I’d hesitate to generalize like that. I think there are schools where the most motivated students can get a good primary/secondary education, without excessive risk of injury, if they get lucky ... but that’s not a judgment about the school as a whole. I got an education at public school that produced a 1530 SAT and a National Merit Scholarship and national English awards ... but I also got an “education” that made me vow no child of mine would ever attend a public school while I live, and I don’t say that lightly.
I’ve told my older children that if they can persuade their father and me that there would be some immense academic or artistic advantage to their attending school - to which the child would commit 100% - then we will allocate the money for the very nice Southern Baptist school not far from home ... but they will not go to our county schools.
Mr. Walker’s family moved to a new house in order to be in the area for a particular high school, but by the time their oldest child reached 8th grade, the school had cut the top academic programs because of the district’s focus on attempting to raise the achievement levels of the lowest-performing students. No doubt the district would agree (if a few top administrators were spiffled) that parents of intelligent and motivated students can just do a better job themselves. (They still don’t regret the move, because it put them in walking distance of their church ;-).
The last thing I want to do is defend the public school system. But, I lived in the city of Buffalo for 20 years and saw that, even in the supposed worst of the city schools, white and Asian kids (some of the whites; all of the Asians) were excelling and going on to college.
Meanwhile, the same schools were being penalized for high drop-out rates and terrible average test scores. You know the reasons for the poor aggregate results as well as I do.