I think even more important than home is peer groups. Research I read about in The Nurture Assumption [0] convinced me that much more important than home life (home life being called "shared environment" I believe because in a twin study it's the thing most shared by two non-biologically related siblings) is peer environment. If your friends all think that learning isn't cool and tend to do drugs or whatever, children will follow in that path, and parenting affects that very little despite our intuitions.

How to solve the peer group problem? As far as I know it's extremely difficult, even more than reforming home life. You can split up peer groups and distribute their members into peer groups with different mindsets and they will generally conform, but the ratio has to be quite steep towards the peer group you're integrating into. I don't know what the number but I would guess something like 15 to 1. There's definitely not enough middle and upper class classrooms to go around to house all kids from more troubled areas under my stated assumptions. But perhaps the process could be incremental?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption

>Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best.

A fair point. Although I came to the conclusion when I was in school that while the impact of your home life is important, providing a positive initial experience with school and having high expectations for scholastic performance can do a lot to improve educational outcomes. Perhaps even enough impact to counteract the lack of parental involvement/motivation for education for some.