I am not sure of why you are conflating discipline skills with blacks passing or not passing subject matter tests, but I know from experience that being good with one does not guarantee being good with the other, but that both skills are necessary in inner-city schools.

I'm not sure, either. The fact is that inner city teachers in Houston are predominately black and the Singleton ration inserted white teachers making race a hiring issue. The black teachers complained that discipline suffered while the white teachers coming in were appalled at the abysmal scholastic achievement. The system was unable to blend the talents of both, resulting in a sort of a "white flight" of inexperienced teachers to the suburban schools after their "trial by fire" in the HISD cauldrons.

As far as "survey", suffice to say this TECAT information is shared openly, embarrassing some teachers and infuriating others. I'd say I have a a broad perspective of who is teaching what, having taught Journalism, English, and Social Studies at five different schools in my 22-year career. While I have many anecdotal stories, I do relate them to hard information or discard them as anomalies.

I realize I sound racist in making the "black" comments, but put my posts together and I hope you'll see that I understand that skin color has nothing to do with intelligence or teaching skills, but that culture does. Furthermore, the politics of race make it an issue by separating scores of students and teachers, thereby heightening the contrast.

I come from a Midwest culture where a high reading level is assumed, where, as Garrison Keillor put it, we were nearly all "above average." Black kids in Iowa performed about as well as their white counterparts, so I had no preconceptions about that coming to Houston (which recruits teachers in Iowa colleges quite heavily). Imagine the culture shock when I found and found the dramatically lowered standards, even among my colleagues. Two of the coaches who were to teach Geography had no idea how to figure out latitude and longitude! Though I found the TECAT test to be ridiculously easy, several teachers in my school had taken it numerous times without passing it.

Or is this simply a self-congratulatory statement in terms of having found an intelligent and articulate (liberals love that word, and even though it's not stated here, it's implied: "better than most of her white colleagues") black woman?

It might seem to be some of that, but one doesn't marry a person, have children with her, and stay married 17 years just to prove something. It does, however, give me an insight into the homes of many inner city black families that I could not otherwise have. While a discussion of prejudices is important here, I'll save it for another thread or respond to direct questions.

Suffice to say, I regard my wife as an equal in every respect; she knows about the same amount of trivia, has a similar reading and scholastic background, and has a similar educational philosophy: we both feel strongly that education is being "dumbed down" and that few care about what happens to our students (their parents included).

Though I detest Texas Republican politics, I don't consider myself a "liberal." I'm more of a "Pragmatist" or Progressive" and prefer Barack Obama not because he's black, but because he tells blacks and others true things they do not want to hear.