If you don't educate your youth then you'd better build a lot more jails. Education and health care are the foundation of society. I've noticed myself that schools have suffered from "feature creep". Too many subjects and too many topics in any given subject. Stick to the fundamentals. Make sure the student has mastered a given level before moving them on to material that depends on an understanding of the previous level. The three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic. That's it. Teach them the language and make sure they can write, no need to study every friggin author. If they can't do addition, don't move them to multiplication.

Get rid of fluff courses. People can get religion classes on Sunday (or Saturday or whenever). No point teaching history until they can read.

Too many parents dump their kids at school and expect the schools to raise them. Kids get off 3+ hours before parents that are working. If you want to give the kids PE or shop or whatever, do if from 2:30 to 5 when they're normally hangin out at the malls or visting their drug dealers.

My wife was a teaching assistant at a local well regarded university. She would show me the papers she had to grade. Freaking embarrasing. Beyond your worst imagination. And the kids don't give a sh*t. They are so far lost on the fundamentals it's almost hopeless.