[yo-mf]

Wow, lazy parents...care to provide any metrics to back up that ludicrous assumption? The lazy parent excuse is what come out of the mouths of teachers to justify themselves and the status quo.

Having grown up in the inner city, there were plenty of parents that did not care, they were too busy wallowing in the despair of poverty. But there were plenty of other parents that fought to get their kids a better education and were stymied by a system that simply did not appreciate or care for feedback or parental participation. So those that could afford it sent their kids to Catholic schools, the only place left in NYC to ensure kids got a decent education. I was fortunate enough to be one of those kids, but my parents stretched to make the tuition. Today, it is even worse as parochial schools shut down and magnet schools are not able to meet the rising demand by parents fed up with the public options and desperate for alternatives.

This is not an honest debate. Obviously you are coming from one particular viewpoint and I am coming from another. Part of it might be political views and part might be personal interactions with the US educational system. I have children now in public school and can see how misaligned incentives have created a system that simply does not rewards quality.

As for bringing up Finland, that is a country that has less people than Chicago, a completely different culture, and a homogeneous population. What works there simply does not translate (just as the hagwons in Korea do not translate to the US). What does translate however is making quality the pinnacle for reshaping the US education system, something that oddly liberals resist. Instead they protect the unions and the status quo and that sounds like the camp you support.