real school reform ideas

Blogging for Real School Reform -  Real Ideas, Not Faux Reform and here are real ideas for actual school change.  Among them, this excellent one on ending age-graded factory methods of education, something homeschoolers have long known:

This is not the first time I have said this, but it is the thought which must begin any conversation about truly "re-forming" our education system. The system in use in the United States, in Canada, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in Ireland, et al, was designed to fail 75% to 80% of students. The idea, whether the builders were Henry Barnard and Ellwood Cubberley or Henry Brougham and William Edward Foster, was to find a very few students who might arise from the lower classes while consigning most students to the mills and mines of 19th Century industrial society.

So, if our schools are only failing 50% to 65% of students - as they are - the system is already performing way above its design capabilities. "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." - Woodrow Wilson 

  [from] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Brougham,_1st_Baron_Brougham_and_Vaux