I've really yet to see a coherent discussion about what's even _wrong_ with schooling. It's possible that coherent discussions are happening and I'm just not aware of them. I see two different patterns:

  - A list of complaints about what people did not like about school. eg: "The teacher yelled at me too often and then I became discouraged in this subject."

  - Working backwards from bad outcomes. "Numbers are getting worse. It must be that we're not _empathizing_ with kids enough!"

Neither seem to offer a real, coherent theory. The first argument totally fails to address if school is doing the most good for the most kids, and it was just a poor fit for you. The second problem is more general -- it's really difficult to build meaningful theories about complex systems.

The topic seems politically fraught enough (and for good reason, I suppose) that it's hard to imagine landing firmly on the correct answer. No matter how many good ideas you have, there will be so much complexity in the system, so many schools and systems that don't fit your model, that it will be possible to point to failure for any reform.