I don't think you need to trust what "conservatives claim" when you see the test scores and literacy rates.
American public schooling is and has been broken for awhile.
American public schooling is and has been broken for awhile.
Blaming the parents and kids is just a scapegoat.
But yes, the kids that succeed are the ones that the parents are involved, because the teachers are useless.
The quality of teachers has gone way down, especially since federal student loans.
Anyone can become a teacher, it's a default path, and it shows.
I've seen good schools crumble due to terrible policies and teachers.
You're enabling the problem by apologizing for these poor performing teachers.
Literally all of 8th grade was learning how to count to 10 in other languages and some stupid cross-stitching art. In Math!!!
Luckily I learned through programming on my own time, but once you're behind from one shitty math teacher, it's hard to catch up.
And the notion that private schooling (in general) is better is hard to believe. When we looked at private schools for our son, test scores and college admittance were only marginally higher and much of the gap was simple selection bias (private schools are not legally required to take all students, so don't deal with disabled, disadvantaged, or otherwise non-exceptional students). The only time private was substantially better was hyper-elite, hyper-expensive schools (Sidwell Friends, DC vs Paul VI, Fairfax vs the publics in FCPS).
Also, America do tend to be country of extremes, so it has some very good public schools and some bad ones. Bad ones being in poor place. And it just so happen that the countries doing better tend to have less poverty and less issues related to it.