I think we have a higher percentage of people who are able to read. I'm not sure about the civic involvement - do you know?
As I pointed out in #75, today's "poor taxes" (schools taxes) account for about 75% of your property taxes and about 40% of your state taxes. Do you think that represents good value for money?
What do you consider good value? Do you think it's how much I'm paying compared to how much I'd pay for a private school education for my children? Or is it the number of students whose education I'm able to finance through my taxes? Or is it the quality of education overall in my state and district?
How about voluntary charity?
How many poor students are you willing to send to private school? Are you doing so now?
I suspect if that option worked well, the government wouldn't have gotten involved in the first place.
Sadly, graduated income taxes (for most states) and value-based property taxes make that different for everyone. If you have many children in government education, have a low or modest income and live in a less expensive house it may represent good value. If you have a higher income and live in a more expensive house with no children in government schools it represents poor value. Of course, if the schools fail to educate their students, then it is bad value for everyone.
Because nobody pays directly for education they tend to be price insensitive, always open to "a small tax increase" ... "for the children". Because there are more tax-spenders than tax-payers, the pressure will always be to increase costs (someone else will pay). However, because education is largely a government monopoly there will be less pressure to increase service. Therefore, over time government education will become poorer value.
One big reason for establishing the government role in education was to assimilate the large number of immigrants who arrived here at the turn of the last century. However, now we have multi-culturism, bi-lingual education and a "progressive" slant on American history. In that sense, they are not offering good value, or indeed good values.