There is no one "real" problem. Everything is the problem. There is no part of public 'education' performing acceptably. Not administration, not teaching/teachers, not students.
It would be impossible to design a system that works worse than this. There's no accountability anywhere.
“There is no part of public ‘education’ performing acceptably. Not administration, not teaching/teachers, not students.”
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Of course there is——lots of great public schools.
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You left out an important part of the problem. One of the black guys at a weekly political breakfast I attend says “what our schools need is a better class of parents!”