"The quality of the discourse has fallen so low!"

Well yes. Have you seen what goes in schools?

It is precisely there that children are enculturated into the political clown show. The failure of American political discourse, and everything that flows from that, is school.

Invest more money in public education?

You are investing in more dumber politics if you invest more money in schools without substantially redefining what public education entails. You will get more of what you got now - which is a subliterate hyperpolitical public.

Problem isn't that schools don't have enough money to accomplish their pedagogical goals. They have more than enough - compare per student spending in US against nations where outcomes are better. You'll find throughout people manage to get a good education at fraction of cost.

The problem is that schools are in fact accomplishing their goals. Their goals include redistributing public money into pockets, containing the youth population to expand the adult labor pool and to enculturate the youth into ideology. Math, science, literature are tertiary.