OPPOSITION TO EDUCATION REFORM
Education reform is a hard-to-achieve goal for many who feel American public education isn't what it ought to be -- even if they can't quite nail down concrete solutions -- and a threat to lovers of the status quo.
Adherents to the status quo are obvious opponents of education reform. Genuine education reform is also stymied simply because there is such a broad spectrum of conflicting opinions about just what education reform ought to be.
Opposition to education reform is ever more formidable today because the education establishment has morphed into an education-industrial complex of considerable dimension -- with the electronics and pharmaceutical industries added to the others that produce supplies for schools or have an influence on them, the rise of powerful teacher unions plus ever larger bureaucracies at every level of government, and interest groups with agendas that impact education.