You do know that when teachers go home they have to grade all your homework, right?  In fact, many times they end up grading homework on weekends or holidays.

Perhaps they shouldn't assign homework then :)

1) Put more money into the system
2) Take away some of the Teacher's Unions power
3) Pay qualified teachers more and give them raises more often
4) Don't hesitate to fire unqualified teachers
5) (Maybe) Peer review system like professor's currently have

I tend to think that if you did #2-4, you wouldn't even have to bother with #1.

bold: posts that start with insults never go anywher good
italics: and that worked great for the financial sector didnt it?
underlined: its unlikely they would have expert knowledge enought to judge what there child should and shouldnt learn, some of them for example might not want there child to be taught science (if theyre like a fundementalist of some religion)

in addition, parents can hold the government to account for failings and errors, they cant hold a private school to account as the school dosent have to listen, the private sector allways has its own agenda, whats to stop schools from forcing there political or religous views on the children? whats to stop private schools giving certian people prefferential treatment? state education is the only way to go, its fair, can be held to account and is cost effective if done properly and funded by progressive taxation.

If you think that teachers work less than other jobs, hahahaha, you clearly don't know any teachers.

Parents can hold the private sector accountable for failings and errors. It's called pulling your kids out of the school, and going somewhere else. If someone doesn't like shopping at a particular store, getting gas from one station, or playing on one kind of video game system, they can easily pull their money out of that store/business, and go somewhere else. That is why capitalism works: The consumer has the ultimate say in the matter, and the business has to benefit the consumer, or they will go somewhere else.

Furthermore, in the American system of schooling, citizens 'can' vote out board members, and exert their will on the system. Problem is that it takes place every 2-4 years for voting, and they are pretty much screwed till then. In some cases, they forget what happened and fail to take prompt action. This is why privatization is better: Consumers vote immediately. If a school does something bad, then the students could be taken out of school immediately, and funds would dry up rapidly, killing the school. Thats why it would be much, much better than the current system, which allows as many abuses by teachers like the Catholic Church allows for thier pedophile priests.

And there you go again with your progressive taxation speel. Did you know that the American system for education doesn't tax progressively? It taxes based on property ownership, and not income.

Everything in this paragraph is wrong. Everything.

If you don’t like what the school is teaching your kids, change schools. In the UK, if you don’t like the school your children are in, what’s your options?

Also, the last sentience is funny. You can have an inefficient system that you make the rich pay, but doing so does not make it “cost effective”. It just makes a very non cost effective system paid for by the rich.

Collecting taxes and spending taxes are totally independent. Finding ways to collect more money to pay for an inefficient system is a very poor solution to the problem. If you’re spending too much money on something, fix it.

You'd be surprised.

The Department of Education in cleveland used to have a website where you could see what teachers made.  They made so much that the site got taken down because people got pissed.

For example Cleveland City schools are facing a shortfall of 83 million dollars.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/01/budget_deficit_could_force_cle.html

This equals the average pay and benefits of 900 teachers.

So a quick review of the math.

83 million/900 teachers =  $92,222.23

$90,000 a year isn't underpaid for 9 months work.   That's 10K a month.

Cleveland City schools are some of the worst in the area.

It's not a matter of funds in Clevelands case at the very least.

The average Salary for a teacher is something like 50K not counting Benefits... which almost all of them get.

I mean 50K for 9 months work I wouldn't call underpaid... espeically when most classes the same syllabus and assignments can be used year after year.

These numbers are straight from the AFT by the way. (American Federation of Teachers.)

I agree

It has pretty much become a pass of your school lose funding b/c of no child left behind, not to mention there are some teachers that do it fro the wrong reason, and then there is to many people trying to make policy that have never been in the classroom, and teachers are no longer really protected from parents that want an easy court case, to much politics in school, ...the list goes on

But not all teachers are bad, and not all programs are bad

My wife works from 7:45 in the morning to 5 in the after noon (that’s just at school) then she comes home and has to grade papers, go over lesson plans, and since she is in special ed she has all these reports she has to write—so some days she wakes up and goes to bed working

So I don’t bust her chops about getting bigger breaks


But being on the front line I can tell you some things that do need to change

Year round school—it seem s to be a better plan then what we have, more staff to lower the student teacher ratio, better funding for after school programs and the arts, a clean up of the politics, no longer should you be allowed to be a principle unless you have spent at least 15 years on the front lines (as in the classroom)