Not necessarily; he might just mean that parents who did poorly in school are more likely to raise children who also do poorly in school. Some people and cultures value education, and some don't, and they tend to pass that on to their children.
I saw this myself growing up, as my extended family on my mother's side were white, rural people, who weren't educated and didn't value education at all. Luckily she kept me away from them most of the time and pushed me to do well in school and go to college; I was the first person in her family to finish college as a result. If I had spent all my time growing up with my cousins, that probably wouldn't have happened.
As for reproduction, many of those poorly-educated cousins went on to become teenage parents...
Maybe the fact that it was such a big sacrifice is one of the reasons why some people tend not to value it, as it requires them to deeply change a lot of their cultural values. Maybe it is not that they don't value education, but they don't value the culture that formal education entails (white collar, college educated, city life culture). Speaking broadly here, of course. A quick and extreme example to me is the mandatory native american reeducation camps. These peoples were subjected to a complete change in culture in addition to education.
I think that in a perfect world, we could do a shift in education, and instead of molding the people to the culture necessary to succeed academically, we can mold education to fit the people.
Can you be more specific? Are you talking, for example, about religious groups?