Yes, I think the article is an accurate description of what happens today in public schools.

Because how much students learn doesn’t really matter, what gets monitored is the teachers using the discovery approach in what they teach.

However since curriculum is very lax, since the teachers can make their own materials there is a lot of flexibility in what they can do as long as on the outside it looks discovery based and creative and all the students are equal and promoted to the next grade.

Teachers with a strong grasp of the subject matter may use the flexibility to teach in a sequential, gradual way with lots of practice. Of course at the risk to the teacher being discovered and reprimanded for explaining standard algorithms instead of letting the students discover how to do division by themselves or for expecting the students to practice - which at a superficial level looks like “drill and kill”.

Teachers that were just assigned to teach a subject do the best that they can and a lot of times that ends up being a dizzying array of xeroxed sheets,  textbook lessons once in a while, project work in which by trying to solve a problem students are supposed to discover and teach themselves math .. not pretty. Since results do not matter, it’s all good since it’s discovery and creative and one can report that the student is interested and participates in math classes.

When results don’t matter and students get socially promoted to the next grade there is no problem and therefore anything goes.

All of the “remote bureaucrats” and consultants that I’ve ever seen in the education field are almost without exception ex-teachers. So we’ve actually been listening to teachers for far too long.

The real improvement needed in education today is to put ALL of the curriculum online with self-paced video lectures and 24/7 online Q&A forums - developed, presented, and monitored by the top 10% teachers. Fire the other 90%, sell 90% of the buildings, and pocket the windfall of left-over money.

The technology is readily available, the kids can learn from whatever location and time best suits their needs, and 90% of the population who would have previously been stuck with lesser quality teachers and learning environments now gets access to the best teachers and improved tutoring (online classroom forums).

There is absolutely no reason this couldn’t be implemented today - well, except for the teachers union. And there is absolutely no scientific basis to say that “it won’t work for elementary age kids”, or “the kids will suffer from the lack of social stimulus” etc. - that is all pure fear and small-minded thinking.