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Public schools were free the last time I checked.

Oh yes, like Santa Clara High School where only 31% of the students are proficient in mathematics....

Macarthur High School, Irving, TX reviews. Sounds like a terrible place to try to learn.

"At least half of the teachers should not be teaching kids EVER."

"Only by threatening to have them arrested. Kids are afraid to take AP classes because they aren't learning anything. They are only reading and taking notes. No instruction at all."

"My kids hate this school now and would much rather move if we were able."

"No it's a breeding ground for bullying, fighting and rudeness. The teachers stoop to a child's level to treat them with absolute disrespect."

"This school has gone from a 10 to a 1 in a matter of 9 months. I blame this 100% on the new Principal. This school is run like a military camp, with horrible food, unrealistic rules, and all 'fun' activities taken away. They are threatened with court and jail if they are tardy. Theft is so rampant at this school that it is unbelievable. AP History teachers give several hours of notes each night, instead of actually TEACHING while they are in class, which means no time for their core class homework or sports. They refuse, and I mean refuse to let your child out of AP, even when you have signed several slips for this to happen. Teachers obviously set you up to fail. They just don't care. This is true for 50% of the teachers at this school. And don't report bullying. Your child will be blamed instead of the child who is actually doing the bullying. And the parent is put down as well. We just don't report theft or bullying anymore. Not worth the humiliation and disrespect that the 'fine' staff at Mac makes sure you endure."

Why is teaching to the test a bad thing? Is it because the test does not measure the skills students are expected to be learning? Or is it because teachers depend on repeated drills with old test questions to prepare students?

Neither one points to an insurmountable flaw with standardized testing.

Hey, what does being uneducated have to do with being Scots-Irish or for that matter being from a mountainous state? Let's leave "hillbilly" out of this. There are educated and uneducated people of many different ethnicities and locales. I think some of you people so dismissive of "hillbillies" and hog farmers forget that small town schools are often better funded and better performing than those in large portions of the biggest cities.

I guess according to your city arrogance the schools in Newark, Baltimore, or East St. Louis are much better than those in, say, Cartersville, Georgia or Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Hey, what does being uneducated have to do with being Scots-Irish or for that matter being from a mountainous state? Let's leave "hillbilly" out of this. There are educated and uneducated people of many different ethnicities and locales. I think some of you people so dismissive of "hillbillies" and hog farmers forget that small town schools are often better funded and better performing than those in large portions of the biggest cities.

I guess according to your city arrogance the schools in Newark, Baltimore, or East St. Louis are much better than those in, say, Cartersville, Georgia or Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Some are, and even those that are not are improving, unlike public schools:

http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/3706-charter-schools-better-than-traditional.gs

The US spends more on education per pupil then just about any other country in the world and we have shit results from it. Until the educational/unionization/bureaucratic complex is dealt with, more money wont make any difference in our schools.

*Citation required*

I would argue the reverse. The US spends vastly different amounts of money per pupil depending on the community that they live in. Where I grew up, the property values were prohibitively high as well as the taxes. As a result, I was privileged to attend great public schools. http://www.greatschools.org/connecticut/easton/ 15 miles away in the Bridgeport, CT are some of the worst schools. http://www.greatschools.org/connecticut/bridgeport/

You appear to hate unions, but not lack of funding. The greatest programmer alive grew up in the "educational socialism" that is europe and seems to agree that educational quality in the US is a regional thing instead of a national thing https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X

The US spends more on education per pupil then just about any other country in the world and we have shit results from it. Until the educational/unionization/bureaucratic complex is dealt with, more money wont make any difference in our schools.

*Citation required*

I would argue the reverse. The US spends vastly different amounts of money per pupil depending on the community that they live in. Where I grew up, the property values were prohibitively high as well as the taxes. As a result, I was privileged to attend great public schools. http://www.greatschools.org/connecticut/easton/ 15 miles away in the Bridgeport, CT are some of the worst schools. http://www.greatschools.org/connecticut/bridgeport/

You appear to hate unions, but not lack of funding. The greatest programmer alive grew up in the "educational socialism" that is europe and seems to agree that educational quality in the US is a regional thing instead of a national thing https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X

Increased education lowers crime.

No, more educated people commit less crime. Those are not the same statement.

