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<p>You’ve summed up why we homeschool our children. In my town, I couldn’t count on finding a high school where a smart kid would both need to do the homework to keep a good grade AND get intellectual advancement from doing the homework. In my generation, I knew really bright kids who blew off school (dropping out, in several cases) and somewhat less bright kids who ground it out but weren’t prepared for colleges like Caltech. My childhood best friend, a man I greatly admire, is an electrical engineer who went to same lousy high school I did, with the only major difference in his program being that he didn’t move out of state to an even more backward state as I did 
before graduating from high school. He supplements his school education as he has all his life, by independent reading. He thought it was expedient to get straight As–as you pointed out in your post–and put up with school nonsense until he got into college. He has NEVER been a lazy person, as his dad insisted that he pursue hands-on, challenging hobbies outside school hours. (They didn’t own a TV while he was growing up.) </p>
<p>I hope the young people in my care (and I mean the kids on my math team, as well as my own children) do get the message that if school isn’t challenging enough, they just have to find lots of challenge outside school. Developing work habits early is crucial. Figuring out efficiency to avoid the busy-work of mediocre teachers taking too much time is a big problem in some school systems. I LOVE for young people to be busy, but I hope their busyness makes their brains busy as well as their pencils.</p>