>Throwing thirty teenagers in a room at 8am and having a tenured adult speak at them for 45 minutes on a subject is not a recipe for success

The problem here is that getting enough money to hire more teachers per student is like pulling teeth. The problem that we as a society are solving isn't "how can we achieve the best overall educational outcome?" It's "how can we avoid a disastrously uneducated population with a budget of $X?" I'm not entirely sure we're doing a good job on that one either, though.