Comment Clueless. (Score 5, Insightful) 106
You people are no more education experts because you were students than you are dental experts because you've had cavities!
It has little to do with the political parties. The political system is a big factor in today's problems but it is not the parties who are to blame; other than for their contribution to a dysfunctional political process and for their pandering to an ignorant public demanding idiotic things with no basis in reality. Things were better when only 1 party pandered and education was much lower of importance to voters. It became important as everybody wanted their brat to have more earning potential. People don't really want their kid to THINK, they want them to get a high paying career (the nutty sports parents are a good example.)
There is plenty of science on how poor kids are greatly impacted by their lifestyle; it has more impact than the education system; but it is far easier to blame things disconnected from your responsibilities! The conditions under which poor children live are collectively OUR responsibility; and that goes for abused and messed up children who are not poor but who damage the learning environment. We can't demand responsibility from parents or their children for their actions-- that doesn't poll well, so as a result any successful politician of either side picks the best lies to tell the voters.
Doesn't matter if you vote for those who "reform" the system or hire private; they both pitch a set of metrics to sell the parent - and selling is not the goal. Public education didn't put anything into marketing itself in the past; but now public elementary schools budget for marketing (which just reflects a larger societal problem.)
Then you have the matter of trying to succeed 100% with no margin of error. It's a great example of perfect being the enemy of good. You can break a good thing by trying to get that last few % not to mention all the effort and resources that last few % can cost... Yeah, I'm saying it is ok to have an acceptable failure rate. It happened in the past and they got us here to our constant reform mess when we are going down hill trying to perfect it... or more like perfect the perception of it.