(If you think these things don't apply to you, they probably don't, so don't be personally offended please... just consider if they might be generally applicable to the "teeming masses.")

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. The quality and effectiveness of education will not and cannot improve until the attitudes of people (and especially students) change. Education seems to only be really important (as in, "I should actually bother studying and going to class") to a minority of children. So, no matter what you do with the education system, a lot kids will still just not care, still skip classes, still drop out. Of course, living in New Mexico (lousy schools, very high dropout-rate) might be influencing my impressions. :)

In my opinion (currently valued at 2 pfennigs), the way people are attacking this problem is very similar to the way that abortion is attacked. They're going after surface issues and ignoring the underlying ones. Some people want to make it really easy to have one, some people want to make sure no one can have one, but almost nobody is trying to change the attitudes of people which induce them to want one. As long as there are incentives to have bastards (welfare) and have unprotected sex (boyfriend approval), there will be people who are desperately unprepared who will get pregnant and need abortions (or welfare).

Gaaaaah, now I'm ranting. Sorry. Maybe I should mention He Who Kills UseNet Threads so this can be ended....