Reply #5: maybe, the goals lack realism

[quaker bill]

You make and excellent point. The one variable that consistently correlates to academic performance is the socioeconomic status of the parents. So as others have noted elsewhere, as the relative status of middle class and farther downscale parents has declined as a share of our national wealth, the "schools are performing poorly" becomes a meme. Is the notion that the schools should "improve" in an environment of increasing wealth disparity realisitc?

Further, under "free trade" the US has been supposed to become an "information economy", where brainpower and innovation is the source of our "comparative advantage" in global trade. This has placed greater stress on education to prepare a larger and larger proportion of our children for a college education, at some level. What is has not changed is the natural capacity of human beings. Of the people here, just like everywhere else, half have less than the median IQ, by the very mathematical definition of the term. Being a mathematical truism, there is nothing an education system can ever do to change this.

Some of us are simply not capable of making meaningful use of an advanced education. There is no training approach that will ever change this. It is entirely possible that we have created a demand for "knowledge workers" beyond the very biological capacity of our species to provide. This conceptual failure to understand our nature and incorporate that nature into economic policy, I see as being shoved off on the "failing schools". The notion that "accountability" measures will do anything to change this is simply the political class proping up truly destructive economic ideas by off-shoring their failure on teachers.

It is actually worse than just that. The meme is now spreading through all aspects of society. Even though the deck is now stacked firmly against a person of average capacity living a successful life, the standard for a successful life has increased in difficulty. Further, as under republicans, the individual alone is held accountable for any failure to meet this standard, guilt is passed to society at large individually, for the failure to live up to their unrealistic economic models.

It is a sickness.