Many states, including Michigan, have started or started and given up on, quality education for one major reason - the lack of growth by city students. Of course setting higher standards is racist, there aren't monthly good report cards like welfare checks. Most kids today think good grades and a diploma are entitlements for them. When the grades aren't good, CAIR, THE NAACP, Laraza, etc., all scream racism and discrimination which in turn get politicians on the bully pulpit and they have to make sure statutory laws are written to stop this terrible "injustice" and further down the slide to hell America goes. The things you can never force a kids in school to do:
MAKE them learn
MAKE them think
MAKE them talk
MAKE them read
MAKE them accept your values
All of these are the basis of education.
And so much more...
That morning prayer acknowledged the existence of an immutable and more powerful entity which had established standards of Right and Wrong, and would one day judge all thereby.
The Pledge of Allegiance further acknowledged the bond of country, of a culture which united diverse regions and people, for our mutual benefit, another level of loyalty, and an entire set of principles.
Those things, depending on your school, would be found in your studies, reflected (or renounced) in your actions, words, and thoughts, and incorporated in your character.
Fully one generation, and perhaps two have been taught otherwise, as first prayer to Almighty God and then the pledge of loyalty to this nation have been erased from our schools and replaced with a contest of victimhood and division: division of the family, the community, and the country, often along lines that are entirely artificial, the product of twisted minds making a mockery of all that is sane and natural and proclaiming themselves the wisest of the wise.
Typically, the Leftists who have engineered this creation, who have cobbled together this parody of America with insane divisiveness, held together only by the desire to loot it, fail to realize the group which is largest is still loyal to that God and those ideals, and have divided themselves from it by creating and pandering to any group which excludes itself from being truly American.
In that, they have sown the seeds of their demise, and they, at their peril, prod and goad a sleeping giant, one awakening to the foulness they have made of its home. Unintended Consequences are their hallmark, and this one, like underestimating the crystalizing resolve of Americans after Pearl Harbor, will be their undoing.