One argument I've seen forwarded elsewhere is that school methods have tracked university methods. According to the argument, watering down standards to increa

One argument I've seen forwarded elsewhere is that school methods have tracked university methods. According to the argument, watering down standards to increase retention (and revenue) gained legitimacy in the sixties as the higher education act empowered administrators to increase the size of their ranks and policy views at colleges across the country. These colleges trained education majors according to their new philosophy, who became a new rank of principals and superintendents in the eighties and onwards, promulgating the transactional and nihilistic view of the purpose of teaching. On the one hand, it sounds farfetched. On the other hand, all five of the teachers and professors over 50 whom I've raised the topic to over the years agreed wholeheartedly.