What are they talking about? The product of the public school systems is illiterate authority-respecting slave sheep who will bend over and let Mommy government screw them for their own good. It has all been a tremendous success.
If someone wanted something good for humanity - an educated population of free men - the first things abolished would be the public school systems.
"The country would be far better off if we stopped filtering education tax dollars through the beltway, blew up the entire federal Education Department along with No Child Left Behind, and instead let states and local districts take the lead in embarking upon aggressive reform."
That is precisely what we have done here in small-town northeast Texas. Essentially all of the school board are members of First Baptist Church (and most of them are Deacons). And a significant majority of the teachers attend the same church.
There is no "Gay is good" crap taught here. And competition and success in the "AR" ("Advanced Readers") program is spectacular:
Last year, our 4th grade granddaughter was the top reader in the entire elementary school with 602 "AR points". This year, she is already at 703 and still reading... But the great news is that there are dozens of kids who are giving her real competition. Those kids can read -- and love to do so!!!
Of course, Texas has its own "TAKS" testing system -- and both of our granddaughters who attend the Atlanta (TX) schools have "maxed the TAKS" in every testing category.
Local control + suppression of the NEA + parental involvement WORKS!!!
IMHO!
The utter failure here is the risible idea of a federal Department of Education. The Department of Education should be disbanded; it is an enormous boondoggle, wasting literally millions of taxpayer dollars per employee.