As a non-educational employee, I posit a few remedies:
1 Eliminate the NEA
2 Eliminate teacher unions
3 Return ALL control of schools to local communities
4 Return in-house discipline to schools (with strict enforcement of course, and pre-approval from parents to discipline!!)
5 Reward effective teachers & remove in-effective ones (those whose PCism over-rides their concern for the education of the pupils!)
I'm sure there are others of which I am unaware but known to insiders!!
I'm convinced that only a return to God can ever accomplish any of the above, as any power returning to the Dems will trash any and all of the above!!!
It's worse than that. The teachers unions control the dialogue but they also control the system as both the unions and the government are in the hands of the liberals and progressives. John Dewey, the philosopher of American education, was a hard-core socialist. The local communities are just as bad. Where I live, very rich liberal Republicans control the system. It is a spoils system for them and their contractors, as it is everywhere. It is a pork barrel. That is not so bad per se as that is how the government has always worked and there seems to be no other way due to human nature, but it is a closed system with a siege mentality so that the wagons are always circled and anything on the outside that moves is fired upon. For example, it is likely that the siege mentality has helped preserve the teaching of Darwin and deep time all these years in every public school.
In short, the government monopoly must be broken. For example, is it really in the interest of white democrats, who have controlled blacks since the USA was a colony, to provide a good education to a group that they want to suppress and control even today? Indianapolis, for example, has a terrible educational system. Especially, Christians and Jews want more for their children and quickly could build good private schools if they were not required to pay high property taxes for low-quality public schools as well as substantial tuition fees to support their children in better private academies. Thus the key to reform Is a voucher for every child. Now some people want their children in public schools but what about those who do not?