People without kids in public schools have a pretty warped view of what things are actually like. When you poll actual parents who enroll their kids in public e

People without kids in public schools have a pretty warped view of what things are actually like. When you poll actual parents who enroll their kids in public education you see a different picture. I'm actually really shocked people genuinely believe schools aren't focusing on core academic subjects... if anything they're too narrowly focused on a subset of ELA and Math rather than taking a broader approach to these subjects. As a parent with kids enrolled in public school tho, I'd probably be a "wrong direction" person but probably not for the reasons outlined. My biggest gripes are: 1) Teachers have limited autonomy to shape their curriculum and (at least at our school) teach a canned curriculum to ensure standardized test scores move in the correct direction. This also feeds into more advanced kids getting bored out of their minds. 2) Schools often have lopsided resourcing for various special education concerns. There's significant resources available for kids who struggle in math and reading but if a student's needs are social, speech, etc (eg: kids on the autism spectrum) the support isn't as widely available. If your child is well-behaved and academically strong but has support needs elsewhere they're not going to bend-over backwards despite whatever a state law may say. But it's not all bad. I've also noticed: Bullying seems to be taken WAY more seriously these days. To the point where the kind of stuff that I'm not sure would've even gotten recognized as bullying when I was in school gets clamped down by schools. However, for schools that are more permissive with devices, as I've understood it, much of this bullying just gets pushed online. I think allowing kids to have devices in school is probably the worst thing for education. And this is 100% on the parents for forcing schools to tolerate this. And I think any politician that tried to run on getting devices out of schools would probably get run out of town.