That elementary teacher in Mississippi who has her first real job after college and makes $24k needs to be held accountable, by God. If she can't teach all 37 of her students to be little Shakesperes and Einsteins, while making sure they behave, and referring them to various counsellors and social workers for their broken home and abusive family problems, and manage the "special" student who is so autistic he can't even drool correctly, and come in early to clean the room, and stay late to help slower students, and field calls from outraged parents, and coach soccer in her spare time, and produce the school play, and advise the drama club...

Well, then, what good is she? We'll get some other chick with a master's degree would be happy to make $24k and get three months off in the summer. All we really need is someone to make sure they memorize the test answers. How difficult can that be?

I'm in favor of scrapping No Child Left Behind, but I think the worst problem it had (beyond the fact that it was evidently written by people who were failures of the American public school system), was that Bush placed at its head someone whose only qualification was his undying loyalty to Bush.

Which is pretty much what the problem has been, on every front since Bush took office.

You need accountability. You need a metric to gauge progress. NCLB is a good start. Unfortunately, "accountability" is a swear word to the teachers unions.

The comments from the Dem candidates are pathetic and clueless. What we need is to introduce a little bit of choice and some incentives to improve. A little bit of free market competition even if it needs to be in the context of a public school district. San Francisco and Oakland have done this with great effect, letting schools compete for students and giving parents a choice on where to send their children. Unfortunately "choice" and "competition" are another couple of swear words in teachers union land....

Honestly... That is the best that these people can come up with? Uhhhh start earlier with these kids that'll fix it! Teach them how to NOT think earlier... brilliant. That'll fix it! The true problem has very little to do with school and a whole lot to do with society. 30% don't graduate, because they are busy working for a living already. As far as "good teachers" more college education is not the answer. It now takes almost the same amount of time it takes to get a masters to get a bachelors in a subject plus education. Reality is you can't teach someone how to teach. Colleges simply make teaching less appealing by forcing students to take pointless fluff classes, that you can pass in your sleep but cost more money and make zero sense. My "teachers pysch" teacher spent more time discussing speeding tickets than any actual teaching information, because he knew the truth. You can't teach someone to teach, only experience and ability make you good at it.

You used the word "think" and tried to apply it to public education. Everyone knows our job is to equip our children to pass standardized tests. That's what will make our nation great and strong -- the ability to pick the most nearly correct answer out of four possible choices. What is all this "think" nonsense? Thinking never helped anyone. Our president doesn't "think" about things. Neither should we. God bless America!