Allow me to be controversial The following link to Sir Ken Robinson's famous - very famous - TED lecture is perhaps well known. If not, do watch it....

An
independent candidate for the presidency in 2012 says wisely that if elected, he would work for
the termination of the federal Department of Education. When bureaucracies run
education--federal and state--there is no possiblity for educating children in the true sense of
the word.  Bureaucracies by their very nature are about forms, objective standards, and
measurements and all things that can become statistics.  The problem is that students are not
commodities.

With governments hovering over every school, of course there is
political correctness and bureaucratic paperwork and shuffling...