Yeah—but part of the reason for this is because we aren't capable of addressing the actual causes of educational inequality (among other forms...) which have ve

Yeah—but part of the reason for this is because we aren't capable of addressing the actual causes of educational inequality (among other forms...) which have very little to do with schools. Instead we focus on schools and ask them to do the impossible. The results are, predictably, absurd, and harmful to other worthy goals schools ought to have, because the only way to make serious progress is by faking it one way or another, or just getting lucky. But this is far cheaper than actually fixing our entrenched poverty problems, screwed-up justice system, and terrible social safety net, and school reform programs are easy and often fairly popular (as opposed to what we actually need to do, which is guaranteed to be controversial and probably end up sabotaged no matter which plausible set of solutions one proposes) plus the real solutions would take many years to yield results, which is far too long for our political cycle—so we keep trying, then act surprised and/or outraged when the results are very stupid, when we've set things up such that we're basically asking for stupid results.