The best way to go about solving our education problem is amping up our miserably failing High School system. It needs to play more like European countries, where students can pick their schools. Why should students be forced to go to crappy schools they don't like at our expense? Schools are paid an average of $8,000 + a year per student. If that money was attached to the students, who could go anywhere they want, being a good school would actually matter. $8,000 could send kids to superior private and catholic schools, and hyper-competitive schools would spring up to fit all sorts of needs, whether it be for the disabled, athletic, gifted, art-oriented, ect. If we got our system to be good enough, most students could end their education at high school and get jobs, just like in Japan.