Any experience in a classroom?

If we are busting at the seams, the first thing that should be looked at is whether everyone that is attending is legally a citizen. Once that is determined, action should be taken to remove those people from the system. Then re-evaluate whether we are "busting at the seams"!! Doesn't that make sense??!!

Mary, it is time to change that law.

This law is wrong. Why should you and I pay for someone's kids who are scamming the law and society? What is next? We HAVE to feed them or house them? If you make it easy for those who are here illegally, then they will stay. If you make it difficult, then they will leave. I am all for LEGAL Immigration, but they must come through the Front Door in order to enter and participate in what our country offers to its citizens. Don't you agree??!!

Mary - if my wife and I commit crimes, should advantages be given to my children?

By the way, many of these federal laws were enacted during the 1990's when school populations were decreasing. I know some teachers who were happy to have Illegals in their classrooms because it saved their jobs. Is that right??!! How about if Firefighters lit fires around town to justify keeping their jobs?? We have strayed from the priciples of what is right and wrong because of the Holy Dollar.

I don't know the history of the law, I do know that in certain parts of the county, it's a non-issue, in other places, it's completely transformed the schools, almost overnight. In all honesty, teaching children who know very little English is extremely challenging. I have taught in Springfield, where most of the kids are not immigrants, because they are Puerto Rican. But when they're trying to learn English, a single word can throw a kid off the meaning of a poem, or a line in a story. It's hard to remember that when you are a teacher, and you're trying to understand why the kid didn't understand the essay, or the assignment. I just think it makes better sense to educate children who are here. It's the ticket out of poverty, and a way for children (and their families) to become assimilated in our culture.

With regard to American intelligence, though our level of education--and our educational status and standards--are felt to be dropping, we remain, in terms of intellectual strength and humanistic values (if those things can even be seen as separate), the very pinnacle of civilizations in the history of the world.

Charter schools are an attempt to undermine the essence of civic and academic education in this country. The current malaise has roots in the generally anti-intellectual GOP and its attemptys to punish teachers and schools by financially ignoring them ans at the same time to put every student into a preconceived slot that will not excercise the strengths of indivduals but the cheapest methods of cramming everyone out of a cake decorator. I spent 40 years in education and in text publishing and I saw our universities turn in to employment agencies for corporations and now everyone but a few needs remediation. College textbooks now do not offer the challenge of a 1950's high school curriculum.

Charter schools can and have been viable alternatives to the monopoly of government run public schools. They should be encouraged.

And just to be clear, total expenditures per pupil are nearly two-and-a-half times higher today than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation, while student achievement toward the end of high school has been flat or has even declined slightly (in science).

You may be wondering: ”What did we get for that huge increase in spending?” The answer is: a lot more public school employees. The number of public school employees divided by the number of students enrolled. This ratio of staff to students has gone up by 70 percent since 1970, swelling the ranks of the public school employee unions to about 4.5 million people.

And charter schools are famously non-union. Which is why you see teacher's unions leading the charge against charter schools and school choice generally.

I'm not against spending money. I'm for results. Both the data and anecdotes like Carl's tell us that we are not getting the results we have a right to expect from an almost 250% increase in spending.

There is a lot of innovation going on outside the constraints of the public school systems in charter schools, home schoolers, and web based instruction.

Check out this fabulous website: khanacademy.org

I disagree with the need or the conceptual goal of charter schools. This is a part of the trend by really insidous conservatives to undermine and dismantle the public schools. Conservatives do not think that an educated populace from that source is good for their constant war against progressive policies or democratic principles. They would prefer not to have what was produced in the late 19th and the 20th centuries which was 100's of millions of people educated in the basic tenets of participatory democracy. They have successfully misled people about the accomplishments and advances of public education. They would prefer what happens in upper class schools where elitism is bred. They have as an alternative, the charter schools, which has no distinguishing traits other than exclusivity. And they want to pay for it with taxpayer dollars. This is not only absurd, to not remedy whatever ills are perceived in a public system, but to throw it out as fit only for the non-elites. This country as well as other democracies are supported and grown by an early civic minded curricula that educates and promotes democratic ideas. That is not happening as well today because of many things, not the least of being neglect but also also due to a tremendous ignorance among those who are promoting elitism based on irrational principles, such as religion. To suggest that we abandon a public system is to actually destroy this republic.