You're very right that our school system as a whole hasn't made any progress in that direction, but I do find it a somewhat hopeful sign that there are now quite a number of democratic schools based on Summerhill and the similar Sudbury model. 40 or so Sudbury schools (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sudbury_schools), probably a hundred or more under the loose umbrella of "democratic" and associated with AERO.