[RightField]

Teachers truly are finding themselves between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they're being told to raise standards by school boards. On the other, parents are asking them not to be too hard on their kids.

We homeschool, even though hubby has been a public high school teacher for 37 years. He'll be retiring in 2 years, if he can hold out that long. He teaches US and world history. The school district has dumbed down the books over the years like you would not believe. The current world history book devotes 70 pages to anything prior to 1600 and 500 pages for everything after. There are more words devoted to the attire of Louis XIV than there are to the Reformation. The US history book is just as bad. It is called something like The Americans ... From Reconstruction to Today. 10% of the book devoted to Civil War and before; 90% to Reconstruction and forward.

Last year he was in a protracted argument with the administration over the grade EARNED (earned, mind you!!) by one girl in his class. She EARNED a B+, primarily because she turned in a project late because she was on a long weekend skiing trip. Her parents demanded that she be allowed to do extra work to bring her grade up to an A. It was ugly, and in the end, she got her A.

[sparkydragon]

Funny, I know of something like that that happened to someone I know. She turned in her project a day late, and was told that there were no exceptions, but finally convinced the teacher to grant an exception because she missed more than half the class (and therefore was technically absent) because she slept in late. This was so that she could be in the top 12 of our class.