Some of the biggest problems in ghetto schools just aren’t discussed properly.
How do you deal with a culture in which doing well in school is acting white?
How do you deal with all the gang crap going on?
How do you deal with all the baby mama stuff going on?
How do you deal with kids in high school reading at a 3rd grade level? How do you give them remedial help that they need? But then, how will they respond to help, if trying to do well in school is derided as acting white?
How do you deal with kids who want to drop out of school, and make big money dealing drugs or doing God knows what with gangs, instead of thinking about a better future for themselves?
It just seems to me, that we go in circles talking about problems in schools in the inner city. Liberals tell us we need to spend more money, get better teachers, build new buildings to replace old buildings which have fallen into disrepair. Some of these solutions can help, but, so many such plans over the decades have been implemented, and unfortunately, have failed. So what the heck do we do now???
Everything you described is a real problem...in suburban white high schools.
But as to the answer to your question about how we start to address these many troubling issues, my answer is always the same with all our social problems:
Stop subsidizing them.
If it were up to me, we'd repeal the Child Labor laws and only require school up to the 4th grade. After that, if you don't do well in school, you get kicked out and you can get a job. If that happens, you have to stay out for a year. If you want back in, you have to apply, you go to a remedial school, and you better work like a dog or you get kicked out again and that's it.
I know it sounds draconian, but the reason these kids aren't doing well is not the spending, the teachers, the buildings... it's their motivation. Much of that comes from parents but some comes from the child himself. I've seen it a hundred times: parent tells kid "Get good grades and be good and I'll buy you an iPhone." Works like magic, which tells me that the majority of the problem is the children's attitude.