That is quite a picture you paint — and dark, at that.
What do you think the solution is?
Our school system already feeds them breakfast and lunch; provides free prenatal care and daycare when they have their babies while in high school. Many of our students are pregnant. We provide all our students with books, and in many classrooms we also provide their paper and notebooks to them. Students taunt those who try to be academic and call them “schoolboy.”
I don’t think the solution lies in high school. It is in the grade schools where all the basics must be taught. I don’t understand how a child can attend our elementary and junior high schools and still not know he needs to remember to start a sentence with a capital letter. I would pour all the money into the grade schools and try to help them when they are young and impressionable. They already are too “cool” to be academic by the time they get to high school.