Public schools need to produce a good product to reduce all the criticism. Many who have no desire to send kids to religious schools nor destroy the public schools are unhappy with them. And, it is not a matter of needing more money. Many parents do not want schools that have their own police department and are violent. Very little is being taught, testing shows no improvement in learning, and teachers are required to pass students regardless of performance.
Public schools have given critics a big target. And public school teachers cannot overcome the problems of children brought up in broken homes, drugs, and guns. Many of those private and charter schools are in business primarily for state money and do no better in teaching students although they use materials that pretend they are succeeding.
I agree with most of that, but to say
"Public schools need to produce a good product to reduce all the criticism" is a contradiction of the rest of what you said.
We as a society have given public schools an impossible task, then we bitch and complain when they don't do a good enough job.
We send our spoiled, entitled kids who've been taught by their parents that their rights and their feelings are paramount to anything else.
Any time little Connor or Caitlin takes a smart-ass, disrespectful attitude with their teachers, mummy & daddy automatically assume it's the teacher's fault for not knowing how to relate to their precious darling.
So the brat kids get a "talking to" which of course, goes in one ear and out the other.
The situation with the quality of graduates public schools are producing, can be summed up with an oft-heard old computer programmer slogan....
"Garbage in - garbage out".
But all that having been said, and having worked in public school system classrooms for several years, I can say that considering what they are given to work with, public schools have done a very commendable job.
The problems public schools have to deal with, are directly tied to the larger problems of our declining society.
