You can rant about the educational system all you want, but the educational system we have is the system parents tolerate. It can never be a substitute for good parenting.
Parents must push their kids to take the difficult courses and study. If they do, their kids will do well in our educational system. Parents must also demand that their school system provide quality education. There are outstanding school districts in our country, mostly because the parents who live in the community insist that it be so. If the parents don’t care, the educational system becomes like any other ineffective government bureaucracy.
So I get back to the original point: the education system is not a substitute for good parenting.
You don’t know how close that is to the truth for me personally, and painfully. Laid-back attitude at home, and teachers that were ineffective. From what I can remember, I’ve had 3 good teachers in 13 years of being in the NYC public education system (got left back): two were science, one junior high and one high school, and the third teacher did ESL, the yearbook, and was in charge of the Student Organization.