Private schools are, of course, not homogeneous. Some schools will accept bad apples, most won't. Public schools have no choice and you generally cannot expel a child except for extremely serious issues. If you've found a public school without major disruptive issues then you probably live in a high income and/or less urban area which immediately works as an invisible filter on the student body. I went to public school system in an urban low income area - I will never put my own children in such a system, under any circumstance.
As for 'no child left behind' and the woke stuff. I can actually tie both of these together in California. [1] In an effort to increase equity they've essentially hamstrung their own education. They're making Algebra 1 a grade later (meaning less normal path access to calculus), offering "alternatives" to Algebra 2, swapping from a focus on mastery to one on "big picture" understanding, keeping classes integrated regardless of student performance, and generally dumbing down the mathematical education across the board. They want to achieve equity in outcomes, and so they're taking the easy route - lower the ceiling, rather than raise the floor. It's near to certain that outcomes in California will decline significantly over the next decade, but I expect there will also be better grades on average - laying a nice layer of paint on a building that's collapsing.
---
As for the Civil War, imagine the EU had a military and simply refused to accept Brexit, triggering a war. Would the cause of that war have been e.g. immigration (which was arguably the main factor leading to Brexit, and mentioned in numerous official documents relating to Brexit), or would it have been over the rights of EU member countries? Obviously without immigration you don't have Brexit and so you don't have a war. Yet similarly without our hypothetical effort of the EU to impose its will on member countries, you also don't have war. A key point to me is that one issue is variable, while one is fixed.
As for 'no child left behind' and the woke stuff. I can actually tie both of these together in California. [1] In an effort to increase equity they've essentially hamstrung their own education. They're making Algebra 1 a grade later (meaning less normal path access to calculus), offering "alternatives" to Algebra 2, swapping from a focus on mastery to one on "big picture" understanding, keeping classes integrated regardless of student performance, and generally dumbing down the mathematical education across the board. They want to achieve equity in outcomes, and so they're taking the easy route - lower the ceiling, rather than raise the floor. It's near to certain that outcomes in California will decline significantly over the next decade, but I expect there will also be better grades on average - laying a nice layer of paint on a building that's collapsing.
---
As for the Civil War, imagine the EU had a military and simply refused to accept Brexit, triggering a war. Would the cause of that war have been e.g. immigration (which was arguably the main factor leading to Brexit, and mentioned in numerous official documents relating to Brexit), or would it have been over the rights of EU member countries? Obviously without immigration you don't have Brexit and so you don't have a war. Yet similarly without our hypothetical effort of the EU to impose its will on member countries, you also don't have war. A key point to me is that one issue is variable, while one is fixed.
[1] - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-12/californ...