Thought of the Day re: "Why American Public Schools Are Failing Students"

This video misses the point, although it alludes to it. The entire U.S. education system needs to be privatized, kindergarten through college. I've been to both public and private high school, and the latter was a far better experience, both in academics and extracurriculars. Government is inefficient in almost everything, and education is no exception. I have a M.Ed. and dropped out of student-teaching (final step to become public school certified in most states) because I foresaw the deterioration of the public school system. 1. Common Core is flawed and disliked by the vast majority of teachers. In general, the curriculum is too strict and pedantic. In English (my subject), they've been teaching To Kill a Mockingbird since forever. 2. The teacher unions, like most unions, are too powerful. They promote self-interests to the detriment of the students/parents. It's almost impossible for teachers, especially those with tenure, to be fired, because there's little oversight from administrators and district/state officials, and there's ZERO internal critique. Therefore, it's not a merit-based profession (not that any profession, except maybe athletics, is a true meritocracy). 3. No Child Left Behind Act has had a negative impact. There are too many standardized tests that the state uses to measure student/school performance. Under-performing schools are penalized. 4. At the risk of sounding sexist, there are too many women in K-12. It should be 50/50, not 70/30. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a problem. In any other profession this would be viewed as obscene. Why isn't it in education? Privatization would encourage more competition, thus helping to balance the ratio. 5. Although it conflicts with the merit/competition standard, private schools have the option of enforcing diversity quotas for their students/teachers. This would solve the problems addressed in the video.