World Net Daily has a commentary from Migdia Chinea, a former substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country's largest public school district:

In my view, the LAUSD is completely corrupt, inept and broken, with many students having serious behavioral problems and disinterested in learning, whereas the teachers remain underpaid and exhausted – some of them just marking time until their retirement and giving out charity passing grades to high school students who can barely write or do math at a third-grade level.

Perhaps the school district where you live is not as exceedingly bad as Los Angeles, but it is bad.  We lived in Irvine, California a few years ago, which is noted for its "excellent" public schools -- our homeschool is better.