You are so right about rampant cheating in classroom schools. It has to be harder one-on-one if the parent is not totally abdicating their role.
From research papers downloaded to ipod “cheat sheets”, to students for hire, classrooms are no context in which to measure academic performance. The abdication of authority and consequences in the classroom has made public education obsolete. The penchant for social and political agendas of the teacher’s unions have made public education irrelevant.
Revival of public education would be based upon:
1. Objective and measurable standardized testing.
2. Eliminating the monopoly of public funding and generating free market competition through increased charter school development and private school voucher programs.
3. Eliminate the fat of EDDs and PhDs in thick layers of bureacracy in Administration so that increased funding can filter down to teacher salaries to attract the best and brightest. It is the “innovation” of EDDs and PhDs that has led to hair-brained philosophies and programs that created the mess we are in. Almost ANYTHING would be better!