There do not seem to be any shortcuts. I think improving education requires that the majority of the public have a statement of objectives of education much more specific than Goals 2000 and a plan for reaching those objectives that they can support and that they insist that school systems use that plan to meet those objectives. Read My observations and recommendations about the local school system for an example. An interesting contradiction is that many of the same people who do not want the government to interfere in their lives by providing education for their children do want the government to force all children to pray aloud and to be indoctrinated into religion in the schools. I have never understood this.
Most people believe that religion is a personal thing.
This nation was founded on that very premise, that each man has to find his own religion and that no one, and especially not the government, has any right to force a religion upon him. That simple idea is called freedom of religion. It is one of the fundamental individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights added as the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It is our protection against the excesses of unrestrained government. These people, like Barry Goldwater whom I was raised to admire, believed that individuals should have as much liberty as possible and that government, to the extent it was necessary at all, was best in small units and as close to the local level as possible.