Maybe off topic, but I heard we would not able to go back to the moon for many many years, because we don’t have the rockets and manpower and “know how” at NASA anymore.
It’s hard to believe we don’t have the technology and equipment on hand anymore.
America was different then.
How many decades of this game do Americans have to witness before they get it?
Parents need to be teaching (and UNTEACHING) at home, regardless. I have had personal experience of both ends of the spectrum, in myself and in my grandson, and I can attest to the problems maleducation presents, in a very up-close way.
First, no matter how you carve up the money, legally the state stands in loco parentis in public education. That effectively means the state calls the shots. It also means you can't expel miscreants below 16 yrs of age. Thus, while maybe if you complain you can get a little more math and a little less sex Ed and an anti-bullying campaign here and there, everyone and no one has a say except for the bureaucrats. The rot is systemic.
Two, I disagree that ...government-funded public K-12 (is) a good thing. I totally get the fear that we'd have a nation of imbeciles if we took away taxes and public school. However, as your story suggests....we're already there. As long as Leviathan is collecting money, nothing will change. Furthermore, I would submit to you that if we removed the taxation-based funding of education, we'd see a massive surge of private education and even philanthropy to help the neediest and poorest get an education.
In the Comminist Manifesto the 10th "plank" is:
10. Free education for all children in public schools.
I don't believe a framework coming from Marx & Engles is something to be sustained. It is time to realize the system is inherently destined to failure, and go back to private and home education which worked for millennia.