Take one school system looking to get rid of 1, 000 used Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) laptops.
One way to unlock innovation in our school system and help it transform into a student-centric one is to get out of our own way and eliminate these disincentives.
One major problem facing the school system is the low level of academic training of many teachers.
Not surprisingly, its school system was one of the best in the country.
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Critics in Texas have pointed out that their public school system has nearly one administrator for every one teacher.
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An elementary school teacher in the Bronx public school system can buy one.
He wants to replace the "one and done" system, which requires high-school stars to play for at least one year in college, or in Europe, before they can be drafted into the NBA. The result is that some teams with a constant churn of freshmen, like John Calipari's squad at Kentucky, don't so much have student-athletes pursuing a degree, but guest stars.
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How, they ask, can one diligently teach scripture in a secular school system?
Mary Laurie is one of those fighting to revive a school system that many, long ago, gave up for dead.
She's one of the veterans here in the New Orleans school system for nearly twenty years.
"Cauldwell Street is one of the busiest parts of Bedford and we have got to be absolutely sure that no child is put at risk by having a school right in the middle of a busy one-way system, " he said.
His memories of the old Orleans school system, pre-Katrina, were completely negative, and one thing stood out in his mind.
Now, there's a second problem, though, and it's one that money alone cannot solve, and that is that we have a school system that was designed for the agricultural era -- there's a reason why we've got three months off during the summer.
And the result is we have a system that minority students graduate on time from high school -maybe one out two or about 50 percent.
One week before the school year began, workers finished removing mold from the air-conditioning system and teachers spent nine-hour days repainting the school to give it a distinctive identity.
According to Roger Wallis of London's City University Business School, Europe's collecting societies work rather like the postal system: one price for all destinations, one administrative charge for everybody.
But I sort of feel that, you know, if Thomas Edison were in the school system today, he wouldn't have failed 10, 000 times before that one time that he figured out the real one - you know, the answer to the question.
There in a one-room schoolhouse he had learned his lessons, in the days before the destruction of the public-school system.
The graduation ceremony was a moving one and a reminder of the power of online learning to serve those who are literally not served by the traditional school system.
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