If it takes Timmy, on average, 2 days to learn a lesson and Tom 20 minutes to learn a lesson, then a system that focuses more on the educator of source of problems, instead of the child, is going to trend towards each lesson taking 2 days. And Tom? Well I imagine many of us were Tom. He'll be bored out of his mind, but hopefully can manage to use his vast swaths of free time for something other than shenanigans and being the class clown. By contrast at a school where Tom is the mean student, similar lessons can now trend towards being done in 20 minutes. Tom has a much more interesting time, learns vastly more, and comes out far better at the end.
Yes I'm aware of ideals like differentiated instruction [1] but it not only poses a massive burden on educators, it also fails to solve the problem. Even in its ideal scenario, you end up sacrificing breadth for an ideal of depth that in many cases is somewhat nonsensical. Instead of having since learned geometry, Tom is instead stuck continuing to "learn" basic arithmetic he already knows, but with 'enriched opportunities for educational depth' [with basic arithmetic].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_instruction
It's not (the plunging enrollment is largely due to age demographics, which the article acknowledges, with the rest apparently associated with the pandemic, with the article admitting that no one knows the underlying dynamics really are, but insisting that experts are somehow sure that they are durable), but it wouldn't be great news if it was..
> It's well known that the public school system in the US is just not up to snuff.
It's less well-known, but no less true, that (controlling for factors that determine success within the public schools, like parental engagement, parental educational attainment, socioeconomic status, etc.) the alternatives are no better, though they look better before controlling for those things (though less so over time as the demographics in the alternatives become less skewed) because they tend to cherry pick the most advantaged students, largely simply by being non-default choices and therefore cutting off the low tail of the parental involvement distribution.