Issues with modern education

Basically, in my opinion there are three things basically wrong with American education today.  First I want to begin with the notion of innovation, there seems to exist a modern believe that the educational practices of the past are not up to task for educating the youth of today.  This assumption is just a fallacy, were being sold new educational techniques by vendors, new curriculums and pedagogy's are being invented daily, seminars and expert lectures are being sold to school districts en masse.  The problem with this is, it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Arguably, the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s were times of great economic and scientific progress for American society.  We were the great innovators of all things scientific small electronics, space travel, the automobile, industrial processing techniques, the computer, the PC and other various small electronics.  The reason why this innovation has come to a standstill in my opinion is because the Socratic method of learning, as well as the basic study method of personal inquiry hypothesis and theory production ,have all fallen by the wayside in favor of teaching test taking skills, and experimental educational techniques.  This leads me to what I believe is the second problem in education and that is doing away with the tracking system, it works, plain and simple.  I have been presented with data that suggests that our children, who are at the lower echelon of academic prowess benefit greatly from having access to students who are the higher level of academic prowess and this brings up the overall grade level or test taking ability of an entire school.  But what they fail to tell you and what research has shown from my wife and other teachers that I know who have taught for over a decade is that the advanced kids do not benefit from this interaction with mid range kids or low-level kids.  In fact, they either flat line or show no growth or actually the stagnation hinders them at the next level of education that they attempt and they lose ground.  The fact that American exceptionalism and education is being denatured is due in great part to the lack of facilitating our most accomplished academics in the public school system because of some misguided sense of the quality in the classroom.  The three industrial nations that are extremely academically advanced beyond America do not practice such equality.  In fact in China, Germany and Japan, students have to test into the better schools, and there is a homogeneous classroom where the highest academic achievers are pushed to greater levels of achievement.  This policy has allowed these countries, which used to borrow technology from the United States through technology transfer to become the great innovators in the 21st century, leaving America behind.  Then finally, it is my belief that education should not be legislated by nor should people who make decisions about best practices, length of school year, pedagogy or curriculums used, be done by people who have never been educators. Educational policy, as well as funding should be controlled by current or former educators who actually know how a classroom operates and what's needed for success in a pragmatic, practical way.  Politicians make decisions based on the pressure from their voters, which may not actually be in line with the best practices and means of educating the greatest amount of children to the optimal level.