The most common complaint I hear from teachers is that the management prevents them from doing their best. The many levels of bureaucracy above them usually hinder education rather than enabling it.

I am the president of a company that's distributing free and low cost literacy training materials. Most of the people who order the Nooalf charts or cdrom are tutors, ESL teachers or home schoolers. Very rarely do I get orders from schools or teachers employed at private schools and never from public schools.

One of the most commonly repeated statements I get is 'we could never do that!' which is followed by an explanation of all the rules, administrators, red tape, government grants, licensing, etc. etc. etc. that prevent them from doing things that are sometimes stupid-obvious.

Even though this comes from teachers who quit because of all the BS and parents who realized they could do better themselves, the steady stream of unfavorable education news supports their picture of an oppressive, unresponsive, self serving bureaucracy that is only good at wasting money.

From my perspective, it looks as if conservatism, tradition and fear are the main forces guiding those in charge. It takes a true leader to look at the facts and make decisions based on logic and innovative ideas. Unfortunately, advancement in the entire educational infrastructure is based on academic credentials rather than performance, talent and leadership ability. So what we have instead are career administrators; people who are simply not constituted to make bold moves. It's no surprise to me that literacy rates and test scores remain low in spite of escalating billions spent by a steadily growing assortment of government programs.