What's Missing from this List?

Our teachers are unable to discipline troublemakers, or to throw them out of class. So teaching suffers.

Sean of Ireland, I agree. Throwing troublemakers out of class is also a form of choice, albeit in the reverse sense. Just as parents should be able to choose their schools, schools should be allowed to choose not to serve troublesome kids.

Restaurants, for example, operate under the same principle, and it works well for everyone involved.

Jim

Great. Another billionaire, looking under the hood of American education, comes up with the same formula that got us No Child Left Behind: Goals and accountability = metrics = standardized tests = failing students. Stick to selling software, Bill.

Just to show I'm not merely grousing without a solution to propose, here it is: shut down the Department of Education and return its portfolio to the states (and their elected boards) where it belongs.

In a Northern California private school, I can say the single biggest difference between our school and the 2 public school I had worked in before is the involvement of parents. Accountability must be direct, between the school and its parents. When I screw up as a teacher, I have parents on the phone. Every year, every teacher in our school comes up for renewal, it isn't automatic. Same with our students, they are invited back or not, it isn't automatic (though i know of only 2 kids in 4 years who were not invited back) And this is a big motivating factor. A key to accountability is choice to move your kids elsewhere. I hesitate to support vouchers because if tax dollars come into private schools, so do bureocrats trying to run how we do things, yet at this point only the rich have school choice.