My 2 cents.
My mom was a teacher for 30 years, an administrator with a very large school district, and her last job in education was the principle of a private elementary school.
Additionally, she was president of her AFT Chapter.
she demanded that I go to public schools and not follow the hypocritical path that many took sending their kids to private schools.
I did well and was a national merit finalist.
My first semester at West Point I got hammered.  I was failing every class half way through and barely eeked out a 2.3.  I was about 3.0 for the rest of my time there.  Public education completely failed to prepare me for a real education.

How to fix?
Step 1.  The decline of public education has matched, quite nicely, the creation of the Department of Education.  Kill it.  Its a waste of time and money.  Districts need more control and districts need to be smaller.  The federal government has zero mandate to control education.
Step 2.  Quit pretending that every kid is going to go to college.  Every other western country has a much stronger vo-tech program to actually teach kids marketable trades so when they leave school, they can get a real job.
Step 3.  The right to education stops when the kid stops performing.  Too many parents see school as free day care, and not education.  If the kid can't keep up. the kid is no longer in school.  If parents knew they were going to lose their free day care, they might start giving a shit.

Step 4.   Good parenting can overcome whatever a shitty school throws at a student.  If you don't like the product of public education, look at yourself first.

There's some pretty good posts in this thread.

I have a son in the 9th grade of public school.  Public school was a concious decision on my part wanting my son to have a perspective on the cross section of different people.  I've often regretted it.  Once in the system, its almost impossible to get out of the system.  

I based this decision in part on my personal experience in school which I found to be in error on my part.   Public school had changed so much over the years I had no idea.  

Its like paradox in time in the fact that two basic problems feed on themselves to the mutural detrement of the whole.  Its amazing how many single parent children there are with little or no home life.  This creates an attitude in teachers, I never dreamed of.  Many are like workers on an assembly line making an inferior product.  They know it and it impacts their motivation.  

The vicious cycle feeds on its self by a social engineering agenda through government that encourages single parenting and socialist standards.  What's the solution?  Why more government intervention.  Now in many schools instead of educating they are training for the TCAP tests or whatever the state calls their state examination.  In an effort to insure a minimum level of education they insure a minimum level and discourage creativity.  

Where in my youth a parent could let their child go to school and enjoy a discussion on what they learned each day.  Now a parent has to fill in the gaps of what they didn't learn or point out how what they learned was slanted by political motivation.  The whole time one must keep in mind that testing will be on the schools version and where too much information was good in the past, its not today.  

The social direction in the schools is mind boggling with typically the advantage going to girls, the top of the economic ladder, and the bottom.  The system encourages the problem that feeds the student problem.  In its quest to not offend and normalize the not normal, it perpetuates the not normal.  Then the school has to deal with the not normal.  Its a vicious cycle.

The whole thing is so frustrating at times you want to scream.  Subjects have been dumbed down to push social agendas or cater to the bottom so much that public school is home schooling.  To watch a child that reads at home, writes his own stories, has an IQ of 140, and aborbs history and science like a sponge do medocre in school something has to be wrong.  

Get involved they say so you get involved.  The only involvement they want is your time and money  forget input on curicullum for that's the mystical states area.

How a citizen is to behave is foremost in the social agenda.  You only have two choices sheep or wolf.  Sheep dog is not on the agenda and will be punished right with the wolf.  Let your child be attacked and he dares to fight back then he is punished right with the offender.  This is policy this is social engineering at its finest.  Individual achievement has been replaced by group achievement.  There's no I in team has taken a new meaning as share becomes you buy it but must give it up.

You want to fix the schools?  Quit telling the children being on welfare is cool.  It has to stop somewhere and though this generation is lost there is always the next.  If you social engineer design success not glorify failure.

Tj