More on education:
The last living WWII veteran that I personally know is a guy who attended Cleveland's Aviation High School. He was going to be a 1942 graduate but he had enough credits to graduate early so after
the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor he cashed in his credits, graduated in December, 1941, and joined the Navy where he got right into aviation (like he wanted).
My dad was born in 1940 and even as late as the mid-to-late 1950's when he was in High School, Cleveland's High Schools were much better than what we had out here in the sticks. They had the aforementioned Aviation High School and two Tech High Schools (East and West) and generally offered things that smaller districts couldn't offer for lack of sufficient size to fill the courses.
The collapse of the urban high schools was like a snowball rolling downhill. As they declined the parents who could afford to get out left and those parents tended to have the best students in the schools so their exit hurt the schools more which caused more parents to leave and this feedback loop ultimately resulted in the catastrophically bad urban High Schools that we have in the US today.
I think that discipline issues are a major factor. In a typical High School there are going to be some kids who are uninterested in learning and are going to be disruptive. I assume that
@OrangeAfroMan is a good teacher who tries hard and as long as the percentage of this type of kid (I'll call them the disruptors) is minimal, he can minimize the damage and still provide a productive learning environment for the other kids. The problem, I think, is that there is what I'll call a "critical mass" issue. Once the disruptors reach a certain percentage (which probably varies by teacher) it simply becomes impossible for the teacher to sideline the disruptors and maintain a productive learning environment for the rest of the kids.
Years ago schools were legally "In Loco Parentis" which meant that they more-or-less had carte-blanche to discipline as they saw fit. That changed when the Supreme Court decided that kids in schools had a right to due process.
Example:
My dad drove a School Bus. He first drove in the early 1960's right after he got out of the Marine Corps. Then he did other things then started driving again in the late 1970's. In the early 1960's if a kid caused too much trouble my dad literally had the authority to stop the bus, eject the kid (forcibly if necessary), and continue on the route with the other kids.
When he started driving again in 1979 things were very different. If a kid caused a problem my dad had to fill out a report and turn it in to the Transportation Supervisor. If the Supervisor deemed it necessary, the report was forwarded to the Superintendent who forwarded it to the kids' principal who then scheduled a meeting with the parents, the principal, and the Bus Driver. By the time this meeting occurred it was weeks after the initial infraction. There were a few drivers who were considered "OT whores" who would constantly file these reports. The rest (like my dad) basically ignored all discipline issues that didn't leave any blood.
The severely diminished authority of the Schools to remove disruptors coupled with the diminished quality of urban HS students due to flight (not just white flight, upper class blacks don't like in crappy urban school districts either) has left the urban schools with way more than a critical mass of disruptive students such that the schools fail to provide a productive learning environment for the kids who would benefit from it.
IMHO, there needs to be a compromise between the extreme of random bus drivers dropping kids off whenever they saw fit and discipline effectively disappearing from the schools. In the urban districts the disruptors need to be removed from general pop so that the non-disruptive kids have a chance.
