The other big problem I see with these "cash strapped school systems" is that they're all locally-run, and mostly locally-funded. So poor counties have poor and crappy school systems; there's no higher level of government making and enforcing standards to any serious degree.

You don't see this at the college level because state universities are run at the state level (and are also funded in an entirely different way, but they do receive state tax funds for in-state students to my knowledge).

I grew up in one of the richest counties in the U.S. and the teachers were just as underpaid and overworked, the added money the schools got was spent on useless tech like putting smartboards in every classroom.

I had a friend in college who grew up in an even richer neighborhood, and his school inflated GPAs to the point where most top-tier schools threw away their applications.

Not saying you're wrong, but lack of money isn't the only issue in the public education system in America.

In some ways, it doesn't really matter how much we throw at the schools because they are expected to solve for very large societal problems such as the massive inequality that exists in this country.

In the US at least, schools bear the brunt of consequence of the lack of social safety nets. They are expected to not only teach but also raise kids that have no real parents (who are either working two jobs or the victims of a life time of poverty themselves)

If we want to improve education, we need to take a broader look at inequality and the cycles of poverty that feed into each other.

> Looking at the problem another way, we could just fund education properly and provide a better social safety net.

You missed the point. More funding won't help if you're placed with kids that do not want to learn. A perfectly reasonable solution is exactly like OP said, separate out at sophomore year the people who GAF. Germany does this, it works well, and it doesn't cost a fortune to try to give students a Stanford level education who just want to do nothing.

> More funding won't help if you're placed with kids that do not want to learn.

There is very little kids inherently want more than to learn—if they've learned not to want to learn, either in general or in the particular venue of the school system, that's a failing of the school system or society more generally that needs to stop happening, rather than writing off those who have been failed.

Kids don't want to learn because they see no benefit in learning due to a cycle of poverty, a complete mess of a home life and parents that are probably uneducated as well. They have also been indoctrinated from an early age that "school isn't for them". It starts way younger than high school. Dropouts actually start dropping our during middle school or even earlier. If you think that kids tune out at 17 because they are bored, you are missing a lot to the debate here.

While I agree that alternative programs should be available, it's a bit silly to chalk up most educational problems to "kids don't want to learn".

Germany doesn't have the scale of inequality the US has and shouldn't be compared strongly to our situation. We have bigger fish to fry.