With kids acting up in school, teachers quitting at record rates, literacy rates down etc etc it got me thinking. What kids need today are actual consequences to get them back into shape.
China has the right idea. After 9th grade start dropping your bottom 20% students. Just kick them out of school. Okay little Johnney, don't care about your grades? Well go be free and get a job. No more wasting tax money trying to get you to learn how to read. Obviously you weren't using it anyway.
We make space for the kids that actually want to learn and remove problem children from the educational space as well as focusing resources on the ones that actually want to be there. Sure 1/5th of the population will essentially only have a freshman education, not that it matters since 50% of American adults are functionally illiterate.
But everyone else will have a much higher quality education free from distractions and problem children ruining their education, straining tax payer money and stressing out faculty.