A lot of people seem to be under emphasizing how bad parents screw things up. Our local high school fired an amazing science teacher because he, as the basketball coach, decided to bench a student player for unsportsmanlike behavior and the other complained. Stuff like that happens all the time.

Then there's obviously some shady stuff that goes on in small schools. The local middle school had to pick a new math curriculum. They were budgeted $Xk dollars. They had all the math teachers review the curriculum options and asked them to fill out questionnaires that ranked them 1 to 5. Afterwards, they said "okay, we're actually going with the free one, every teacher that didn't pick that as top is in now on an improvement plan for the next school year." They sent out a memo the first day of school saying they know the kids' scores are going to tank and if a single teacher even mentions the curriculum, they're fired.

Turns out the new curriculum is horrible. It's basically a series of checklists telling the teacher exactly what to say/do. If they deviate, theyll get in trouble.

But hey, all that money was budgeted for the curriculum went somewhere...