I'm glad you pointed out the importance of checking the reverse path. Traceroute can often be misinterpreted. I'd recommend the NANOG presentation "A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute".
I would generally agree that historically universities have not been as focused on teaching as research, but I believe there might be a shift in this. Many top-tier engineering schools, such as Purdue, have engineering education departments (https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/AboutUs/) looking into the pedagogy of technical education.
I dont't want to generalize, but if there is one thing I have learned from my limited experience working in both a Title I HS district and a fairly affluent K-12 district is that these problems are very, very complex.
aik, Here's one example of a downside: Even relatively well-performing school districts can struggle when their student population starts moving to a new charter school in the area. Since many of the costs for education are fixed within a certain margin, it becomes difficult to shed costs to compensate for the lost funding for each student that left the district.
https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog45/presentations/Sunday/...