As for cost of education, let's take a good school system - New Trier in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They spent $100M to educate about 4000 students, or $25k/student. That's over a quarter of a million per student. How about a bad one - DC? They spent over $28k per student. Wow. Well, maybe we could choose somewhere poor. The poor souls of McDowell County, WV, are spending over $10k per student for some of the worst results in the state. That's got total expenditure for a K-12 education down to around $130k, so if you can come out of there and succeed, you'll definitely benefit the government, but even then you have to worry about the time value of money - a huge investment over 13 years that takes 13 more years just to break even if you're successful. And you'd have to be really successful - the average working male in McDowell County only makes $26k, not $40k.

Legally, it may not be force. But is pretty much the social equivalent:
http://familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/drugging_our_children/
"It should be noted that itâ(TM)s not just elementary and high schools that seem to need a drug to help them run smoothly, but preschools and day care centers also. As writer Robyn Suriano recently pointed out in the Orlando Sentinel,[xxvii] âoeThe drug [Ritalin] reached its heyday in the 1990s, after more children started attending day care. In a preschool, kids must follow instructions and behave just like older children in classrooms. Rambunctious ones are not easily tolerated in these surroundings, where workers must watch many children.â This is not to say that day care centers are necessarily bad, but there are a lot of inadequately staffed and equipped ones. These trap preschoolers in confining, boring situations for 10 hours a day and then complain when they act like the active, inquisitive, and needy young creatures that children just barely out of babyhood normally are. That drugs are used to remedy this situation is unconscionable, especially considering that Ritalinâ(TM)s label warns that the drug is only for those aged 6 and over. But âoeoff-labelâ prescription is legal, and itâ(TM)s happening. As a Wall Street Journal article reported,[xxviii] the use of prescription drugs to control toddlersâ(TM) behavior has increased dramatically in the past decade."

Why was a bill like this needed and sabotaged:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=21803

Why is this so common?
http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/other-disorders/1289-what-do-i-do-when-a-teacher-says-my-child-needs-meds.gs
"My daughter gets in trouble at school. The teacher says she is in high speed all the time, doesn't watch where she is going, knocks things over or trips over stuff. Her teacher says that she doesn't pay attention to her work, she does it fast all the time and it ends up messy. The teacher would like me to put her on medication to slow her down, but I refuse. I have told her teacher that I give her worksheets and reading to do at home, and she will sit down and do the homework, and does a fine job. What do you suggest I do?"

Much of this is just kids being kids, kids being vitamin D deficient (from being indoors so much), and kids eating junk food.

You may not be popular for that comment, but it is definitely true. People decry ageism in regards to minors, while leaving out the fact that it also protects them. There are very few cases where a minor is held accountable for their actions in serious crimes and typically crimes committed by a minor are sealed and not permanent. The simple fact is, that they have little real world experience outside of their school social structures, home life, and neighborhood activities. They are more focused on 'me', although I can't say this is a biological change, or an environmental change that brings about a responsible adult. We do know that biological changes are what allows a child to learn to 'lie', and separate fantasy from fiction simply from development in the brain.

http://www.greatschools.org/parenting/social-skills/developmental-milestones-ages-3-through-5.gs?content=724&page=all

For instance, a 12 year old, out with his buddies late some night would probably never think twice about vandalizing a neighbors car. Having never owned one, understanding the costs, the pain of filing insurance claims, rentals, etc, they simply don't grasp what such a simple act sets in motion. Granted that's a rather simplistic example, but it has truth in it. Someone also mentioned the fact that there are responsible minors as well as irresponsible adults. For those, I say you simply have to you have to draw the line somewhere, and the odds are that an 18 year old apparently shows more adult traits at that age. They are typically working in the 'real world' by that age, they have experience outside of school and home life, and some basis in social norms expected of them.

All of this aside, I think that because they lack certain 'rights' until the age of 18, their basic rights are often dismissed or trampled. I suspect they are simply viewed as not being 'full citizens'. IMO, some rights should apply to all people, the right to free speech being one of them. The school never should have involved itself in a post made by a student on the students own time. It wasn't threatening any violence, and was basically just one students opinion of a faculty member.

Perhaps the faculty members time would be better spent understanding why students have such a poor opinion of him/her rather than wasting taxpayer money on pointless and inherently wrong cases such as this one.