What are the core constituencies for America’s dreadful k12 government schools? Individuals vary, but hey: I can think of seven broad groups:
- Sports fanatics
- Parents who demand babysitting services
- Teachers and administrators whose careers depend upon tax money
- Progressive social engineers who wish to supplant families and markets as the prime institutions of sociality
- Businesses and students, who rely upon grades, credentials, and test scores to signal suitability for jobs
- Governments and politicians who rely upon the public system to inculcate acceptance to social engineering and government dominance in society
- Parents, students and community members who earnestly think something called “education” is a good idea
Everybody pretends to be in category 7. Almost no one is really in category 7, for, if they were, they would complain about poor educational achievements more, and look into alternate means of providing education. Most do not, so most are not.
Wirkman Comment 
I would amend this list a bit, because of a relationship between items 2 and 7. Parents want both baby-sitting services and a sort of social certification that “they did their jobs” by sending their children to school to be educated. They want to ignore the discernible fact that their children — who these parents brought into the world on their own authority and responsibility — are not being well educated, or to look at the situation and cry “Why aren’t the schools doing a better job?” yet continue to send their children to ‘the’ schools, because most of the people around them will accept the presumption that in sending their children to state-run schools, even if these schools are under-performing, represents a meeting of their responsibilities.
Which sounds like another form of signaling….
Well, signalling is intended either to convey fact, or to deceive.
When a parent engages in magical thinking, simply believing that responsibility is met by sending his or her child to an under-performing state-run school, there’s no expectation of a need to signal.
If the parent does anticipate confrontation, he or she doesn’t have to believe that anyone will actually be deceived by pretense; the parent simply needs to believe that various others will choose to behave as if they believe, perhaps so that they may avail themselves of the same pretense, more generally so that they won’t feel the need to do something, especially when surrounded by those who will fight to protect the pretense.
Most of society chooses to look the other way about many things.