The failure of the American educational system is not a specific problem.
Having worked for a newspaper on the education beat for a number of years and covered an uncountable number of asinine school board meetings, I can honestly tell you that what works in Colorado may not work in other states in the union.
Now for the HN cop-out. I'm not against increasing funding for education, nor increased accountability and power for teachers. These are all great things. But there's a rotten core to our philosophy of education in this country that will never be solved by the government or any legal requirements for anything.
Small, focused charter schools or aggressive home schooling are the only real ways I can see to truly revolutionize the state of education. But those two are so amazing unpalatable or unpractical for the vast majority of cases that personally I'm stumped.
Really, if we're all going to be honest, what's going to change this is parental involvement. Daisy is not the majority of kids (referenced in the OP), she is an amazing exception and I hope the school system doesn't fail her. But the bigger issue is the teacher-student apathy to learning cycle. And that starts with parents who WANT their children to succeed and who understand how to help their children learn and achieve their goals. In the absence of that, no money in the world will produce successful children.