I totally agree that missing foundation is a huge, compounding issue, and that it can be solved with “surgical education”. I used to do this as a tutor. You dig deeper down the stack of fundamentals until you find something that’s missing, and then you build the stack back up.

That being said, surgery is hard and can be traumatizing if taken on haphazardly. One of the harder problems, in my experience, is if an adolescent has been behind for years, it takes a long time to get to “normal”, and that can be really depressing for both the tutor and the pupil.

Another huge compounding problem is literacy skills. There are people in high school who can barely read, and it dramatically impacts their ability to catch up in every other subject. You can write a perfect explanation, but it might be totally disorienting to these students.

Education is really hard. I wish you the best of luck, it’s inspirational to read your ideas here!