Despite the expenditure of over $607.2 billion yearly and the best professional efforts of over 3.1 million teachers (statistics from the Center for Educational Reform, 2011), and several recent major Department of Education Programs purported to solve all our educational shortfalls in short order, the American Educational System (AES) continues to fail virtually all American students with unsatisfactory educational outcomes that will last lifetimes and deeply impact our global presence. This inability to implement much needed change occurs because at its root the AES is a series of "givens"...