Belfield, ND (0438)

Though this always gets blamed on the teachers, a good portion of it actually goes all the way back to the small government and anti-worker power movement that started hitting the country 30 years ago. Under that movement, schools faced increasingly tight funding and since their funding is per student, the pressure on teachers to make students happy and pass them, regardless of ability, increased. The weakening of unions also meant the teachers had little ability to push back to such pressures.