In fact, I will throw all of my political support (and maybe a lot of financial support, too) behind the candidate who has the courage to stand up and tell the truth about public education: There is no place in a free nation for "public education" as we know it. Up until the last 150 years or so, I'm willing to bet that you will not find any documented case in human history of a society that rounded up all of its children on a daily basis and warehoused them in large buildings for the purpose of "educating" them.
Our human ancestors of the past 150,000 years must be laughing at us. You are right. When in human history have we done this to children?
And...My father was born in 1913. Most of his generation were educated in **small** one room school houses with children of mixed ages. His friends left school at age 14. He was the top ranking engineer for his company and won **many** awards for his work. He did very important design work and supervision of production for the Mercury and Apollo programs. Yet, ...he never finished high school and attended college at night.
That is true. However, the other fact is that, until 150 years ago, you couldn't find a society that had any more than about a 50% literacy rate, either. I'm not saying I support public education in its current form, but you have to consider that other part of the equation.
And politically, now at least, I agree it is a non-starter. Before I die, I expect to see opposition to "the twelve-year sentence" reach critical mass, if for no other reason than neither the states nor the nation can afford it any more.
If the political implications of government schools are bad, the economic harm done to the country is far, far worse, from ever-rising taxes to the way the funds are unwisely spent and squandered. You might as well flush much of that money down the toilet for all the benefit most kids and their parents get from it.
As for a candidate with the guts to say the Emperor has no clothes, so to speak, there have been a few at the state and local level (who, once known, are immediately targeted by the NEA and their offspring organizations for censure and electoral defeat) and just one that I know of nationally.
Can you guess who? (Right column, second page)
Of course, education is not a federal issue and should not be made so except for the purpose of undoing the laws and regulations that locals have to comply with in order to get funding from Uncle Sugar.
As with many other areas of life, the fedgov needs to simply butt out. That must happen before any radical reforms can be achieved at the state level.