Politics and Education

Although I do think that some structure is needed in order to set standards for schools so that they are not all slipping behind and each child has a fair and equal chance at education, I do believe that some people are getting involved in this standard creating that should not be. And by those people I mean politicians. How is it right that people who have never even been in a classroom before can determine all of a teacher's and/or student's needs? It sounds nice to create test standards that all student's should look up to and benchmark themselves with, however it doesn't sound nice to close down schools when they don't meet these standards without looking into the circumstances first.
Don't get me wrong, I do think there needs to be some kind of regulation to ensure that our schooling system is still an organized system in some manner. However, reforms should be run or at least considered by the people who deal with the day to day problems themselves, not by people who sit in an office all day and argue with each other in D.C.
Here is an article that talks exactly about these issues: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/politics-and-education-dont-mix/256303/
One quote that I really like from this article that a legal representative by the name of Phillip Howard is, "Bureaucracy can't teach." I think completely encompasses in a simple statement everything that is wrong with the government trying to come up with too many programs that only set further restrictions on our teachers. Teachers and education officials are the ones that see the struggles day to day in classrooms and so they should be the ones coming up with the rules on how the classroom should be run.