You overestimate the Ed bureaucracy. These people are not even capable of running their own institutions, much less engaging in a sinister plot to repress the children of the workers and the poor. In addition to being incompetent and half bright, the Ed bureaucrats are asked to no an impossible job under absurd conditions with no money. Add to that a culture that systematically disses academic achievement (pointy-haided inallecshuls . . .), and the outcome is inevitable. Half-assed education may be functional for capitalism, but it is not explained by its functionality.
^^^^^^^ CB: Actually, I wasn't so much thinking that education officials are consciously and purposefully plotting this. There may be some more conscious , sinister plotting at the level of the funding decisionmakers. But it is probably a situation like other areas, say , like mass disillusion and apathy about voting. How it comes about that most people don't vote most of the time is a complicated mixture of factors and people , most of whom are unconscious or indifferent to the fact that the pattern of fewer voters makes it easier for minority elites to control elections. But it is not a coincidence that it helps the ruling class retain power. The small number of conscious ruling class agents don't even have to cause the origin of voter apathy. They just have to cultivate a phenonmenon that arises "on its own".
Similarly, I think the reverse of your aphoristic last sentence is true: Half-assed education is very significantly explained by its functionality for capitalism. All it takes really is a few class conscious dominators of state budgets and policy to limit the funding. The vast majority of the educational bureaucracy is not conscious of the issue I raise, but the fact itself (you point out) that there are many incompetents can be fostered by the class conscious top dogs in state legislatures and state houses, and their liasons with the bourgeoisie. For one thing, all they have to do is preserve the status quo, fail to improve much, refuse to pay teachers more, etc.