What the American Education System Can Learn from the B-52 Bomber

The B-52 Bomber has been in service now for over 50 years.  It has served valiantly in numerous wars since the 1960's and by the end of it's service life the B-52 Bomber will have served for 80 years.  One might wonder why would the Air Force keep this airplane in service for this long with all of the advancements in technology over the years.  This technology has brought us the B-1 Bomber, B-2 Bomber and the like but why is the B-52 still in service. The answer is that in spite of newer planes none of them can perform in the same way as the B-52 and no one has been able to come up with a good replacement yet.
     I believe that the B-52 Bomber can teach legislatures, Departments of Education and School Boards some valuable lessons.  Over the last several decades we have seen new ideas in education come and go without providing the impact that they were promised to do.  Now we have No Child Left Behind, High Stakes Testing, AYP, School grades and teacher accountability and to date none have not provided the success everyone was sold for.  Our education system is currently failing our students which will ultimately end up failing our country.  What our education system can learn from the B-52 is that new and fancy ideas do not always do better than the tried and true ideas.  Some times you have to go back and find what was working before and tailor it for today's child.
      The main problem with education is that we have a one shoe fits all mentality and we do not try to meet individual student needs.  The main reason why the B-52 is still in service is because no of the other bombers can stay in an area as long as it can  No other bomber can carry different types of bomb loads as the B-52.  Our schools need to be able to meet needs of students in many different ways and go back to proven ways of educating students.