Cynical Schooling

I have been doing a lot of research on the difference between European schools and American schools, as well as Charter schools, Public schools and Private schools. Through this research I have come to a very obvious conclusion. The performance of each student and each school is directly related to both how the students and public view education and how difficult the school is to get in to.
Take higher education for example. You really don't see a lot of failure coming out of Harvard. Sure they may be the wealthy kids or the kids with the most advantages, but they have also had to work like mad to get into that school. They are more likely to outperform students attending community colleges because they worked harder to get there and know what is at stake. The same applies for their teachers. They have to be the authority on their subject to earn a spot teaching at an IVY league school. They aren't likely to go easy on their students because they know how hard their students have had to work to get where they are. I think the same applies to secondary schools. Education is compulsory, which means whether you want to go to school or not, you have to, and there are a lot of students in the public education system that do not want to go. When they do show up to school they often put in little effort and are not motivated. Teachers and school administrators have even resorted to bribing their students to come to school. These students don't see school as a privilege, as do some of our foreign counterparts. They see it as a chore to be suffered and escaped from as soon as possible. This is not a healthy view of education for anyone involved. If students don't appreciate their education than they are likely to get out of it exactly what they put in to it, which isn't much. The public's view of education is no better. In the news lately all you see about public school is how the system is failing our students. There isn't enough funding, the teachers are incompetent... it is always someone else's fault. You don't often see a flock of parents showing up to a failing school to help tutor failing students because they don't view it as their problem. It is their problem when the schools are not up to par, but it is not their problem to do something about it.
So I propose a change. A change in the way the public views education and the way students feel about school. I think maybe we should give up on compulsory education. If a student wants to drop out after the 8th grade, let them. Let them go out into the real world with no high school diploma and little in the way of life skills and have them fend for themselves. I am willing to bet that our test score will improve! Maybe we don't need to make it that extreme, maybe we just need to wake them up by creating a more competitive environment, again much the same as our foreign counterparts. Instead of funneling students into the same schools whether they want to be there or not, open vocational schools for students who simply wish to learn a trade, allow them to learn what they want and get out. So what if they lack experience all humanities and can't think critically and independently, at least our test scores will go up! And who cares if our democratic society is driven into the ground by an elitist model of education that only promotes free and independent thinking in the well educated of our society? It doesn't matter if students drop out because we will just be able to tell them how to think when election time rolls around, theres no need for them to develop their own opinions. Who needs equality in education when its only bringing us down? Right?

I thought so.