The incentive is : keep your job / don't get sued.
The law requires certain accommodations for students with disabilities and local elections should handle the rest. All that requires is an engaged community and parents can be extremely vocal/involved. Cities can have good reason to lean on schools too, because good schools bring people into an area and they bring money with them. In that sense, public schools do compete. Families and young adults looking to start them don't want to move to areas without good schools.
Incentives are there, it just takes work and paying attention. A lot of people don't even bother voting in local elections and those that do don't always give much thought to who to elect as superintendent or to the school board. When communities don't take the time to invest in their schools they don't get much out of them. It's part of the reason why poor communities that lack the time/money/energy to be as involved tend to have poorer quality schools. Adding to that are the wealthy families that move to where schools are better or don't move into those areas at all.
So you kind of just explained why public schools aren't actually competing, at least in poor areas. The issue is that many of the families in these areas do actually care about education, but are unable fix their schools because of others apathy. What should they do?
Organize. Campaign. Reach out to other parents. Name and shame. Apathy is hard to overcome, but most people already want good schools. Even people without kids don't want to be surrounded by uneducated people and don't want to deal with the problems they cause. Making time for local politics is a hard sell, but I've become increasingly convinced that it's our best chance to enact meaningful changes and improve our day to day lives.
This has already been happening and the result in many states is that the path of least resistance is to increase the decision making power of families.
Everyone voting with their feet is functionally equivalent to removing the disruptive kids from class, even though it might not seem like that if one has ideological blinders on.
You need only look at the Moms for Liberty types to see what small but well-organised campaigns can do. If you don't make time for local politics, others will.
The law requires certain accommodations for students with disabilities and local elections should handle the rest. All that requires is an engaged community and parents can be extremely vocal/involved. Cities can have good reason to lean on schools too, because good schools bring people into an area and they bring money with them. In that sense, public schools do compete. Families and young adults looking to start them don't want to move to areas without good schools.
Incentives are there, it just takes work and paying attention. A lot of people don't even bother voting in local elections and those that do don't always give much thought to who to elect as superintendent or to the school board. When communities don't take the time to invest in their schools they don't get much out of them. It's part of the reason why poor communities that lack the time/money/energy to be as involved tend to have poorer quality schools. Adding to that are the wealthy families that move to where schools are better or don't move into those areas at all.