My only concern is that the reform as it currently stands is taking the exact opposite road to the one that is most likely to work, and it's not including the teachers in the discussion hardly at all.

This process has been happening in Ontario in recent years. The system is more responsive than it used to be, in many respects, though it still has a long way to go to be really responsive. Some of the recent gains include a move towards restorative justice as a discipline model, the provincewide adoption of assessment for learning that is embedded into the learning process and student-centered, and an insistence on differentiated instruction as a key facet of classroom organization. I see elements in the rhetoric and documents coming out of the States that are in direct opposition to the last two, and that's a big, big problem.