1. Changes that deliver the most bang-for-the-buck should be directed at early childhood/preschool/k-5 education. Once a kid gets past grade 3 (shoot, maybe even grade 1), his die is cast.

2. Most recent research shows that private charters perform, at best, as well as average traditional publicly funded schools, and the majority perform worse to much worse. Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin charters have been especially under-performing.

3. Schools must become fully funded. Most school divisions across the country have never recovered from the great recession of 2006-07. In Virginia, the state funding is still at 2008-09 levels. The net effect has been the elimination of teaching positions and assistant positions; outsourcing of nutrition, custodial, and transportation services; trimming of instructional material budgets. Teachers in state are having to cover more and more from their own pockets but that is becoming more and more of a strain as salaries have not kept up with the cost-of-living for the past 25 years (1993). Back in the early 1980's when I started teaching, the state of Virginia supplied about 65% of a local school division's budget. That number has slipped to about 33% in most school divisions in 2017.
Some school divisions, only get about 15% of their funding from the state. Federal support for local education has hovered between 6-10% over the past three decades, most of that supporting federally mandated special education services. Of course, it could be worse. In Oklahoma and Kansas, many school divisions have gone to a 4 day week in order to ration limited financial resources. We need to get serious about funding our schools.

4. Our society needs a true citizen revival. Children truly are our future. Parents need to actually be parents. Too many children are mere after-thoughts in their parents' lives or just carted from one place to another for one activity or another. Instead of real, dedicated family time at home, kids are served a constant menu of distraction and deflection. Either directly or indirectly, children are taught to defy authority and disrespect elders. Furthermore, some are even taught that "their shirt [sic] don't stink". Meanwhile, the disappearing majority of well-behaved children are forced to learn in an environment where the growing minority of disrespectful, irreverant children destroy the learning environment. Self-discipline must be taught at home and student discipline must be enforced at school. Instead, too many educators pander to parents and placate the disorderly while ignoring the just.

5. We must move away from the culture of mindless assessment, incessant data analysis, and destructive, limiting objective-based instruction. Instead we need more inquiry-based instruction that allows for the development of true critical thinking skills. We were on our way toward that goal in Virginia until 1994, when the state's reform program was stopped in its tracks and replaced with the massive assessment model (MAM). Looking at successful education models across the globe leads one to study the Finnish model.

If you are truly interested in learning more, I'd suggest four books:

A. Finnish Lessons (2011) by Pasi Sahlberg

B. The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (2010) by Linda Darling-Hammond

C. The Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2013) by Diane Ravitch

D. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010) by Diane Ravitch

Ravitch is a former US Secretary of Education under H.W. Bush. She was originally a proponent and leader of the standards-based reform movements that swept the education world in the 1990's, but her perspective changed in the ensuing years as evidence of the failure of such models became apparent to her.

Darling-Hammond is the preimminent education researcher alive today. She is a professor at Standord's Graduate School of Education and President/CEO of The Learning Policy Institute.