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Fundamentally, the problem is that we have public schools. Public schools have little motivation to increase their standards, as they are not really in competition with other schools (going to any private school costs significantly more than a public school). It doesn't help that teachers' unions are greatly in favor of retaining some of the most worthless members of our society to deal with our children. It's a small miracle our average child can even answer four questions on the ACT. Furthermore, the ACLU has made it its personal mission to slap a felony on any child which appeals to the LORD for assistance and to glorify Him. They may not have succeeded with this plan yet, but our pious children are well aware that their personal faith is under assault; as a result, their performance in school plummets. The amount of money which should be allotted to families for their children is open to debate. What empirical evidence howls for us to implement, however, is for all schools to be privately owned, and to cater to private standards without allowing the federal government to intervene. In this way, competition and Christ will be commonplace in our schools, and our children will no longer have to deal with scurrilous ruffian classmates and mentally incompetent but sexually unrestrained teachers.

The problem is that schools are not toughening kids through self discipline, but coddling their sensibilities. For example, instead of telling a student who bullies other students to stop it and actually enforce school as a place of learning, kids who are getting bullied won’t be able to concentrate on their work and pass. Schools are being treated like social netowrking centers, country clubs. It’s not about learning, it’s about who you know and students act accordingly. If a student knows that in order to pass, all he has to do is study hard, then he’ll study and not torment his peers. But, if he’s taught that he has to know the right people and keep the right people, he’ll become cutthroat in how he gains the favor of the person he needs to know and keeping it. Keeping that favor usually means keeping down and destroying other people who might be competition for said favor.

Schools are also being run by administrators living in denial or determined to not get their hands dirty dealing with the bullies. Too many adults in authority don’t, they want someone else to do it. Which is why kids who get bullied either do it and get punished, or suffer. Or the kid does it, gets punished, but the cowardly administrator secretly thanks them.

One need only compare the performance of students who attend Catholic Schools with those who attend Public Schools to see just how wide the performance differential is. Even if you control for race, ethnicity and income groups, the difference is mind boggling.

Meanwhile the faculty in Catholic schools make considerably less in salary and bennies than their public school counterparts.

This is not to say turning over the educrat establishment to the Catholics is the answer to the problem.

You will find the same performance gap if you compare schools run by other Christian denominations to the public schools. It is just that the Catholic school system is so large and so old that libtards cannot easily dismiss it as data bias due to cherry picking students, though they still try.