This is terrifying.  Astonishing, but terrifying.

Eliezer Yudkowsky deconstructs education, examining the incentives and relative power of the various people in the education “food chain”.   He points out a series of issues - governments mandate certain tests, administrators focus on reducing costs and managing “process”, bookmakers focus on covering subjects at the expense of readability and effectiveness, teachers are not able to control which textbooks are used, parents can’t be in the class to see what happens, etc.

There is, of course, one school system where none of this is true - home schooling.   The administrators, teachers, parents and curriculum selectors all have the exact same motivations, and a tremendously greater incentive to ensure the future success of their students .   Not all parents can or should homeschool, but for those that do, at least their motivations are aligned around the individual child, rather than the statistical mean of a population.