There is one and only one reason that American education never improves. It is not Darwinian. Failures don’t disappear and successes are not reproduced.
An old friend of mine (93 years old) phoned recently to ask me to help put on another education fair. She was referring to a fair I put on in 1964.
On the San Francisco State College campus I put on an education fair for thousands of teachers and the public. I had 50 to 100 displays and films about the major innovative education projects in America.
Two good things came out of this. One, it was the inspiration that led to Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Truckstore and Catalog. That in turn led to number two, the homeschooling movement in America.
I was involved in at least a dozen other projects of educational innovation over the next decade. None of it had any influence anywhere for the single reason mentioned in the first paragraph. Schools, school districts and schools systems do not copy successes which they see elsewhere and they are more likely to terminate a successful program than terminate a complete failure.
Sorry, my job on this blog is to report honestly. I cannot gloss over this tragedy that I have observed for 40 years.