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People are sick and tired of asking for a modest level of performance from a public education system that for over forty years has increased in cost at twice the speed of inflation.

There are a number of reasons for that increase in cost, and not all of them have to do with classroom instruction. For instance, in many districts, the number of administrators and central office personnel, and the salaries of the same, have ballooned.

Many parents now expect their children to learn using computers and other technology that is a tiny bit more expensive than a chalkboard.

And then we have special education. Some of the children who are now in public school would have been in institutions 40 years ago. I don't doubt that the parents need some respite, but some of the children are not being educated, they are just being cared for, and it's expensive.

Nothing is quite as simplistic as you'd like it to be, I'm afraid.

I was a teacher, my wife was a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher, and I have literally dozens of other relatives who are or were teachers. I don't need you to explain the cost or bureaucracy to me. I've been there. I've been in those trenches. I've listened to teachers brag in the lounge about having never changed their lesson plans in the 30 years following their receipt of tenure. I've listened to union leaders tell school teachers to get their butts out of the school as soon as the final bell ring--to do nothing "extra."

You can play your game of trying to analyze my "anger," proclaim my "ignorance," project my "hatred," and play all those diversionary games all you like. Public education is a disaster, and public school teachers as a group are a huge part of the problem. Your wife may or may not be one of the the "good ones," but that doesn't change the fact that there are one hell of a lot of bad ones. And, having been a teacher, I can tell you that one bad teacher can totally change the course of education for a child.