[VladRussian]

>an elephant in the room all debates on US education dance around.

is that

>US children

is pure virtual "statistical" entity. The education in the US is local. Chinese children from Bay Area Cupertino are tigers ( as i heard, don't have direct experience). Children of my Russian or "native" (WASP type) American friends in the Bay Area have no problem being accepted to Stanford, Harward, Berkeley (though one "lazy" one was forced to go to lesser known UC campus).

On the other side, beside obvious case of black ghettos, there are well known areas in the US where school boards decide to teach Creationism, where people "cling to their guns and religion" while waiting for the President to bring back from China and hand them down "good paying jobs". What kind of motivation and resulting education will children get there?

The children must not be held hostages of the local political, religious, economical situation. Alabama didn't want to integrate schools - the real force was apllied to enforce the right of the people. The same way here - the basic education is a guaranteed right and the children don't have a way to defend their right. That means that federal government must step in and apply necessary resources (and force if necessary) to make sure that the children's right for the basic education (and that has very specific meaning in the 21st century, and isn't subject to specific religious beliefs of local school board members) isn't violated.