How about beginning school at age 7 and finishing at age 16?  How about a shorter school day, a shorter school week, and a shorter school year?  Fewer lessons.  Student-driven learning.  Students decide what they want to learn.  No structured classes.  No schedules.  Teachers with subject specialties could set up rooms and students could enter those rooms at will when the subject peaks their interest.  Or they could simply sit in the library, or go to the gym, or go outside!  They can learn how to read, learn how to garden, learn math, science, psychology, learn how to cook, sew, throw a ball, learn to care for small children (why should teachers have to pay for day care when responsible teenagers in school could watch them!).  There are no limits to what a child can learn.  Why should we divide learning into six subjects and limit children to learning each subject for only one hour a day? 

How much money could we save by requiring fewer tests, fewer hours of schools being open, fewer textbooks!  Each classroom could have relevant books for reading while in that classroom, and possibly for borrowing by the interested student, but there is no reason to buy each student a $50 textbook for each of six subjects!  In a school of 1,000 students, that equals $300,000!  That money can be used for so much more! 

I don’t know how much you’ve read about the topic of education, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and the general consensus seems to be that less teaching equals more learning.  Those families that can afford to keep their children at home would be doing their children a great service if they would just do it.  And since not all families can do this, I feel we still need to provide schools.  Whether or not they should be government regulated is another matter all together; however, they should be paid for with taxes, and thus the government will be involved. 

I think the answer will be to shut down all schools for a specified period while things can be rethought and reworked.  Communities should control how their schools are set up, and when something’s not working, they should be free to change.  Many will not be convinced of the less is more philosophy of learning and the restructuring of schools, as they have been the same for so long, but there are many passionate advocates that I know will fight to make such changes a reality.