14 year old failing high school, rocky home life. Please help.

I hope this is the right place to post, if it's not please feel free to point me to the correct place. I will include backstory so it's easier to understand, I promise it's relevant. This will be quite long, but I apologize and am so grateful for ANY feedback and advice. TLDR at the bottom.I (26/f) am engaged to 26m, and his little brother is 14. He is my fiance's half brother, which accounts for the age difference. My fiance and I are parents to a 3 year old daughter and a 19 month old daughter. I will call my fiance Mike, and his little brother Ryan.Ryan and Mike have different fathers. Mike lived with his own dad pretty much full time growing up and only saw their mother every other weekend, when he actually wanted to go. He has two older sisters, one who barely passed high school and the other who dropped out. The sisters lived with their mom growing up. Their mother is not "motherly" as in she has no sense of discipline, lacks compassion, and has no structure set in place at home. Mike and his mother are not on "bad" terms, but there was never that nurturing/close connection between mother and son. She is nice but young minded.Ryan's dad has a drug addiction to crack. He is in and out of his life frequently. He is a great dad when he's actually around, but most of the time he's nowhere to be found and this obviously this takes a toll on Ryan. Ryan is big into riding dirt bikes and has been his whole life, same with racing RC cars. His dad is usually who takes him to ride dirt bikes, sometimes taking him out of state to race them. Ryan is even sponsored at the local RC racing shop because he's so good at racing RC cars. Ryan's mom and dad have gotten back together (he moves back in to their apartment) more times than I can count. Currently his father is not in the picture. The relationship between Ryan's parents is toxic and clearly not a good environment for him.Mike and I, for the most part are his "functioning family unit". We pretty much play the Mom and Dad role to him. We take him on our family camping trip every year, we talk to him about life and school and try to implement values. We ask him about his dad (but never push, just check in once in a while with him). We have family dinners here when we can. He mows our grass and helps out when we need projects done around the house. Just some examples. Ryan goes to the RC shop alone every time, his mom drops him off but never stays. I think she has stayed maybe once or twice on an actual race night, when she and Ryan's father were together and he wanted to go. We often pick him up and bring him back home or just have him stay over our house because his mom is out and can't pick him back up.His mom calls us often when Ryan and she have a disagreement so we can mediate. She does not have any type of natural ability to parent him herself. She just yells back at him and argues with him like she would talk to/argue with an adult. She will often call us and say, "I'm so sick of his attitude, he is always pissed off, snaps so quickly, etc". It is frustrating because although we want to help, he does not live with us and we can only do so much. His behavior is clearly a cry for help, and as I have been wording it to Mike, "a symptom of a much larger issue at hand". He is not getting the attention and structure he needs at home and I am at my wits end here trying to find a way to get through to their mom about how to help him. Ryan is a great kid, and I know it's hard to understand that from the things I've said in this post, but he truly is. His behavior is a reaction to a much deeper issue, and that I'm positive about. He is the best uncle my girls could EVER have. When he is at our house, he never gives us an attitude, he laughs, smiles, plays, jokes..but when he is around his mom he just seems like he literally hates her. He never talks nicely to her and I know that's part of being a teenager because I was the same way with my parents sometimes, but I can almost feel the hurt he is displaying towards her that is coming out as anger.He is SO smart. When he actually puts in the effort and does his work he gets great grades. He knows how to take apart a motor and even build one from scratch. He has the brain of an engineer, and should be in a trade school but his grades were so bad he got denied. We are so mad at his mom because she knew he was having issues and kept ignoring them, and now it's gotten to a point where it feels like he's so deep into this mindset of school not mattering, that we're not sure we can change it.The other day he brought over an Algebra assignment to show me he got a 100 on it! He knew I would be so proud because he is really struggling in Algebra, and we talk about it often. I have stayed up on the phone with his mom and him until 11pm a few times helping them figure out his Math homework, so this was a big deal for him. I'm glad that he feels happy to show me these things. I am also glad that I am someone who knows how to show emotions, and was able to tell him how proud I am of him and how far he has come with understanding Math in general. It seems like no one knows how to communicate emotions well in this family, including my fiance sometimes, so I am the one who has to step up and help with these kinds of things. I know it is not supposed to be my job, but I am naturally a "fixer" and can't just not help..Now to the current problem.. Ryan's mother asked me to come with her to a meeting with his school this morning because of issues he's having with his grades, and she's not good with handling these things herself (her words). I am very happy she feels confident in my ability to help, but worried at the same time that this is her 4th kid and she's still not confident handling these things. I knew some of what was going on, but not the full extent until now. He is failing every single class right now, including gym. I don't mean just a few points under the passing grade, he has a 39 average in Algebra, a 37 in Health, a 39 in Physical Science, a 19 in World Civ..etc. He is cutting class, and refusing to do in class work/quizzes because he "doesn't understand the material". He has 19 overall absences since the beginning of the year. A few are excused, but not many. Per my fiance.. their mom lets him race his RC car all day and night on Sunday and he's too tired to go to school sometimes on Monday so he just doesn't go, and she doesn't make him. If he misses more than I think 2 or 3 more days, he will have to retake more than the 3 classes he already has to in summer school or retake them next year. Apparently she gets phone calls every time he cuts class, but he is never disciplined. Never. She has never told him he can't race his RC cars, and has never grounded him for anything ever. The meeting was a bit over an hour and I took notes and asked questions while she pretty much sat there and acted surprised to hear what was going on. He has until March 15th to complete all of his missing work or he