The problem is that it is still taught that the Irish potato famine was due to potato blight.
GIGO
Yes, parents share the responsibility for the failing education system. Let's examine that.
In the 60's, schools were very structured, rules were set, and any transgression was met with swift justice by the teacher. The principal's intervention was reserved for extreme cases such as violence toward a teacher, expulsion, or suspension, and that nearly always included a paddling. Continued disobedience was generally met with treatment at the local sanitarium with a steel rod up the nose to correct the behavior. 'Promiscuous' girls were usually sterilized. "Delinquent" boys were usually pressed into service in the armed forces. Either way, poor behavior had a rather extreme cost. Poor behavior existed, disrespect occured, but there was a fear factor that certainly garnered respect of authority.
In the 70's, schools were still fairly structured, however, teachers were softened up a little, and a little more permissive with open discussion in the classroom. They were more 'woke' about the events of the time, and the possible impacts on kids who were wondering if Daddy was coming home from Vietnam. Laws were enacted to limit corporal punishment to only the most heinous offenses (using a pocket knife in a school fight, discharging a firearm in the parking lot). Lobotomies ceased. Military draft/conscription went away, ergo, no legal means of forcing young men into the military. Disobedience is on the rise, ergo, so is learning on the decline.
In the 80's, no lessons were really learned in the 70s, so more laws were enacted to try to completely eliminate corporal punishment (which ultimately succeeded). Teachers had to have parents' permission to correct children, and were losing control of the classrooms. This angered a lot of older teachers who felt their services were for naught, so they stopped teaching and used their tenure to ride the retirement gravy train. Education dumb-down begins because kids who aren't taught don't learn. It must be the school's fault.
In the 90's the parents who went to school in the 60's and 70's never wanted their kids paddled or even spoken to harshly in the schools. Again, mayhem ensues through lack of discipline, and school becomes a daycare center for kids that won't mind either their parents nor any other authority figure. More racial tension is fomented by the indoctrination of how bad Whitey is. Children of color choose not to cooperate nor learn from the instructors that were predominantly white (mostly because of the effects of economics and availability of funding for educating non-Caucasian teachers). So, the obvious solution is to stop teaching the white kids too. No child left behind. (Doesn't this also mean no child gets ahead?)
I sometimes wonder if the snow-ball effect of limiting the authority of teachers and the schools can be reversed to correct the real problem (lack of discipline) in our school systems. There are no real consequences for poor behavior nor not trying to learn, other than aging out (19 years old max in Alabama) of the public school system without any documentation (diploma) that they are willing to achieve anything. Even the GED has been dumbed down because the mathematics questions were deemed unfair and racist. That is perhaps the most mind boggling statement I've ever seen. I'm clueless how mathematics and logic can be racist, but apparently they are. Our public schools have to have interpreters for kids that can't speak the language that somehow arrived day-before-yesterday and have a 'right' to an education, but they can't prove they're not invaders or illegal immigrants.
I'm not pointing my finger at anyone in particular, just pointing out the fact that without rules, discipline, and performance standards, an education system cannot succeed. If that does not happen, then I'll give you three guesses what happens to future versions of the education system that is run by the people that the one before failed. Snowball's chance in hell of correcting this without a lot of conservative effort and planning. Lowering the standards because some cannot succeed is obviously not the answer.