[crusty old prospector]

Public skools now cater to the lowest and not the highest. If you are in what now are termed “on level” classes, you are in with the degenerates who disrupt learning for everyone else. Everyone gets behind together because it is racist, unfair, etc. to send the rejects to what we called reform school or alternative campuses of today. If I were king, the central part of every secondary school would have a fenced-off arena and if you wanted to be a gangsta, you could do it with the friendly drill sergeant-type in the Pit.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

FWIW, in Germany and most of the civilized world, most people do not even enroll in academic high school. At age 14 you are sifted either into trade school or an academic school. Germany only (used to) send about 6% of their kids to academic high school (Gymnasium), whence they almost all went on to University. The numbers are about the same for Japan. Somehow they manage to maintain modern industrial societies. My wife used to work a local middle school that had Metco (Boston inner city) kids bussed in. They were somewhat disruptive in academic classes, but since they were not a critical mass it was manageable. However, they shone in shop class, they loved working with their hands. I’m not saying they were incapable of academic achievement, but maybe somewhat discouraged, especially since they were competing with kids half of whose parents were engineers, doctors or lawyers.

Sending these poor kids to an academic high school is a waste of everyone’s time. Teach them to so something they love and teach them well. They’ll take pride in their accomplishments and be able to make a living for the rest of their lives. And they’ll probably even learn a lot more math, to boot!