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For me, step #1 is removing the feds from every aspect of education. There were schools in the 18th Century, and our Founders saw the wisdom to leave it out of the Constitution, and thus, by the 10th Amendment, it belongs to the states. The feds conveniently ignore this by making it "voluntary" to follow their dictates... but any schools failing to obey get their funding cut off. The fads only contribute about 7-8 percent of the budget, but schools (thanks primarily to unions) are stretched so thin that they cannot afford to lose 7-8 percent, so they meekly comply.

My viewpoint however, is that if we have 50 different systems, the best ideas will become apparent, and those states which didn't implement them initially can copy them soon thereafter. The crucible of ideas gets tested and compared to many others. The best ones survive. When we all simply obey the over-reaching and all-encompassing ideas from DC (which are often the worst kind of feel-good pap, like Common Core), we do not get to see what other ideas may bring. There is no comparison. It is simply a total failure, with no hope of competition for improvement.

And, not surprisingly, the Fed were mostly not involved in education, until Jimmy Carter created the Dept of Education in 1979.

"Freedom from archaic ideas of what constitutes a successful individual"?

Freedom from ideas?
Deciding what is to be labelled as "archaic"?? (old and therefore somehow bad... like our Founders and their Constitution??)

Smells an awful lot like someone has the progressive infection, even with some notions in there that I would get behind.

I respect your comment, but I have a point, myself. When I was at my 50^th and again at my 55^th class reunion, I could not help but notice that all my former classmates were just - mature adults. It didn’t matter if they had been on the honor roll or if they had been much further down in the class rankings. They were adults, and to be respected as such.
That sounds perfectly obvious but in fact it was, absurdly, a bit of a revelation. Why? Because in school, the only setting in which I had known them, they had been a milieu in which they were arbitrarily at a disadvantage. As adults, no teacher disciplined them for not being interested in what the teacher demanded that they pay attention to. Some of us were interested, others not so much. That is the fundamental difference between being treated as an adult and being treated as a child. Lots of stuff that you and I interested ourselves in and would miss not knowing, those people as kids didn’t interest themselves in, and they were - to one extent or another - demeaned for it. The earnings and prestige of the members of the class as adults is quite imperfectly correlated with their performance in high school.
One of my cousins has two sons; both now on their own. The elder is a veterinarian; the younger went to trade school rather than college and is now a diesel mechanic. "You pays you money and you takes you choice". I remember a fellow test engineer once telling me he hoped one day to attain the salary of a top technician. Both require education, one more general and one more specialized. Unless diesel engines become obsolete, that diesel mechanic will do well for a lifetime.

Charter schools, opportunity scholarships, digital learning opportunities, blended learning capabilities, private schools, teacher effectiveness and educational savings accounts are proven options that expand parental choice and educational freedom. Excellence in education should be every state’s number one legislative priority in 2015 and every year following. If we do not prepare our students with the ability to think critically, solve real-world problems and do so in a way that is competitive with the rest of the world, America will fail. Educational freedom is key to the success of this nation.
I have a granddaughter who, because of an illness, is “hopelessly behind” in this academic year. Except that she will keep right up with her class, because she is doing distance learning over the internet to catch up.
Something is wrong with the traditional educational model if she can so readily obtain her education without setting foot in a classroom. It makes you wonder if the 9-3 brick-and-mortar school is obsolete.