has to switch to an alternative school. I asked about it and it's not for "troubled" kids, it's more of a .. something is going on and you're way behind and going to fail out of school so this is your last resort, kind of place. So he says. Ryan knows this and does not want to go. He has a tutor (teacher) in place in period 3 right now, and he has skipped every session. I mentioned that a peer tutor might be better, and suggested that they have a junior or senior tutor him.. maybe someone who was in his shoes once, and Ryan shot that idea down when the teacher mentioned it to him at the meeting with us. So I suggested my original plan I wrote out anyways this past weekend to prepare for the meeting, and that is that he comes over here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week to work on his make up work and current homework, and then on Saturdays to go over anything extra he feels he needs help with. As soon as I said that, he said he would absolutely do that and has no problem with it whatsoever. I told him it will be fun, I'll get him his own desk and make his own work space for him. I will make a nice dinner those nights for all of us, whatever he wants and I'll even do my own homework with him so he doesn't feel alone (I'm taking online classes for a Bachelor degree). I plan on going to the store later today and getting him some stuff to keep his make up work organized so he doesn't feel so overwhelmed too.Apparently there is also something called Powerschool where you can sign in and keep track of all his grades. Ryan's mother has never signed up for it and I told her to get it today while we were there for the meeting. This is quarter 3 of the school year now and it should have been done the first week of school. I am FURIOUS about this.When we left the meeting and got back to her house, she asked me if I wanted to take all the print outs the teacher gave her since I was going to be helping him, and of course I said yes. She also went and grabbed the pile of make up work and gave it to me too, so I can work on it with him. Her logic is, "He's 14, I can't force him to do his homework." She doesn't even try, she lets him go wherever he wants whenever he wants with no repercussions.He spends most of his time at the RC racing shop. He even SLEPT OVER!!!!!!!!???!?!?! there on Saturday night because they were setting something big up the next day and he wanted to stay.. and she let him. Are we wrong for thinking this is inappropriate? Although we know the guys down there fairly well, and they all care about Ryan a lot and step in as the father figure for him (they know a lot of what is going on and try to talk to him too)... holy shit I cannot stop thinking about the fact that someone is letting their CHILD sleep over with a bunch of adult men who could be doing lord knows what to him. I doubt any of that is going on because they try to keep Ryan on the straight and narrow, but I still can't believe that these thoughts don't even cross Ryan's mother's mind. Maybe I am overreacting and could be thinking wrong because my parents were very strict growing up, but it doesn't sit right with me.. at all. He spends all day Saturday AND Sunday at the shop, goes there after school almost every day during the week and his mom doesn't see a problem with it because she works 2-3 jobs and doesn't want him to just be home alone by himself all the time. I understand that but we are ONE exit away and he is always more than welcome to come here, but he would rather go have fun and I understand that because he has never been told that shouldn't be his priority.My fiance thinks tough love is the answer because HIS dad was that way with him and it worked, but I think in Ryan's situation it would backfire. I think he needs love. I think he's craving structure and an environment with constant people where he doesn't have to worry about one of them leaving or not taking care of him.I have spent the last week or two Googling about how to get teenagers to do their homework, how to motivate them, etc. I wrote down so many notes but I just want to talk to people who have been through this and can offer some insight.This was so long. I tried to organize my thoughts as well as I could and tried to only include things that I feel really matter. I'm just feeling really anxious right now because I don't know what to do about all of this. I'm worried that if I take over parenting/guiding him through his teenage years I'll say the wrong thing or be too hard on him or too soft or not push him enough or push him too hard. I just haven't parented a teenager obviously.. my girls are only 3&1 and I'm not there yet. I'm young enough to relate to him but old enough where I don't remember the teenager mindset, so I just kind of feel lost and very sad for him. Please help me help him. I want to break this cycle the family has of not taking education seriously and not providing an emotionally supportive environment.Things I am aware of: He has emotional childhood trauma from the things I talked about in this post. Not doing his homework and failing school is a cry for help/attention.Things I have suggested: Talk therapy, multiple times. Anger Management, multiple times. Tutoring from me, 3-4x/week for as long as he wants/needs. (Agreed to today, will see what happens) Cutting back on RC car racing, redirecting his priorities.Questions I have:Is tough love the right or wrong answer? Mike and I cannot agree on this. I think he has had enough yelling and nagging in his life. I think we need to take the gentle, loving, redirecting of priorities over time approach but also cut way back on RC racing.How do I get through to a teenager? Him and I are very close. I talk to him often about life and goals and stuff like that, but I don't want to be too preachy (my mom was&after awhile I tuned her out) but I also want to be a motherly figure for him since he doesn't exactly have one.How do you get a kid to care about school? Is that even possible?I read about a "token economy" in an article about this kind of problem, does that work when it's already this bad? How would we implement that if we're not the parents?What can we do as just sister in law and big brother? How can we support him?How do I encourage her to get him into therapy in a way that she will actually follow through with it?How do I make sure not to overstep boundaries with his mom?(although she doesn't seem to mind whenever I make suggestions or help)TLDR: 14yo brother in law failing freshman year of high school, doesn't do his in class work. Father is addicted to drugs, parenting doesn't come naturally to his mother. He doesn't do homework, would rather spend all day and night racing his RC cars. Does not get disciplined in any way, shape, or form. Cuts classes. Has emotional/anger issues while around anyone besides us. Need to know ways to help him feel motivated to do his schoolwork, support him emotionally, and talk his mom into putting him in therapy. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2FbfHlk