Walter Williams has the answer

for our ailing public schools:

"To improve teaching, we must attract people of higher intellectual ability and we must make teacher salaries related to ability and effectiveness. We must ensure that teachers have more academic freedom, better working conditions and a suitable environment for teaching. An important component of that environment is the capacity to remove students who are alien and hostile to the education process. Finally, we should consider curriculum changes that eliminate courses that have little, if anything, to do with reading, writing and arithmetic."

I know teachers who feel that conservatives and libertarians are always bashing them. Some teachers deserve to be bashed - your students know who you are - but most are good, solid Americans who deserve a better system. Privatizing education would get most of the politicians out, so everything you need to do wouldn't require a majority vote in Congress.