I'd rank my own experience as something like 80%/20% in favor of option #2. And I finished high school in the mid-1970's in one of the better ranked school districts in one of the better ranked states.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of teachers which I had who were genuinely outstanding. It might take both hands to count those who were pretty good or above average. All the remainder would be average or below. I don't think the situation has gotten any better, especially in Los Angeles.
My middle son had incompetent teachers. He studied the material, conducted evening review sessions for his fellow students who cared enough to study and substituted for the seat warmer paid by the school district when that "teacher" was totally incapable of conducting the class. I reviewed his compositions for English classes after the "teacher" had "graded" the work. Inexcusable. Spelling errors and grammatical errors were not flagged. I held his feet to the fire. It made a difference.
The Vietnamese kids seemed to do much better than their peers at school. Why? Their parents required them to sit down at the kitchen table and complete their homework before they could "play" after school. My parents had the same rule, but didn't supervise the effort. The honor system was good enough for me.
Education or learning? I always did most of my learning by reading, just not usually text books. Most of the “school” stuff I learned was just from in class. Homework always felt boring and repetitive to me, I’d already learned it and didn’t feel a need to keep writing it down, and the more A’s I got on tests the less interested I was in homework.
I think what really killed me was when my Jr High English class entered the mythology section of the course. Not even sure why we were learning Greek mythology in English class but I’d just finished obsessing on mythology, having read pretty much every single book on it our public library had, including the book that was handed out to us. That lead to a month long nap, and my figuring out that I could learn on my own. After that for me school became about proof not about learning.
Best teacher I ever had was a stats professor in college. We had our first test covering the first two chapters of the course materials on the third day of class.
He stood up in front of the class and said anyone with less than %70 on that test should just go drop his class and stop wasting his time.
I was sick when I took the test and scored a 49. He made me mad. I said to myself I’ll show that SOB. I dug down like I had never had to dig before. School had always been easy for me. I passed that class with an A. I never missed more than 2 point on any other exam or assignment.
The funny thing was about halfway through the class I realized what a great teacher he was and his motivation for saying what he said that day. It turned in to one of the best classes I had and it was a fun challenge as well.
To this day I remember my stats well!