At the end of the day, if parents don't value education, there's nothing an educator can do to fix that. Even truancy laws can't force a kid to pay attention and do their homework.
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with valuing education. Not everyone got to work from home during the pandemic. Those in the lower economic class had to continue to work 8 or more hours a day to put food on the table. It is hard to make a kid pay attention to school when they don't want to if you aren't there.
Even if there's nothing an educator can do to fix it, what they can do is give the student a failing grade for failing to complete the course. It is a slap in the face to every student who shows up and does the work to "socially promote" kids who don't do the work. Combined with the ongoing elimination of standardized tests, we are left with no metrics to judge students. It is no surprise that our colleges and other "higher educational institutions" are filled with people who should not be there, because they don't even have a basic education.
You're absolutely right that children are not to be blamed for the sins of their parents. But in order to advance society we must work with human nature to make incentives aligned between disparate entities.
One of the most fundamental parts of human nature is that parents want to see their children do well, and it's often the biggest reason why people toil and overcome great difficulties instead of settling for the minimum it takes to sustain themselves -- all so that their children might enjoy a life better than theirs. Once government steps in between that relationship and guarantees that children will be fine no matter what the parents do or don't do, you remove that important incentive.
Should we let children born to poor parents starve or dumb parents stay uneducated? No, let's do what we can to alleviate that. But how far will you go to ensure that your parentage has no effect whatsoever on your life? Clearly it's not my fault that my parents aren't Yao Ming (7'6") and Ye Li (6'3"), but nevertheless I shouldn't expect to have the same chance at making the NBA as their children. Then why should a child who was born to parents who don't value the qualities it takes to succeed be equally successful as one who was born to parents who did?
In other words, how high should your equalizing bar go, to remove the influence of parents on children, especially in the face of the fact that public educational outcomes in this country are stubbornly refusing to budge as the amount of money spent per pupil rises year after year?
There is legitimate debate to be had here, beyond just downvoting me and calling me an unsympathetic child-hater.
That appears to be a false equivalency, Yao Ming doesn't "value" being tall, he is tall. Parents who don't value education may be crappy parents, or they may be hard-eyed realists who think nothing will better the lot of their children. But it's in the interest of a society to not have large numbers of uneducated and angry young people causing havoc.
I don't know that society can handle a government large enough to ensure that large numbers of uneducated and angry young people do not exist, if the majority of parents do not care to educate their children. Put another way, I'm advocating for policy that incentivizes parents to be good parents, instead of one that raises children in their stead if they fail to be good parents.
> if the majority of parents do not care to educate their children.
I don't agree that this is true. I might agree that a majority of parents now don't understand how to educate their children or have the excess capacity to do so.
Reading to your child means that you have literacy above your child as well as having time. Doing well in school presupposes that your parents know how to do well in school. Navigating bureaucracy is a skill learned by the upper-middle class and above.
Working the system is difficult when you spend most of your time simply trying to avoid having that system grind you apart.
Providing a public education to everyone is how society can help ameliorate some of those issues. It also is the most cost effective by a long, long margin.
We aren't spending the money on the parents though, we are spending it on their children, who deserve that attempt even if they aren't able to fully take advantage of it.
Ruthlessly optimizing use of "the public's money" is not inherently virtuous, but providing the universal opportunity for education is. If it is spent to offer an education, and that offer is not accepted, it is still money well spent.