Education, and public schools are miserable failures, and the most dependable and major political media pawns, the inner city poor, have just about had it with the Left's slavish devotion to the wealthy NEA, at the sacrifice of the poorest children. This insidious practice has kept the poverty stricken in the deepest of despair.. but not forever.. It is becoming all to obvious that dumbing down is causing a backup in the courts and court of public opinion.
The problem with inner city schools is not money, it's partly teacher's union, but the 900 pound gorilla that no one wants to address honestly (like illegal immigration) is the fact that many if not most of these kids come from broken homes typically with no responsible male parent and compromised maternal guardians.
Until that trend is stemmed, nothing else will work unless we take these children out of that environment forcibly which is never going to happen in a constitutional republic and the only folks who can fix that are those communities themselves.
As long as we are turning on the bright lights of truth.. This problem may have much deeper roots than paternal leadership, it a cultural anomaly, that has for centuries been bred into the gene pool.
In a earlier life, I spent a great deal of time, and more money than I will admit, researching animal husbandry, selective breeding and management practices of Thoroughbred bloodlines. I am not suggesting that there is much that humans have in commons with horses, or any other mammal. Except that there is a component in conscience selective breeding that mirrors human behavior with rewards.
If there is an environmental reward for being, lets say, especially durable at high altitudes, or a physical trait or physiological trait that is sought after in a culture that trait will be perpetuated through selective breeding.. never mind :)