A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
Although I think I agree with the thrust of this (children need independence), I suspect the original intent was not so much direct help as cultivating an environment conducive to independent success. Like the difference between trying to grow a flower and trying to build a flower.
Of course, children eventually also need to be able to do this independently, but speaking for myself at least I didn't really appreciate this facet of education (nor was I in a position to do it for myself) in middle school.
> The heritability of conscientiousness facets and their relationship to IQ and academic achievement
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.long
> Genetic research has shown that intelligence makes a major contribution to the heritability of educational achievement. However, we show that other broad domains of behavior such as personality and psychopathology also account for genetic influence on GCSE scores beyond that predicted by intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE scores.
> The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence
https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf
> Our findings confirmed positive associations between IQ and the facets of Competence and Dutifulness (ranging 0.11–0.27), with academic achievement showing correlations of 0.27 and 0.15 with these same facets and 0.15 with Deliberation. All conscientiousness facets were influenced by genes (broad sense heritabilities ranging 0.18–0.49) and unique environment, but common environment was judged unimportant.
While academic achievement western societies still isn't as much determined by individual skill as many people would like to believe, it's worse in the countries the immigrants come from, and additional factors like language barriers and discrimination (intentional, structural or even accidental) render the idea of inheritability quite useless.
Another problem is that studies have identified environmental factors which influence intelligence much more than any known individual genetic factors. For example infections with Malaria or other parasites, but also the duration and quality of school attendance.
You will notice that none of the "twins raised apart" studies include such factors, because virtually no children in western societies have these problems.
And that's why the impact of the education system and socioeconomic factors on academic achievement are vastly underestimated, especially because people keep bringing up these inheritability studies.
And that, in turn, disadvantages students with working parents, or with parents that don't have the skill or experience to guide them to higher achievement.
It may sound awful to trust "the state" to handle education independently, but the alternatives are usually worse.
One of the most important epiphanies in my life was realizing that some parents don't care at all about their kids, some are jealous of them and actively sabotage them and that some systematically abuse them for entertainment.
It is also why I'm get angry when people push others to have children; many people should not raise children.
Meaning: They would care more for their children if they had the energy and power to do so. And some of those will also rationalize their inability to spend the energy as not wanting to do it.
Parents spending time with kids over activities that are mutually pleasant or just talking or doing needed activities are valuable. Third party organized nonsense that just needs to be done has no intrinsic "time together" value.
And in case of bad parents, it puts the kid at mercy of bad parent even more.
What if public school is awful, and the only reason it looks decent is that some parents are picking up the slack? What would happen if you cut those parents out of the system?