A rather pathetic status quo:

...let us escape from the bell jar of liberal thinking and wonder why it is that after a century and a half of “free” public education so many students present themselves at college unable to write a coherent sentence.  If you read the latest National Assessment of Adult Literacy you will find that only 13 percent of US adults are rated “proficient” in prose literacy, e.g., “comparing viewpoints in two editorials.” We are not talking here about 87 percent of Americans lacking the skill to write a scintillating article comparing foolish liberal with wise conservative viewpoints on education.  We are talking about 87 percent of adults being not quite up to the task reading a couple of editorials and getting the point.

I blame the teacher’s unions who combat any attempt to introduce accountability and a competitive spirit into our education systems with the sort of wild-eyed zeal usually reserved for religious crusades.  America spends more on education, per capita, than any nation in the world yet even the most basic aspects of college-level communication and comprehension seem beyond the majority of the population.

When are we going to stop lionizing teachers and school administrators (and going along with their endless demands for additional funding and pay) and start demanding answers from them?

Discussion question: If government-run education is this bad, could government-run health care really be any better?