Absolutely, 100%. I don't think our system is the best, most effective, or even, in many cases anything above the bare minimum. There are probably a lot of int

Absolutely, 100%. I don't think our system is the best, most effective, or even, in many cases anything above the bare minimum. There are probably a lot of interesting alternatives out there, and I would love to see some sort of change because I absolutely despised high school. But, the bare minimum is good enough to get kids prepped to continue within the public higher-education system, and they can more-or-less take it from there. Even if you go to a terrible high-school, it is generally functional enough for you to enter a community college, no SAT required. From community college, you can transfer to a good state school. The mechanism exists to take kids from mediocre schools, get the ones who are interested up-to-speed in a less chaotic environment, and put them into a state university, without them being super-geniuses or 1,000% intrinsically motivated or something. It's not perfect, but it's a government program that gets millions and millions of kids who'd rather be playing Fortnite or hanging out at the skate park to at least learn the bare minimum in a somewhat standardized way. The socioeconomic limitations on kids trying to progress through that system is a different thing, and that's a hurdle that I don't know that we have functional systems in place to deal with.