' Standardized test preparation also takes time away from creative activities that can really engage students with learning, and may even better reinforce skills needed in business, like critical thinking, writing, and working with others. Often teachers know better than administrators or managerial professionals what is needed in their classroom. One of the problems with education is that although schools superficially seem to be structured on a hierarchy similar to a corporation with a board of directors, not all managerial principles apply to schools. Schools are not factories and students are not end products. A teacher may know better what a classroom needs than a principal, a principal may know better the challenges of his or her school than someone comparing the school's results to a very different institution in another county. Finally, slashing costs is not the ultimate goal of the Board of Directors, as it is in a corporation beholden to shareholders. According to Cuban, we have been expecting both too much and too little of our schools. We expect to engineer the future of our children changing the curriculum and using schools to provide the solution to economic problems, or making schools and teachers competitive with one another through 'voucher' systems and merit pay. We think that by increasing the days students spend in school we can quickly remedy long-standing problems like American students' failure to compete with their peers on math and science tests internationally. We think schools can improve a faltering economy, and widespread socioeconomic injustice. But we still do not address the unique...

The principles of education are based on individualization, and good teachers treat every classroom as a unique environment. Businesses are based upon standardization, and adhering to regimented procedures. In business there is a clear goal -- to make a profit, unlike schools. Schools have different goals with different students. For some students, preparing to enter college is the goal, for others it is a vocational career, and for some of the very poorest children, simply getting regular meals and medical care, so they can feel secure enough for a few hours to acquire basic skills is the most realistic goal.
Cuban's book ends with a plea to enact sweeping concrete and conceptual changes in how we view schooling. Recognize that the size and environment of the school will affect its needs, whether it is large or small, whether in an urban or rural area or an affluent suburb, whether it is a magnet school or a school with many special needs students, etcetera. Give teachers more autonomy. And also realize that the needs of the whole student must be addressed, in body, mind, and spirit, and that the responsibility of the school does not end when the student leaves on the bus at the end of the day, unlike a company where the responsibility of the CEO is to the shareholders and investors, not to the employees.