In medicine and other areas of public service, the issue is now closed. The poor house, the workhouse, the charity hospital and the alms house have all virtually disappeared because of our widely shared belief that human dignity is enhanced by choice. Not so with education. Yet, there is no constituency for bad schools. There is no organized interest group lobbying to make good schools inferior, inferior schools bad and bad schools worse.
Schools are bad in spite of good intentions.
Rather, school failure is functional and organizational. They are bureaucratic where they should be professional, anonymous where they should be intimate. They should hold teachers and students to high standards but expect little of either. They are top-down institutions with little clear sense of accountability. Buffeted by political forces, they face endless compromise.