In my state (Washington) I've found that the public school system is actually not half bad when it comes to choice. Your school district and school obviously depends on where you live, and your taxpayer dollars get sent to that district. But if you don't like that district for whatever reason, you can put those tax dollars towards another district and go there instead, no questions asked. And I'm pretty sure there's a way to stop paying school taxes altogether and just homeschool without enrolling. I like this system because it still provides a "safety net" of public schools for people to choose from, but it also offers the consumer a choice as to what school they want. The schools that are more desirable get more out-of-district students, and thus more tax dollars, so there is an incentive for all the school districts to do the best they can on improving their education. It's rather close to a capitalist system. The thing fucking it up right now is the No Child Left Behind Act. The poorer schools get less money from the government? What kind of ass-backwards logic is that? Seriously fuck that shit.
Now I have friends on the east coast (Connecticut) where this isn't the case. There, where you live is basically the difference between a good education and a bad one. Switching districts, or even switching schools, is practically unheard of and basically impossible. This perpetuates a horribly classist system where the richer neighborhoods have more tax dollars to spare for their schools, so their kids go to the well-funded schools, while the poor communities cannot necessarily pay their taxes to their school district as well and their schools remain poorly-funded. (Yes, the district lines are often divisions between "rich and poor.") Once there was a homeless woman who got arrested for stealing free education, because she was sending her children to a "rich" public school despite not having an address in the district.
As for the whole revolution thing, I think that's going to become more and more of an issue in the upcoming political cycles. The youth are overwhelmingly more liberal than their parents, and while Occupy Wall Street might not be doing much right now, it will eventually gain a huge amount of momentum with an influx of young voters who are fed up with the system. It's not like America's about to break out into civil war or conduct a coup or anything, but massive protests and riots are a possibility in the future.
