Originally Posted by indigo
Originally Posted by Edward
Time and time again along with corporate success has demonstrated that the key is listening to the customer. Those who listen thrive, those who do not fail.
Agreed. This is true for businesses in a capitalist economy in which the consumers are the decision-makers.

However, in public education, the decision-making is removed from the consumers:
Students are the consumers.
Current taxpayers are the paying customers.
Government is the decision-maker.

The taxpayers provide the cash and the government overspends it, running an ever-increasing national debt while making decisions which are less than transparent by sharing authority with non-governmental organizations (non-profits), public-private partnerships, and for-profit businesses, all of which tend to focus on the majority population (IQ < 116 ) while neglecting the outlier/gifted populations (IQ > 132).

Taxpayers, collectively, have influence on decision-making by being aware, and involved in policy/legislation.

Meanwhile, in public education there is money to be made by reframing the everlasting fact of individual strengths/weaknesses not as a wonderful thing which makes each person unique but rather as a "problem" to be solved: closing gaps, collecting data, requiring equal outcomes, and replacing teachers whose classrooms do not show statistics toward increasingly achieving these goals.

I agree, and I hate to say it... but in my views our tax money is funding our own demise. We pay taxes for something that fails our own children and in turn the nation. Just at the surface there presently is a decline in those prepared to fill skilled and technical trades including engineers.