These inner city schools are also dealing with kids from broken families. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. When the poor kid's mom doesn't care, doesn't teach them to behave and listen to the teacher, doesn't care if they do their homework to try to learn, there's not much the teacher can do. Then to top it off, the teacher is blamed because the kid who refuses to pay attention doesn't know anything.

I used to love those Little House on the Prairie books when I was little, and the descriptions of school will change your perspective on what's needed to learn. They were sharing books, slates, half a chalk pencil. She describes trying to learn her lessons while sharing the book with her sister. They were on different lessons, so just held up the pages in the middle and each read their own lesson so they could go up to the teacher's desk and be quizzed verbally. Inner city schools are not underfunded, they're infested with thieving administrators, terrible parents, and apathetic children.