One of the most bizarre aspects of the United States is how we organize public education at the elementary and secondary levels. For mysterious historical reasons, we leave all of the important decisions -- from curriculum and testing to financing and bus routes -- in the hands of local school boards. 130,000 of them, all told. The result, predictably enough, is screaming chaos. Not only do we have haphazard ideas about what to teach and how to judge how well it's been taught, but the dispersal of resources makes economies of scale impossible, so we don't put anything like the appropriate amount of effort into developing new techniques and training our teachers. And it shows. Matt Miller has written a compelling article in The Atlantic, documenting how our screwy system -- unique, apparently, in the developed world -- has utterly failed to give our children the educations they deserve.
The ...
