“In education markets, like the Asian tutoring industry, top teachers are superstars who get to design curricula for thousands or even millions of students and train scores or hundreds of other teachers to use their effective methods. Quality providers expand and are emulated by competitors, and there is a powerful incentive for meaningful innovation. ... One teacher in Korea’s private tutoring sector made $2 million last year because his web-based employer has profit sharing and he’s brilliant at what he does, so he gets tons of students. That’s what should have happened to [Jaime] Escalante. That’s the sort of success that should greet excellence in education at all levels. It doesn’t because we don’t have a market.”

Welcome to Amerika and its anti-education indoctrination system. During the time I owned Montessori schools and was home schooling, I discovered great techniques and methodologies for instruction. Discovering such simple issues included how to teach both right and left brain dominant students in a manner that they would best excel. Offering a love of learning and letting children help children (a peer atmosphere of learning if you will) was a self developing curricula in and of itself. There is so much good out there that the current statist theocracy(s) rejects in the dumbing down of Amerika.

competition, motivation, innovation...how can you lose?

The only truly qualified teachers are they for whom the pursuit is a calling.

In America, education was once universally understood to be a ministerial endeavor, a solemn responsibility characteristically borne by parents and clergymen.

Their noble efforts yielded a population of literate, sensible, Sovereign Individuals whose Virtue was exemplified and personified by this nation's illustrious Founders.

Our children started out at a Montessori school, in which all the educational materials are hand-made, often by the older students and parents. The grading system was completely different. One thing I liked was that students that had 'mastered' a particular task would help younger students learn it. It was very empowering. Later, when we started homeschooling (after having moved FAR away from the Montessori school) we looked into various online programs, some were good, some not, it was quite new at the time. Online education is now a burgeoning field. My children are in college now and enjoy the programs and facilities available. They have had NO problem 'socializing' and are big advocates of following the rules -- even with a father that questions authority as a matter of principle. ;-)

Online education is whatever you make of it -- the Koreans are head and shoulders above the US as far as education goes, they have been for decades...