American Education Failing? : Innovation Needed

If we want to have our schools succeed we must cut out the federal government over reach. The department of education is not needed to set the tone, it should distribute block grants and let states solve their own problems of quality education.

Letting the free market work has always been the solution - that is, the people that find education results in their states to be wanting, they will vote them out of office those in charge or the people must live with the consequences of not being properly informed.

Report Card on American Education
Source: Matthew Ladner and Dave Myslinski, "Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform," American Legislative Exchange Council, 2013.
July 29, 2013

During the 2011 legislative sessions, a number of blockbuster reforms were produced across a variety of education policy areas. That momentum continued in 2012 with major reforms impacting a variety of K-12 policy domains. In addition to major policy advances, a number of high-quality academic studies strongly supported the case for these crucial reforms.

Importantly, with state education policy now beginning to accept a student-driven environment, it has freed education innovators to field-test stunningly novel digital learning techniques that have the potential to revolutionize learning not just in the United States, but around the world, say Matthew Ladner, the senior adviser of policy and research, and Dave Myslinski, the state policy director for Digital Learning Now!, at the Foundation for Excellence in Education.
In the report, Ladner and Myslinski evaluate:

• Changes made by reform-minded policymakers in 2012, including literacy-based promotion, teacher quality reform advances and alternative teacher certification.
• How states are closing achievement gaps.
• How states stack up when it comes to education policy and academic performance. States were ranked on academic standards, charter schools, home school regulation burden, private school choice programs, teacher quality and policies, and online learning.
• The global achievement gap.

Ladner and Myslinski find:

• The average American school, district and state did little to narrow race- or income- based achievement gaps between 2003 and 2011.
• A disturbingly large swath of schools, districts and states, in fact, did precisely the opposite.
• None of the 50 states received an "A" grade; just three -- Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma -- received a B+.

Education reform now represents a decentralized learning process and, as parental dissatisfaction turns into intolerance of continued failure, the pace will likely quicken in the years ahead.