As a physician, I can state with certainty that the AMA does not look out for doctors' interests nor does it speak for me and my colleagues. It is rotten to the core with liberals and socialists, men and women who long ago abandoned practicing medicine and now deign to tell others how they should do so.

I believe that only 15% of physicians belong to the AMA. The rest of us hold it in utter contempt.

Two acronyms: AMA, ABA.

1) Allow schools to expel the 10 % of chronic troublemakers that waste teaching time for the other 90 % of students. Have them go to "alternative schools" to learn how to pick crops, sweep streets and similar menial tasks. Hire them out to local farmers/DPW agencies/etc. to actually perform services instead of consuming tax dollars.

2) Cut educational spending (particularly at the college level) by 50 %. Weed out all the "administrators" in charge of preserving Sacred Diversity, non-academic frivolities like interscholastic athletics (intramurals are fine), GLBT "societies", "ethnic clubs" and the like. Return K-12 schools to their core function of teaching knowledge and useful skills---period.

3) Break up the teachers' unions. If teacher-militants want to be treated like "professionals", then let them act like "professionals". (When was the last time anyone ever heard of a doctors' or lawyers' union ?) Renegotiate salaries and benefits to levels in line with local private-sector firms.

4) Abolish "departments of education" at all institutions of higher education. Require that prospective teachers have a degree in their field and a "minor" in education. The education "minor" should be along the lines for the curriculum of the old "normal schools". Get rid of graduate-degree requirements for a teaching certificate; most such programs are exercises in inanity that actually subtract from the sum total of Human knowledge with each class session attended.

Or we could just send the heads of the NEA and the collective professoriate of "education schools" to interment camps, where they could be retrained to do simple but useful tasks like cleaning out sewers, changing bedpans in hospitals and serving food. Socially useful and tax-saving at the same time---what's not to like ?

Totallt illegitimate government schools are in the business of churning out millions of socialists, which must be the definition of "education." Most teens I meet today who have half a brain are reading as a means of rebellion.

It was all a joke that made a lot of money for those on the inside, like Bennett. Worse, the emphasis on "standards" meant that even private and parochial schools switched to government-school "academic" programs so the parents would feel good.

The only real reform of education is the abolition of all government schools and all truancy laws.

Good heavens, is the state really spending $14,100 in taxpayer dollars per pupil? It is absolutely absurd for the state to spend more money per student than what the average cost for sending them to a private high school would be, yet they yield such inferior results.

Could this in part be due to many private schools harboring a Christ centered learning environment, while at the same time God has seemingly been dethroned in our nation’s public schools?