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Guys, From beginning to end, this is a REAL "teacher basher". Or, is it right on the money. There follows a slight reversal{?} found in the middle of the article.

Interesting article, George.

Williams is right that many of those who major in education and become teachers are at the bottom of the academic barrel. There are also some teachers who are near the top academically, and put up with all the B.S. because they love to teach.

Of my high school graduating class, the valedictorian and the student with the highest SAT score (2 different people) are both currently teachers. This was a rather small high school, and from the same class also came chemical, electrical and nuclear engineers, accountants, and at least one doctor and one dentist, so it wasn't exactly a class of slackers.

Williams is correct, as usual, that there are factors other than the quality of teachers affecting the quality of education - those include the quality of students, political factors, and administrative factors.

Prospective teachers should be held to a higher academic standard, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen until working conditions and salaries improve. Kind of a chicken-and-egg sort of thing: if they raised standards, I'm not sure they'd be able to get enough teachers to fill classrooms at this point.

Amelia, The lady{?} running Maryland schools {Nancy Grasmick} is said {by her former husband} to have "aced" ALL of her schooling. She is now making over 100 grand, and has introduced some of the most moronic programs in Maryland schools that one would think possible. Including "inventive" spelling, and the most onerous M.S.P.A.P. {Maryland State Performance Assessment Program} Test that is very subjective in it's questions and thereby in it's answers and "grading". Stone cold objectivity is no longer the norm in education as it should be.

She also submarined the Calvert Curriculum that worked VERY WELL in 2 "disadvantaged" Baltimore City Elementary schools. Children AVERAGED 32 POINTS above the national average on standardized tests out of California, But, according to Grasmick, "That's not right, and must be changed." One wag in Baltimore said, "We can't be teaching this 'elite' curriculum to OUR kids."

So, with the obvious intelligence running the school systems, is coordinated stupidity at such levels of intelligence possible, or, is what's happening in so called education today just plain planned ordinary EVIL??? Peace and love, George.