Pie... We can throw all the money we want at public schools and make them all world class with high paid teachers... but academic scores will never rise without the key ingredient... good parent(s) and a solid home environment that emphasizes education above all else. I hate to be pessimistic, but unfortunately there will always be a large percentage of our culture where that is never going to happen. Sad but true.
No, we'll never ever obtain 100% success. Right, it's too late for corrupt, ignorant, hateful, (blood-related?) and/or racist parents. Like the dinosaurs, we just have to let them die off. We have to focus on those little mini mes they create. But if we can only 'fix' more than half of the youth's education in this country going forward...that'd be a great start. I agree, unlikely to happen before the U.S. self-destructs.
I believe there is every possibility that we will do still better than that . Educators have known for years how to fix our problems in education. There is wide agreement among experts.* So we already know the message. The right messenger, however, has yet to appear. I also disagree that the problem of unhelpful parents can't be overcome. It can be. But again it will take the right messenger. Maybe it isn't as ridiculous as it could at first seem if I said the right messenger might be found on Madison Avenue. Like bees and ants, we are one of the rare eusocial species. Madison avenue uses that knowledge everyday to sell us things that we otherwise wouldn't have bought had we not gotten the "buy message" from the right messenger. _______ * I am referring to some important fundamental aspects of education were there are reams of supporting data, many studies, and very widepread agreement among experts.
The system seems structured to benefit establishment politicians to the exclusion of "Outsiders". Occasionally someone slips through the cracks, but generally it seems we don't really have a representative Government. Congressional approval polls are a confirmation voters are not happy. Many of us don't esthusiastically vote for someone, rather many vote for the perceived less worse of the choices given to us by the parties.
The problem nowadays is education spending goes more for pork spending or school board salaries for kickbacks with school remodel jobs instead of actually using money to improve education, such as teacher salaries, job training programs, or top quality textbooks.
This is true. And it should be true. Experience counts. With all jobs, you just don't walk in off the street, with no experience, with no training, into a high level job, in charge of a team of subordinates. Long ago someone coined the term "outsider" and everyone started parroting it thinking somehow, that it was a good thing. The solution is not to elect inexperienced politicians into the highest office of the land. The solution is: to monitor the experienced, trained, politicians we elect; to fix and enact laws to that effect; (and 'monitor' also means tracking the money flows [donations, etc.]). The problem is, these changes must be implemented by ... elected politicians ... . So for real change to happen, we the people have to stop bs'ing each other, call a spade a spade, and force these changes to occur. Yeah, don't we know it.
Experience counts when our politicians have the best interests of the voter in mind when they create legislation. In the real world, it is the new politicians that believe they can improve our system. As they get more experienced and realize there is little they can do to overcome the establishment, they end up joining the establishment in working the system to their benefit. Trump may be quite the bastard, but at least he seems to be working to strengthen our country (The host) in which Government parasites feed on, compared to Democratic policies that want to feed on the host faster.