Parents need to take responsibility for outcomes. Education happens as much at home as it does in school. You need engaged teachers AND parents.

Teacher salaries need to keep up. The problem is teacher salaries aren’t a state or a national setup. They depend on the school district you’re in. If you’re in a high income district where higher taxes are afforded. Teacher salaries are good. But then these places also have VERY engaged parents - which makes the scores much better.

If you want rural and inner city scores to improve it will need real funding - 1. For teachers to want to move to small town USA and teach there, 2. Or for them to risk life and limb going to inner cities and 3. Having an extremely high teacher to student ratio - probably 5-10 per teacher to compensate for lack of engagement at home.

It's a pipe dream. I live in a fairly high income district. The school's attitude is my way or the highway. Neighboring municipalities do not fare any better in this department. From my experience, schools will fight tooth and nail to defend the status quo. I gave up.