Even the most challenged or unmotivated kids can be turned into achievers.
But the kids that never respond to education are the ones who have parents that don't care if they don't.
Throw all the money you want at Newark public schools. Their output will be little different a couple decades from now.
Well, mostly involuntary minorities and low-SES groups. (To use John Ogbu's words.)
In the US, IF you work the educational system, you can pull yourself into the middle class with as much in student debt as a high end toyota. Today. With no money. Bust your ass in school, take out a loan, and go to a 2nd tier college in engineering or accounting, and voila -- you are middle class. This is the worst case -- if you are actually talented, you should be able to get scholarships and/ or go to a top tier university -- voila, you are UPPER middle class.
HOWEVER, if you are born to a rural working class family, your mom and dad tell you school is a waste of time, that you can't afford it, your teachers assume you are doomed to failure, and you can hit a local maximum in prestige by being a smart aleck and a decent football player and working early. Nobody is going to encourage you do anything else -- not your teachers, parents, or age group friends.
And you are screwed, before you even showed up in kindergarten... It has nothing to do with race or money, just culture. The classic guy on the interaction of culture with education with class is Pierre Bourdieu -- look him up.
I know about these white families some -- I imagine it is a little worse for black and hispanic kids. But the working class whites prove my point about culutre better, since they are supposedly the power group. (Well, in terms of race, sure, but what matters is class -- go Karl!)
(With asian kids, there is a reverse "Pygmalion Effect"; I knew a girl who got through a second tier UC NEVER doing any homework -- if she were black, she would have failed out early because every little thing she did wrong would have been fodder for preconceptions. Or if she was working class "country" white.)
In my public high school, we had kids go to Ivy's, and we had kids go to jail. I went to a decent state school on a scholarship - I was only 20th out of my class of 400. That wasn't that hard to do. Sure I didn't go to Harvard, but I got an engineering degree for basically the cost of living expenses which is not too bad. My total expense on education lifetime has been less than my first year salary.
Meanwhile, I found out one of the kids I grew up with in elementary school just got arrested for murder (of another girl from our HS). One of the kids I did stagecraft with in HS is in jail for 10 years for killing someone while DUI. I know a bunch of kids who did nothing at all with their lives and are still working local retail jobs.
We all went to the same public school. We all had the same teachers. It isn't even the parents, some of best in my class had 1 parent or bad parents (hell even my parents were AGAINST me doing honors classes, I hate to fight them about it). The outcome is entirely dependent on what the student himself put in.
But like one line is that "being poor" blog that is always passed around, you are responsible for decisions you made at 14 whether you like it or not.