Ben Levi,
The idea for public schools came not from contemporary liberals but from Yehoshua Ben Gamla. If you read about the motivation for setting up the first public schools in America in the 1630s, it is very similar to that of Ben Gamla except that the people who set them up were Christian. Once the schools stopped being Christian (Massachusetts was the last state to make the change in 1833), Jews could attend and in fact many frum Jews, including even some great rabbis, attended public schools. Of course, traditional Torah education is better but Jews have always been permitted to set up our own schools here in America. Calling for the destruction of public schools is no way to improve conditions for Jews.