I was a high school and occasional middle school (junior high) substitute for over ten years.
From 1987 to 1989 and then again from 2001 to 2010.
Until you've worked day in and day out in public school classrooms, you don't really have a good, solid idea about what things are like.
To be honest, the smart, studious AP level kids are as incredibly bright as they've ever been. But they're in the minority. Most kids are in the average range. They run the gamut from decent and reasonably smart, to snarling, smart of mouth, dumb of ass little cretins whose only concern is getting away with whatever they can get away with. Those decent, mainstream students might be good kids as I said, but academically they probably are as I also said, behind much of the world. Doesn't make them bad, just not as academically inclined as they could or should be.
I believe this situation exists because they are sidetracked with too many other issues and distractions. And all this gay stuff is, IMO just another of those distractions from what is the main and most important purpose of school... to learn and become educated in a specific range of traditional academic knowledge.
When adults start getting involved in the issue, expressing sympathy and in effect, lending credence to the supposed importance of these outside concerns, they just drive the wedge in even deeper and make it more difficult for kids to get and keep their minds on what they should be concentrating on, i.e. traditional school work.
The Chinese will show us no mercy just because our high school graduates can tell us all about our precious gay cultural heroes but can't spell or do math.