If you are talking about colleges: it's not "regulations" that are the problem, it's that in a system where the students have to count every penny, there's no r

If you are talking about colleges: it's not "regulations" that are the problem, it's that in a system where the students have to count every penny, there's no room for a diverse curriculum. I haven't been hampered by either government or unions, and the situation is absolutely identical in private colleges. When it comes to colleges, there is no school choice without free schools. People go where they can afford to go. Having educational standards in place means more room for non-standard material. Now, colleges vs. K12 have an entirely different set of problems. If by "school choice" you mean not forcing K12 kids to be attached to a school district, sure (I went to a "magnet" school, which wasn't tied to home address). But not everyone can go to school that's far away for whatever reasons. And having college-style admission systems in schools will lead to the same problems. On top of that, little children shouldn't be expected to make these kind of choices, so basically we are screwing over kids whose parents aren't parenting them well. And since we want all kids to be in school, what's the "default" option if they don't make a choice? Nationwide testing sounds an awful lot like regulation:D Essentially, common core is doing just that: sets guidelines, while leaving a lot of freedom to the teachers. You can see how much of an uphill battle it is. And as for "private schools don't have problems" — yeah, no. They absolutely do. And the best schools in NYC are all public (Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, etc. And there's the problem of finding and retaining qualified teachers while paying them reasonable wages. But I digress. What I can assure you of is that's there's no one single thing that will fix it. Many things need to change, and be done by many people.