The Davis Square Community

I think you underestimate the scope of the problem. That "lowest common denominator" of society represents a substantial chunk of the people in our prisons and public housing projects at the moment, and the problem is currently getting worse rather than better. The main purpose of public school, in my opinion, is to allow children to gain advantage where their parents had none, so that they can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" so to speak. The rest of us already have the means to borrow money to go to private schools if we want to do that (although I would argue that our general population already has more debt than we can handle, so adding even more would do more harm than good).