Through state elections. Vote for a government that changes policies. Like every other parent in every other community. I think the main difference is, that Europeans i. general are less individualistic than Americans. Usually, we just accept that kind of things. Except for a small minority.

Philosophically, I would say that a country or nation can only be successful if some common things are equal for everyone. Letting individual groups opt out and in of stuff as they want, just destroys the overall community. And you end up with "haves" picking the cherries while the "have-nots" are left with crap. And nothing in between.

But why is the state the right level for decision making?

Why is decision making at a lower level wrong? And why is decision making at a higher level not better? Why did you pick 'state' level and go with that?

State or federal doesn't matter. County is too small, when town A has a different curriculum than town B 29 km away things break down. Maybe town B is richer, then town B might not want to fund schools in town A, leaving those desolate. But maybe town As curriculum is better suited for higher education, then what? There ia no silver bullet, but going with stuff that works it would be centralised at a certain level. Se goes for law enforcement, emergency services, military, health care... Otherwise there wont be any social fairness left.

> Maybe town B is richer, then town B might not want to fund schools in town A, leaving those desolate.

Ok but I can say 'maybe country B is richer, then country B might not want to fund schools in country A, leaving those desolate'.

Why's that not the same?

Going down that road you have the EU, to a certain extent. It's a spectrum, don't go to granular but neither go too large, you still want to be able to handle things. E.g. a lot of education issues in Germany come, IMHO, from the fact education is done on the state level and not the federal one. And why stoping at nation level? Culture and history.