Maybe. But it's undeniably true that real 'education' takes a back seat to just about every other facet of school district operations. Most of the money goes to things that can't really be justified. Astroturf for the football field. A pool for the swim team. A renovated wing of a building that is less than 20 years old. New computers for this classroom or that (a real treadmill if I ever saw one). And I haven't even addressed the teachers' unions and their demands. Heck, if it were only that we'd be able to manage the situation.
My conclusions are based on observations of the Newark NJ public school system (notably Central High) while attending college in Newark in the seventies. Any student who dared break from the pack and learn something was essentially called a race traitor - by the school administration.
Thus the school administrations want the students to fail, using the so-called excuses of “poverty and racism” burdens being impossible to overcome. The same line is being pushed at University of Minnesota school of education, where the students are REQUIRED to sign on to what amounts to this leftist political orthodoxy. So, by crying “racism”, the leftist educational establishment practices racism by holding the inner city students down.