Most people who have been students in the public schools dislike them. Yet nothing ever changes.
If you got to some of the parents with kids in public schools in high end communities, Scarsdale,NY, Greenwich, CT --you will find the parents quite happy with the public schools -- though keeping an eagle eye on the SAT scores, etc. and screaming like stuck pigs the instant they drop a singe point in the average.
If you go to the parents in NYC's specialized high schools, you'll find the same thing.
Education is expensive -- quality in almost anything always entails spending more money and knowing how to quantify results. The much despised teachers' unions mitgated this for awhile, but they're becoming less effective. Now it's becoming a "get what you pay for world" in education. So the rich school districts will continue to poach the best teachers from the poor school districts -- luring them in with higher salaries. NYC, for instance, regularly poaches teachers from Texas, etc. with higher salaries while wealthy suburbs in Westchester and Long Island poach teachers from NYC.
Seriously, how anyone can say the schools need more money, and that'll solve the problem, bewilders me. Fiscal responsibility from the money they take from me by force is more like it. Has the amount we spend on education ever gone down? Money and results seem to be totally unrelated in the government education system.