I feel like I was given a good education by public schools.
I don't think the schools are the same as when we went.
We had a huge thread on our internal news server at work on how schools changed because of the 'No Child Left Behind' program. If I have children, I don't think I would have any choice other than to send them to private schools and supplement that with home schooling in subjects we, as parents, would be able to.
Now that I think about it, there's one thing that's been instituted in schools since just after I left them a little over a decade ago: SOLs (Standards Of Learning tests). We didn't have standardized testing when I went through (just the "test" tests to see how everything might shake out). The sad part for my area is that everyone passes the tests easily, but because failing them means you don't move on to the next grade (and no child can be left behind), the curriculum begins to focus on teaching to these tests.
That really saddens me, because it brings my old school down and doesn't do much to bring the schools at the bottom up.
I don't know the details of "No Child Left Behind", but I can tell you one of my best friends left teaching because of it, and one major thing he talked about was teaching to tests rather than actual learning. He says that it pretty much killed any joy he had in his job.
In fact, the only teachers I have ever met that are happy in their jobs are those who teach at private schools, and they are lucky to have spouses who can support them because they make even less than public school teachers.
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