Others have mentioned money does not equate directly to performance. That’s true. It’s also true that the only thing politicians seem to understand is money.

For all its posturing, there is nothing equal and fair about the public school system, from the top down. Too many teachers are incompetent or complacent and too many parents are not supportive. Some parents at all income levels can barely ensure that their kids even show up at school. Blame flies back and forth across the school threshold and kids get caught in the melee.

Every big plan (such as No Child Left Behind)is propelled by political ambition designed to give the impression that the educational system is making progress. NOT.

I have a friend who retired two years earlier than she had planned (after a 30-year teaching career) because she was so disgusted, weary and enraged by the failings of the NCLB program.

Thankfully I have known many teachers who have done an outstanding job of inspiring, instructing and empowering their students without benefit of all the administrative support they deserved and the district and state budgets that would have provided basic supplies.

Even though it’s deplorable that your daughter’s school cut the budget, I am confident that you and the other supportive parents will fill in the gaps and supplement the educational activities.

On the other hand, I worry that the new money added to the budgets of lower-performing schools will not have the effect we think. Throwing money at schools with so many other broken pieces will make little positive change. It’s like tossing a teaspoon of water into the ocean.

As for your original question, yes I have been punished for succeeding.

When I began my teaching career in an inner city junior high, I quickly put all my energy and passion into creating a warm learning environment and stimulating my students. As administrators and counselors began to learn about my strengths, they began to transfer more and more problem students from other classes into my classes. When I protested, they pointed out that the former teacher was weak and couldn’t handle the students, but they knew I could.

I had no problem with working with a variety of students, but why should I have to manage 40 students when the weaker teacher (who was paid the same of course) had only 20 students. Besides, I spent the first few weeks shaping my classes into a family, only to have to regroup with each new troubled enrollee.

In spite of this, I enjoyed many happy years teaching my junior high classes. Forty years later during the last semester of my teaching career at local college, I received an email from a young teacher in Maryland. She was looking for help in offering critical thinking courses in her program. By the way, she wondered if I was the same Flora Morris who taught English at her junior high so many years ago.

I had come full circle. I was ending my teaching career by renewing contact with one of the many successful students who went through my classes. She also shared that she and some of the other students from her class have informal reunions where they have a good time laughing at some of the things I said to them. She thanked me for demanding their best.

Now how can you buy that with a budget?

The idea that $ helps performance is foolish and is proven time after time after time to be wrong.

The budget goes for many things, not just for helping kids get better at learning.

I don’t know what you should do.

As I commented before, I understand why the PC world we live in promotes this. The problem for children is that they become adults and live in the real world.

This real world is competitive. We are competing in business, for jobs, for husbands/wives, and generally for survival in tough economic times (like now).

The only societies were adults are ‘protected’ in this way is in communist/socialist societies and history has proven how successful that model is (NOT).

Maxism is great in theory, as is this new philosophy of non recognition and non competition. But Marxism and other ‘nanny’ systems neglect human nature at their peril.

America is a super power because of its capitalistic history and the fierce competition it promotes. Yes, there are some casualties but overall the society progresses and prospers.

Without the capitalistic, competitive nature that made America and Britain the powerful nations they were in the mid 20th century we would all be living under the shadow of the Swastika.