The wasted money, time, and energy of having congresscritters sitting around bitching at each other absolutely pales in comparison to the amount of money, time, and energy that is often wasted if they actually happen to pass some legislation.

I'm quite aware that many government programs are quite useful; I'm also aware that quite a few others are tremendously wasteful or even harmful. I'm personally of the opinion that most government programs need to be handled at the state or local levels, where solutions can be better tailored to the particular issues the region is facing. Federal intervention simply ends up being ham-fisted in far too many cases. I also don't think that (most) legislators are out to screw us; I think most legislation starts out with good intentions, but then goes through several committees whose members have their own pet agendas, various things get changed at the behest of lobbyists who made large campaign contributions, other things get added in to benefit districts of congressmen who hold key votes, and by the end of it all those good intentions have transformed into something fairly bloated and monstrous. And that's politics for you. Anyone who isn't jaded and cynical about it hasn't been paying close enough attention.

Actually we are in crisis, it is being covered up. Trust me, each month it continues will make the pain that much worse when it all blows up in our faces. There is no silver bullet, no war-time economy, no sudden oil drilling, etc. that will dig us out. We have to start paying for it today and demanding responsible management (and sale) of resources that we, the public, own.

Ok.... Teaching to the test... Yes, I do understand that if "joe" is failing the test time and time again that teacher is going to reduce the class down to a crawl to ensure that "joe" gets his score higher. If the school "fails" then the school looses money, and it is now the cities duty to get that child to a school without failing marks (regardless of cost).

The lowest common denominator is the test, if they fail they are punished.......... how is that helpful to anyone?

If I was to take an economic hit, a fine, or not full funding based on one of my students not passing some test what do you think I would do?

Either way you cut it, most "sane" people would either become more selective by way of moving schools or cutting students.........

You could allow teachers who give a crap continue to do so before they become so burned out by the system that they would rather work somewhere else then deal with it.

Actually, in Freakanomics the author makes a pretty good case that teachers generally cheat in these cases:)

EDIT: Btw, that book is mostly written for entertainment, but he does have sources for data if you desire to peruse them.

Teachers cheating.... Never....... lol :)

Yeah i know.. but at the same point... it could happen

Just because something should not happen ie Teachers having relations with their students, Mothers killing babies because of Farm-ville :) does not mean it doesn't happen

Honestly, I find it hilarious during the times I don't find it disheartening:)

We have this thing in the water field called Top Ops.... Each state has their annual competition, and all the states send in one team to compete for the "Best Water Operators" in the nation kind of thing....

Here is the funny thing the people after each competition would get together and write down the questions they recalled. Well soon as enough questions were known the people holding the competition could not even get five words out before someone was buzzing in with the answer... Now does that mean they know their water? Or does that mean they studied for the test?

Shout out to Alabama :)... Way to totally pwn my friends team assholes....

Sure, though I have a couple problems with how we currently accomplish these things with federal authority:

- one-size-fits-none solutions that we're forced to accept and participate in, whether we need them or not.

- tackling problems at the highest level when states and municipalities are quite capable of dealing with many of these things on their own.

The second one I find to be really dumb. If we compare it to a business, It's sort of like putting the CEO of General Electric directly in charge of the office supply closet with no input from the admin pool telling him what stuff they need stocked in order to do their job. So the worker bees don't have the tools and equipment they really need and the CEO is wasting time doing a task that could be accomplished by someone much lower in the chain of command.

I think we can accomplish many of the same goals with improved results by letting more of these things be handled at a lower level. And we'd also have 50 states working and comparing notes to find better solutions instead of just a single entity trying to make a program suitable for very different parts of the country. For certain, the needs of Florida are different than Wyoming, which is different from Alabama, which is different from Ohio, etc. But a single federal bureaucracy can't easily make the distinctions necessary for the most efficient use of manpower and fiscal resources nationwide.

Some things mentioned here are more a problem of centralization vs. de-centralization than of state run vs. privatized.

Sometimes people can make decisions better locally, sometimes better centrally, it all depends on the problem at hand. Local decisions can be more adaptive to local conditions. Global decisions can adapt better to the overall state of the problem. But in general the state could implement both solutions, wherever they fit best. Its not a principal argument against state wide campaigns.