The most revealing feature of public schooling is compulsory attendance. Children have to go, and the length of time has increased over the years. The teacher and school critic John Holt found it interesting that children may not take the high-school equivalency exam sooner than the age at which they would complete high school. If a child can demonstrate at age 13 that he knows what is required of a high-school graduate, why shouldn't he be able to take the exam and be done with school. It is not there to serve the children.
Nothing is less suited to an environment of learning than compulsion.
The very idea of compulsory learning is ludicrous. Given a biologically normal child, learning is inevitable. Think how much children learn during their pre-school years. The urgent solution to the education crisis is the complete separation of school and state. The public schools should be sold to the highest bidder, school taxes scrapped, and compulsory-attendance laws repealed.