Get 'em while they're young

I agree with a lot of what you said Zach. I also agree with Ben's response. It does not seem terribly logical to give the schools over to the government when the government has shown that it can't really handle it as is. Full governmental control of the school system would also make it real easy for the government to control us (to take it in a super-cynical direction).

There was something you mentioned, Zach, in your post/book that needs some more attention. I think that a major part of the problem with public high schools today is that most kids are not anywhere near the intellectual level that they need to be when they reach high school (or middle school, or elementary school). This is brought on by underfunding, poor parenting, poor testing, etc. However, I think if we really want to fix schooling in this country we should start from the ground level, and we should keep kids in school year round. Let's make preschool mandatory, starting at age 3. Then we should keep them in the classroom all year long (with a different break structure obviously).

If we drastically improved the level of education from preschool to middle school, I think that we could potentially see a dramatic rise in the quality of American high schoolers. So many are lost before the schools even have a chance to save them. We need to get them while they are younger, and keep them in school longer.

There is so much on this issue. Ben is right: what do we do about testing? What is the national standard? Should there be a national standard? What about making more trade oriented schools for 15-18 year olds?

Honestly though, we are too big of a country to nationalize the school system, we are too big of a country to do a lot of good things that we should do (like provide healthcare for everyone).

Bottom line, I don't trust the government, not even with Obama in office.