American public schools are the subject of this ABC News 20/20 investigation, which sends producers and student cameramen into classrooms most school districts would rather keep off camera. At Abraham Lincoln High School in New York, students describe teachers they tune out and say classmates smoking marijuana in school hallways is unremarkable, not shocking. State after state denies the crew access to ordinary classrooms, so the report leans on footage from Washington, D.C., including Woodrow Wilson High, often cited as one of the country's better schools. What the hidden cameras catch there is not reassuring: a teacher unable to keep order, and a student filmed dancing with his shirt off while the class watches and the teacher does nothing. The film uses these scenes, along with interviews with students, teachers, and administrators, to build a case that American public education is failing to prepare kids for anything beyond graduation day, and it leaves the question of how to fix that mostly open.