suspiciously like that School of Ed (for which I have deep respect, I should add.)

However, I disagree with some of the Board of Ed's requirements... for example, the high GPA. As a high school student, I suffered tremendously because of the GPA requirements. I have a passion to teach... but my intelligence is only inclined towards certain subjects. Because of math, in particular, and science, those fields which are supposedly going to make us into intelligent, well-rounded beings, I saw my dream of teaching history to middle schoolers go right down the tubes. Meanwhile, I saw other students, who saw teaching either as an easy out ("Oh I don't have the talent to be a professional muscian, I know, I'll teach as a side job to gigs") who happened to be much better at test taking than me, were accepted.

So while I agree to a certain extent about needing teachers who are well-versed in general subjects, I think that really only applies to elementary students. In my public education class, teachers always taught very specifically... yet you needed that high general GPA to train to be a high school teacher. Does that make sense?

Furthermore, I feel as if grading students based on GPA and grades is what crushes intellectual curosity and leads to the rigid education system we have constructed. When grades become all important, grades that will lead to colleges, that will lead to jobs, who dares risk taking a class in which there is no "right" answer (like literature interpretation.) Yet to become a teacher, at least at most of the universities I know about, you must adhere and even embrace the rigid GPA scale system.

Of course, this is my own personal experience, and I have long been embittered by the assumption that intelligence in only one area suggests intelligence over all, and that sheer raw talent in achieveing grades trumps hard work and passion. I think one of the questions we must ask ourselves to improve the public education system is, who would you rather be teaching your children: the private school educated teacher with the high GPA who can't wait to get out at 3:45, or the public school educated teacher with the average GPA who tutors until 7 every night?

After having used the best public schools in our area (Portland, OR) and then private school we are now basing our son's education out of our home. (Homeschooling)

It is by far the best option and place to learn. Like most kids he is intelligent and quirky and at 14 yrs.old he does have interests that it makes sense to let him pursue. Most countries encourage young teens to develop their own interests and let kids specialize earlier than we do. We keep our teens in institutions, buildings that with a few less defensive walls are duplicates of our prisons. A secure entry point, windowless interior hallways, an interior courtyard, fences, bells, bad lighting, people who don't want to be there. In fact most of our schools are designed and built by the same companies that do the design and building of prisons. Teachers are the wardens delivering the approved programs.

How would most adults adapt to moving through 5, 6, 7 or more disparate subjects a day, then they must answer to that many teachers (bosses). No wonder that so many high schoolers hate high school and destroy the physical structure and any innocent souls they can. It's a boring place at best.

Why isn't anyone talking about how this whole model of education comes out of and was to serve the Industrial Revolution? It is time, it is past time, for us to move on, only inertia, tradition and entrenched interests keep this mess brewing. Why do we allow ourselves and our children to be shoveled into these dismayal institutuions?

For some, public or private institutions may be the best place but they would be even better by being a choice made, not a default or mandated one.

We have taken back our bodies but not our minds. It is past time for freedom of choice in education. If we really want to improve education for everyone, we must respect and enable a right to choose. The details can be worked out.