I think teachers should be evaluated by schools so long as you have tough standards for schools and hold the principles and administrators responsible. Schools should be evaluated by their customers – kids, parents and taxpayers. If the school can’t meet the standards, the customer should be free to take their money elsewhere.

Ever hear of Enron?

No one, not even me, is advocating that schools should evaluate themselves. Just make sure that the standards are setup by people that know how to educate kids and know how to evaluate whether or not they are learning what they need to learn. How hard is that? Teachers and administrators are professionals too.

“What criteria would you use to determine the schools’ performance?”

Ask any educator how they evalute their own performing and there’s your standard. Or, as GWB would say, “Is our childrens learning?” :)

Re your comment that it’s a myth that any child can attend private school, under the system I proposed, middle schools would be required to accept any student within their district. It would only be when the students reach high school that they could be turned down by a school. Kids that didn’t qualify for the high school of their choice would have plenty of options, including vocational school. With the exception of special education students, if a teenager is not academically motivated enough to ensure that he qualifies to get into high school, then he has no business being there. High school is not day care.

I largely agree with you about what needs to be done to improve schoools. In fact, private schools are already doing all of the things you mention. So let’s give all our kids a chance to go to private schools.

I have one question. You mention that we should hold school administrators and city/town leaders responsible for the performance of schools, but you object to standardized tests. What criteria would you use to determine the schools’ performance?

You can’t have nationalized tests and non-standardized cirriculum. High stakes testing has been a proven failure in states like TX where we originally got them from in NCLB. What will the teens that don’t go to high school do with themselves?? There is no reason for businesses in this country to make even *more* money off our kids.

Abolish all school boards…they provide nothing to enhance the performance of schools. Hold school administrators and city/town leaders responsible for the performance of school districts. Consoldate school districts in rural areas to cut administrative costs. Provide well-trained, well-motivated, well-compensated teachers the resources that they need (clean, modern, well-stocked schools with reasonable class sizes) to teach children, and then get out of the way…