American public schools are pretty bad. Most people who can afford to send their kids to private school do- and most people can’t afford private school.

There has been an active, deliberate drive since Reagan (in California, since Governor Reagan) by the right to make public eduation worse, to raise an unskilled underclass with no upward mobility and no capacity for critical thinking. In most places local property taxes fund public schools so rich areas have more school funding than poor areas. This is by design, to resegregate and increase inequality.

“Teaching to the test” the problem this comic directly references, was the result of making them pass metrics or lose already limited funding.

The way this comic calls out public education suggests the artist is one of the heartless fascist Republican boomers who created the problem, smirking to an audience of the same with no self-awareness. “Haha, stupid kid. Shoulda gone to private school. Have you tried just… not being poor, you son of a lazy bum?”