School is always what you make of it as a student. You could go to Harvard and goof off and not read anything and not learn. In contrast, you could go to community college and really apply yourself by attending every class, reading books, doing an excellent job on all assignments, etc. It’s not always the school.

My kid always got As but got satisfactory effort grades. He was smart but kind of lazy. I took him out of public school and then he learned good work habits. Public schools have pretty meh expectations.