@chuck
Not sure really on the overall message of your post - probably me being dim again, but you did mention home schooling so I thought I'd just make a comment on that as that's something I have an opinion on....
Personally, I don't think home schooling in the traditional sense is good for any kids - with the exception of the very youngest. As a child gets older the material they're going to need to be taught quite rapidly increases in content and difficulty making it more and more difficult for parents or even worse a single parent to cope, especially if they/she are holding down jobs. Plus there's the need for kids to mingle with other kids to learn about how to play, how to share and so on...
Now presumably the idea behind wanting to home school is to avoid kids being indoctrinated by/into a system which was not constructed with their interests at heart - so I can fully understand why people would want to do it, but I think some other solution needs to be arrived at...
Thinking about it at the moment I can't see any alternative other than setting up your own schools where the curriculum, ethos etc etc are as you want them to be - now legally that is possible over here in Europe, but I have no idea on the US law or whether it would vary state to state. That's the only way I can see that you'd be able to draw in sufficient expertise/teachers to cover all the subjects you'd want to at a high enough level...
Now for all I know there may already be schools like that or it might not be legal or there could be a host of other problems with it that I haven't thought of - but I don't think a viable alternative to the present system is home schooling.
My wife and I have home schooled for the past 15 years. Two of our children are now level headed, well rounded, well adjusted young adults.
We purchased Christian based curriculum and developed some curriculum on our own. Any devoted parent with a high school level education could guide their child through the curriculum we purchased. When developing your own curriculum you can teach your children specific things you deem essential.
One of the classes we teach our children is "Consumer Math" which teaches math in a way that directed at managing personal finance. It teaches the cost of borrowing money, bouncing checks, getting late fees as opposed to paying on time, balancing a check book, comparison of interest rates, investing, income tax planning, retirement planning, etc. etc. etc.
Our oldest child has been married 5 years. She worked the first few years of their marriage until she and her husband decided she could stay home with the children. They live a very comfortable life on her husbands salary which is not unusually high because of their financial discipline.
One of the things we developed is a research paper that we have the children do where they must compare and contrast the ideology of MLK Vs. Malcom X. They have to decide if one ideology was better or more effective than the other and defend that choice in their paper.
It erks me to hear people talk about home school students being socially crippled or incapable of interacting with others. That is a myth. Furthermore, curriculums can be purchased at every grade level that any parent with at least a high school education can follow.
Some people have told me that in this day and age they just don't have the time and resources to home school. Home schooling is not cheap. It cost as much as sending them to private school. Me, I just use the money I would spend on 22" wheels, gold chains, and expensive sneakers and invest it into my children. They are my future. I have decided to never turn my future over to government to indoctrinate into mindless zombies.