There's really two problems with education that are tied up in this article: The first problem is that the material we're teaching is boring, uninspiring, and useless

I dont know if thats a bug of a feature. After all a lot of jobs people do later in life are boring uninspired and useless. My wife thinks that's a good thing and helps prepare kids for the adult world.

The article itself is ironical boring uninspiring and useless. It fails to address your second point which I think is most important, that schools fail at teaching the boring material. Lack of resources is a huge problem (I think there are probably enough net resources but they are allocated poorly within the system) but also lack of order in the classroom.

Every time I read accounts from teachers who work in inner cities it sounds like the spend every day working in a literal war zone. Disruptive students that fight, yell, threaten etc without the ability for teachers to properly discipline those students. I really do feel like we need laws and systems in place that allow for effective removal and punishment of students who are severely disrupting the learning environment and threatening teachers. Were really failing the basic problem of safety which is the second bar on the need scale.

And until we solve that problem I dont think we can ever really even begin to address the teacher quality and lack of student learning problem. Teachers want to go out, make a difference and teach students but not many are going to do that at the expense of personal safety.