You need to think about your comment - it actually agrees with the author.
Why do you suppose we have homeschoolers now?
Anyway - their success has little to do with the teachers and everything to do with direct parent:child involvement. (We homeschool.)
I will venture to guess you are <35?
40+ years ago - a completely different intellectual/cultural class were teachers. They commanded respect - even from smart kids. In the current world - a smart person feels uncomfortable in a school.
It is as if you took all of the engineers at Boeing and replaced them with draftsmen. Nothing jusdgemental - but - reality.
It is just an unintended consequence of massive societal change - the leftist “forgot” to take into account the effect changing the entire teaching profession would have.
The discrimination was wrong - but those old teachers were smart.
I agree that we’ve dumbed down education in this society and that affects the pool of teachers. But the student demographics have changed, too. A large number of children are products of divorce, single-parent families, abuse and neglect situations. Many have parents who not English-language proficient. So I wouldn’t totally compare modern teachers to old school teachers without taking into consideration that they are dealing with problems less prevalent 40 years ago.