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Living in one of Hartford's border towns, I can attest to that. Our high school underwent a major renovation between 5 and 7 years ago. Basically gutted inside and replaced with new everything. Our system has always had its' share of "Project Concern" kids and others from Hartford when I was there through the 80's, but as the screwel system in Hartford continued it's downward spiral, more and more city kids began entering our system.

Walk down the hallways today, and it looks like the stereo-typical inner city screwel you see on tv. Urban graffitti inside and out, broken fixtures, vandalism, etc. Once Sheff v. O'Neill gets forced upon us, it'll only be a matter of time before the city's violence makes its' way to our screwel yards. It won't be an improvement of the educational system, it will be a degredation of successful systems to the level of the non-performing ones.

My father-in-law is a teacher in the south-western part of the state in a small town that neighbors a big-city. He is considered (and rightly so) one of the top teachers in the system. It has gotten to the point now where he is counting down the days until he is eligible for retirement. If they were to offer him an early retirement package with health care included, he would walk out the door today.

Teachers make an easy target sometimes (I enjoy bashing them myself), but I wouldn't put my FIL in that category. The situation is very problematic even if you ignore the NEA problem for a minute. Good teachers are getting frustrated with the fact that the inmates (students not union teachers) are running the asylum and they have no recourse. More and more quality teachers are either quitting education all together or moving to private schools. Not only do they have to worry about the usual ill-behaved, mouthy, wise-a$$ kids anymore, they now have to worry about getting beat up. Can't carry a side-arm ya' know. As if the teachers union wasn't doing a good enough job of destroying the public screwel system on it's own, you can now add to the situation that good teachers are fleeing in droves.

You may have heard me callin to some talk shows in CT, I used to ask the Shef supporting hosts a simple question:

How come little black kids cant learn unless they sit next to little white kids?

I hoped to point out the total hypocricy of their stance: that little sheff (who is now 22?) could learn if he actually read his books and did his homework, and the teachers held them to that standard.

Instead, we get this politically correct midnight-basketball logic: Black kids cant learn in a black school unless we control their environment through government action; translating to the idea that we must send them to suburban schools where there is less crime already because we dont want to deal with the crime issue/lack of parental support issue/lack of personal discipline issue.

I am so sick of the dems using race as the underlying issue in all things that are only due to personal behaviour and character.