“The parents aren’t doing their jobs.” I agree. Too many parents are a hindrance to their own child’s education. But under our current system, the school still has to serve their kids. If we can teach them despite their parents, then we have work to do. If we can’t, we need to explain why we’re requiring them to spend their childhoods in buildings where, by our own admission, they aren’t going to learn anything. Apparently, school is so essential that children must attend it, but so powerless that we can’t expect it to accomplish much unless their parents have already done everything right. Perhaps you’re keeping them safe. Perhaps you’re making it possible for their parents to go to work. Those are useful services. They’re also services provided by a babysitter. They do not, by themselves, justify making attendance compulsory. And the obligation has to run both ways. If a student persistently refuses to behave well enough to be taught, despite reasonable efforts to address that behavior, the school must be able to end that placement. We cannot require a school to keep a student who prevents everyone else from learning and then hold the school responsible for everyone’s failure to learn. A school that cannot educate its students needs to be fixed. A school that cannot be fixed needs to close. A placement that provides no education should not be compulsory merely because we haven’t bothered to create one that does. Bad parenting is a reason a child needs a functioning school. It is a piss-poor defense of a school that doesn’t function. “The parents failed them first” is a remarkably poor argument for being allowed to fail them next.