Change begins with removing the root of the problem...

...that is if you really want positive change. If you just like to bitch, like the "Quote of the Day" below, simply keep doing what it is you are doing.

There are many that bemoan their own perception of what is wrong with public education, but few are willing to actually take the real reform steps necessary to make a difference. Instead, they go for easy targets (i.e., teachers and unions, unengaged parents, lazy students, district bureaucracy) and the most creative idea they can come up with is "test 'em until morale and scores improve."

Not everyone as most Americans are simply lemmings, too disinterested in doing their own research or questioning the loud voices, instead following the pseudo-reformers over the cliff.

Which leads me to a...

Quote of the Day from The Urban School System of the Future!!
"We can't expect the century¬old district to completely change its fundamental nature. No one would try to turn General Electric into General Mills."

Why not? The multiple-centuries-old one-room schoolhouse rooted in a historical tradition of local control evolved to become a district. Get business and industry, principally responsible for the disastrous graded-school district movement in the early 1900's urged along by their mass-media accomplices of the time, out of the education reform movement and true structural reform can (will) occur. 

The corporate world's focus on grade-level testing along with decreasing funding for education (when adjusted for the CPI) are the glue of the traditional district structure. It can be undone if we begin with ending the federal role in education starting with NCLB, RTTT, and any other iteration of President Johnson's failed ESEA.