Another good reason is simple: the almighty dollar.

I was the product of a private school education from 2nd - 12th. (Catholic parochial) The bottom line was my father (and mother as well) were on me like ants on honey the entire time because it was in their best financial interest to do so. The private schools I was sent to were expensive (though not prohibitively so), and for a simple lower-middle income family, they made a lot of sacrifices to send me there.

If I were to screw around and get kicked out (which the private schools had no problem doing since they had waiting lists), my parents would have lost the $$$ they paid to get me in (non-refundable).

What's the difference with public schools? Parental apathy. I'm a public school 11th/12th grade teacher. I'm triple certified in Mathematics 6-12, Physics 6-12, and Computer Science K-12. (/. is like my second home)

Just today I gave my Precalculus class an exam on Trigonometric Identities. (You know, things like the Pythagorean Trig Identity, Cofunctions, etc.) Out of 28 students in this class (an honors class), I had 7 "Christmas tree" the test in the first 10 minutes (including bubbling 25 answers for a test with only 20 questions on it). I had another 10 beyond that stare at the wall for 45 minutes or so and turn in a test with half the answers left blank. The final mean score was a 28 out of 100. Last week the Honors Physics class dropped me a mean score of 47 on a test on Fluid Dynamics. (Buoyancy, Pascal's Law, Bernoulli's Law, Pressure, etc.)

The root problem? Students don't care, and you can't get parents to care either. I've tried calling 3-5 parents on a daily basis for almost 2 weeks, never receiving an answer - parents have even gone so far as blocking our school numbers on their phone. One parent I reached told me that their child was "too stupid" to go to college (so much for trying to support your child). I've also had 2 of the students miss about 5 weeks of this semester so far because they were out for maternity leave (for themselves).

Now...how do we, as public school educators, combat those problems? With all apologies to President Obama, teacher merit pay isn't the solution by a mile. I could have 3 doctorates, be a textbook author, and be a nationally recognized educator (I'm not, of course), and yet the common reality is you can't teach someone who isn't there physically or mentally, who doesn't have parental guidance/support, and who feels that they will simply get by with a basketball scholarship.

I agree - up to a point. I don't agree that schools are all doing a miserable job. You know the phrase "garbage in, garbage out"? It really does apply to K-12 students.

I've taught 10th-12th grade for 4 years now at an inner-city style school (59% minority rate, 78% free/reduced lunch), over a variety of Math/CS subjects, including Precalculus, AP Calculus, Honors Physics, and AP Computer Science. You'd think I would have the top of the stack, the elite students, if you will. If I do, it demonstrates the problem with some U.S. Science & Math students in the 21st century: the students at some schools (at least mine) have no desire to put in the effort required to master a difficult subject.

Students are looking for classes they can pad their schedule with that look good on college transcripts, but which require very little work. If it's an AP class, they want the AP teacher that gives out extra credit like candy, assigns 3-5 problems a night for homework, and gives "open book" tests.

I came from a tougher school of thought, so in return I expect work from my students; I assign 1-2 hours worth of work every night, every test is "closed book", every quiz is unannounced, and there's no such thing as extra credit. You should hear the crying of unfairness and cruelty. (The funny thing is for the 4 years I've been at my school, my AP class has had the highest passing rate of all AP courses taught at our school.)

My AP Comp. Sci. course, for 3 years in a row, was filled with ambitious MySpace, Facebook, or other "texters" who thought a CS course was going to be something where we sat around all day and wrote the next "How L33T are you?" quiz. Some thought we'd be writing the next Line Rider game the 1st class. When I tried to get them to understand OOP, or to think of what a Model & View architecture really meant, it blew their minds. A simple assignment (almost pointless, but done anyway to try to get something out of them) of picking an everyday real life object and writing down all of the things it's made of and things it can do, netted me about 20 papers all describing a pencil as being made of lead, eraser, and plastic, which can write and erase. Deep stuff.

You should have seen how well they handled writing a simple "Guess a number" game. Basic IF structures (logic) completely eluded them.

It's not their math skills that was hurting them (although you'd be scared to see how many AP Calculus students I routinely teach who can't grasp working with reciprocals or fractions in general work) - it was their inability or lack of desire to employ critical thinking skills. If it wasn't something that could be put on the back of an index card (to cram the night before) or typed into their cell phones (to cheat from the day of the test), they wouldn't do it.

We have to get past that laziness, that lack of work/study ethic, in K-12 education before we tack on anything else. CS, done well, cannot be learned in any meaningful fashion if there's no desire to use reasoning, deductive logic, or problem solving skills.

I pray it's not this bad at other K-12 institutions around the country, but I'm fearful that it's the same everywhere. It's the chief reason I'm pressing onward with my MA or MS to get my foot into the door of college teaching. I know you still get your share of lazy students there as well, but they might just want to work hard and pay attention, and I won't feel like I'm just spinning my wheels every day I try to teach another young mind. And I'm fully aware that I'm not helping the problem, if I'm even able to, by "bailing" on the K-12 arena, but there comes a point when your work begins to feel like an ice-cream salesman standing in Fairbanks, Alaska.....you just have to move your stand to somewhere you can get something done.

P.S. This year the county canceled my AP Comp. Sci. class and rolled my BC Calculus course into my AP Calculus course as an "independent study". Due to budget cuts, having 12 or less students means the class gets folded. So much for even the wannabe texters...

In the same spirit of respect, I have to disagree with what you posted.

If you read the entire opinion, the following was mentioned:

- The government sought permission twice from a magistrate judge to gain access to the guy's email records. (So it's not a warrant, but it WAS an official court order)
- The government had to demonstrate to the magistrate that the records they sought contained information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation" (So it wasn't a blind or frivolous fishing expedition)
- The government was ordered by the magistrate to delay giving notice since the judge felt there was a credible chance of the guy tampering with evidence
- The judge sealed the court orders related to the searches

My point is, unlike other abuses of government warrantless work, at least this one had some measure of judicial review involved. That makes this case different, IMHO, than other warrantless wiretapping and such, and care should be taken to not draw conclusions about either with a broad stroke here.

The court also felt that not only was the case "not ripe" for ruling (which has a very clear and painstakingly discussed meaning in the opinion), but that the guy partially argued on the wrong grounds. They almost suggest he MIGHT have had a shot of having his case heard if he'd argued 1st Amendment rather than 4th Amendment (since he alluded to the idea of a "chilling effect" when it comes to emails) - but he didn't, he argued 4th Amendment.

In fact, from reading the opinion, it seems as though this guy completely "screwed up" his entire arguments. It sounds as though he sued on the grounds of future, potential searches, rather than on particular admissability of the emails that were gained during the prior 2 searches. It definitely was an issue that the guy sought to overturn ALL of 2703(d), for everyone, rather than just his particular case. The court makes great pains to state how they refuse to make a potential constitutional ruling for a general class situation where each person's particulars may be widely different.

I'd say the court did a reasonable thing with this decision, all things considered. The guy clearly should have known from his Yahoo TOS that his emails weren't going to be fully private in the first case - and in fact it was pointed out in his own TOS that "emails will be provided to the government upon request." (That argues, possibly, that the government may have been able to get the emails from Yahoo without any court involvement at all - depending on how Yahoo wants to proceed)

All in all, seems like nothing more to see here to me. Let's focus on FISA, where the real problems are, not on this non-case.