I always thought freedom of expression in academe only came with tenure. :D

The college is a community college with a main suburban campus, a small satellite suburban campus and a city campus. While some of the city (urban, ghetto) students do take classes at the main campus most attend the city campus. Many of the required classes are given at night when no buses are running back to the city by the time the class would end - not late!

The city kids are largely products of a failed school district that has had a 70% dropout rate and immense corruption and nepotism. Many teachers have been uncertified and even an asst. superintendent had no qualifications. There is an acting supt. now because the previous supt. will be indicted. There is a grade and test fixing scandal that involved the FBI and people being wired. This has gone of for years. No Child Left Behind does not work as yet because the children are allowed to transfer to schools within the district that are not failing but, for example, all of the junior highs are failing. They could transfer out of the district but other districts don't want to accept them. To give you a small idea of what it is like, my son's English teacher had never heard of The Catcher in the Rye. The teacher in charge of instituting mastery learning in as much of the district as possible condemned the teachers who not only did not want to prepare for their lessons but many of whom literally could barely read themselves. She was transferred from her position and silenced.

So when my son took his college placement tests in English, he sailed through the essay part. He wrote about the education in the public district he had just left. He's an engaging writer and got high scores and placed out of all the remedial writing courses. So in this case writing about teachers worked to his advantage and he intuited it would.

In the departmental exam for the freshman English composition course at the college the students were given a random quote and asked to develop an essay. I don't know what any of the quotes were but some of the students, including my son, did springboard off this and included some evaluation of the teaching in the district they'd come from as it seemed a relevant point they could make.

Some of the teachers in that city district are superb and dedicated, both toward the academics and to their students' character development and personal struggles. It is not only not rewarded but some are actively punished for, as an example, speaking to parents.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061213/NEWS03/612130412/1007