[JoeFromSidney]

I find this all very strange. I graduated from an excellent public high school in 1949. My children all graduated from Catholic schools, the youngest finishing in 1989. One of my children has a science PhD; the other two have Masters degrees.

The school I attended, and the schools my children attended, were not at all like the descriptions I read of current schools. When and why did things go wrong?

[kosciusko51]

I can think of one contributor and one major change:

James Earl Carter and the creation of the Department of Education, essentially nationalizing education.