Want to revolutionize education? Figure out a way to 1) reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them.

Finding out what learning environment, inside or outside school, is optimal for each learner is definitely a worthy goal, especially if means are then provided to obtain that environment. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

To achieve the worthy goal mentioned in the parent post involves changing the incentives now operating in the school system in most countries, both as to direct regulations and as to funding. Mark Blaug, one of the co-founders of the academic discipline of economics of education, wrote about this over the decades of his career: "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. The state of Minnesota in the United States had what was called "the Minnesota Miracle" in the 1970s, state legislation that changed the pattern of school finance so that most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of

detect the optimum education environment for each student

(by parents observing what works for each of their differing children)

and

give it to them

by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.