Most of my school experience has actually been in private school, but as a child, I did have 3 years of public school, and I attended public university for four years as an adult.
I will start out by saying that every public school system is different. Its differences depend upon the employees who work for the entire public school system, the teachers, the students, and even the surrounding culture.
My Catholic high school was a college prep high school, meaning that it is expected that almost everyone who attends my high school will attend college, whether it's community college, an elite university, or something in between. This meant that our classes were more difficult and required more discipline and studying in order to earn an A.
Many of my friends and classmates who primarily went through the public school system did not go through school this way. Many of them, however, ended up doing fine during college because they were already disciplined and enjoyed learning on their own time. School didn't need to teach them how to study, because they already knew how. However, for the ones who didn't have good study habits and whose schools didn't hold them accountable for said bad study habits, they took a beating during college. I have a friend who after her first year was on academic probation because she didn't know how to study. Many of my classmates constantly skipped class for whatever reasons they could come up with and didn't have the brains to drop before their money was wasted on F's.
My university had recently started a program called the Early College Alliance (ECA), where high school students could take college classes in order to earn their high school diploma while receiving lots of college experience beforehand. I used to work for the Biology Department while attending university, and I had to help the Biology ECA program get their supplies counted and recorded. I was speaking to the Biology teacher and he said that students have no idea how to study for a test and how to responsibly earn an A because they are so used to getting their A spoon-fed to them.
In short, the public school system is different in every area. No two systems are completely identical, and while some public school systems do a fine job at teaching students, others are more concerned about making sure their students do OK on standardized tests than they do about actually teaching.
And yeah, No Child Left Behind is BS. The system is detrimental to public school systems that are not doing so well academically, and it gives more funding to the ones who don't really need more money from the government. I don't know how to fix it or what we could do differently to make the system better, but No Child Left Behind doesn't benefit the people who really need the help.
Aaaaand homeschooling isn't for everyone either... I know people who were homeschooled and learned a lot. Others who are homeschooled get really far behind their own peers and don't ever really learn how to socialize. Every child is different, and not all parents make good teachers.
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