John Taylor Gatto, the celebrated American author and school teacher, offered the proper solution decades ago.

“Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it.”

It was precisely this failing system that drove Gatto, one of the best teachers of his generation and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991, out of the American public school system.

“I can’t teach this way any longer,” Gatto bluntly stated. “If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know.”

[And that’s just *one* aspect of the failure of public education. This goes well beyond method. Add in mandates to eliminate discipline, curricula that focus on political indoctrination rather than real education, and teachers unions that serve themselves rather than children, and it’s a catastrophe. — Ed]