Education is always the salvation. There's a lot of negativity around education systems as they currently stand, but of course education empowers. There's so much research into how education can give people autonomy over their lives, more choices, more resources, more means to make a better life for themselves.
As long as the parents do their part and instill values in their children that promote learning and improvement.
Having spent years as an educator myself, this is often the issue - having a negative view of teachers and schools, and not making a distinction between then and now, or teaching the child to be curious and value education despite the things they may not like about it - has such a big influence on students. I have so little respect for hte parents who come in and say in front of their child: 'oh I hated school' or 'you'll never need to know that in real life' or 'no wonder you're bad at that, I never was' - set such poor examples for their child and limit their ability to get ahead through education. Of course, no one has to have a university education, but a solid foundation provides such benefits to life and can't be ignored.
Even if it's the ability to dissassemble the bullshit we're fed via governments and media. To think critically.
Here in Australia people look down on Aboriginal people as if they're not good enough and that they could have been more successful if they'd just tried. They don't begin to understand that education hasn't been top of the list for people who've had so many human rights removed from them in the last 200 years, and that this kind of wealth - like health - is inherited. They will argue that they get more 'handouts' than 'white' Australia without rationalising that they've had proportionately less over time, and that funding education is attempting to redress the balance, to give people back their autonomy. I'm sure it's similiar in all kinds of countries with all kinds of people. This is just one example.
And yes, we can be cynical too and look at what areas of education are defunded. For example, the removal of funding for the arts and students having to foot the bill for an Arts degree when science students are subsidised. Of course, Arts students are more likely to critique those in power.
I could go on and am probably rambling. It's a day for it - raining here. I'm glad your daughter is in a school where she gets the focus and attention she deserves. There was nothing that made me more irate than a pedagogical 'guru' who said class size didn't matter - of course it does. Even if it matters only to the teacher marking the essays and preparing the work and feeding the passions of their charges - this has a trickle down affect too!
Great article.
RE: A Cascade of Education.