Put yourself in my shoes, the department encourages us to not grade on grammar and punctuation so as not to discourage the "classroom author".

A big problem seems to be the FCAT, the standardized testing that is in place in Florida. Public schools are under great pressure to teach to the test, so many essentials fall by the wayside.

Also blame it on television and the internet I am afraid. The trained teachers in the classroom are getting kids who have never read a book and therefore never seen any examples of good grammer or punctuation. Then what little reading and writing they do is on the internet - I actually get papers written using "net speak!" *shudder* So the homeschooling still frightens me because these are the same parents that are raising their children via television!

Ah, the period-inside-the-quotes thing.

I do personally depart from American English in that respect; as a programmer, the Standard English practice of putting all punctuation outside the quotes (unless it's part of the material quoted) is a much more logical method.

Yeah, and don't forget the ending-HTML-tag-inside-the-post thing. :0

Heh heh heh...

Now, it's very easy to blame teachers for the level of incompetency in America today, however, there are all kinds of reasons. My primary focus of blame is on the parents who don't take any kind of interest in the kids' work, don't attend PTA meetings, or even open houses. Then there are the school districts that hire people to teach who have no training in education. This in turn is because we pay teachers like Burger King managers, because schools don't make a profit. It's more important to put community funds into stadiums and aquariums, things that would be built with private money if the demand were that great for them. Then there are the standarized tests that teachers are forced to teach to, classes that start at 7AM due to bus schedules, and are taught in mobile homes due to overcrowding that often happens the first day a new school is opened. How about financing from gambling? The state doesn't supply almost any budget money for schools, because it's supplied by the lottery, as opposed to it being a supplement (like in Georgia). Teachers have been asked everything from providing their own supplies to working weekends (for free) to help with landscaping and maintenance.
Our country is doomed to decline year after year because educators are treated as labor at best and a detriment at worst. If you follow the lives of the most successful people in the country, most of their education is self-taught.
If Bush is re-elected, and is successful with his bid for private-school vouchers, public school education will be no more than a juvenile detention center; somewhere to leave your kids so they don't get kidnapped or go to jail.