Her life sounds pretty shitty, like she has nothing to look forward to besides shower masturbation time. You guys seem to be all over her too, which while good-intentioned, is probably driving her crazy.
Have you tried doing quality things together as a family? Something fun for a teenager, going to a go-kart track or to a beach, or hiking in some mountains, rock-climbing gym, something like that? Schedule a weekly family time to do something fun. A lot of getting a kid to listen to their parents is having quality bonding time that establishes a relationship beyond "i'm the authority." Her life is shit now, so why would she work hard for a future that she doesn't know can be other than shit?
Or best of all, go to a counselor (PhD variety), esp. one that specializes in children and families. Ask them. Go yourself first, or with your wife, to ask advice. Start there.
We had this stuff going. We still try to do stuff together but part of punishing her generally takes all of that stuff away. Case in point: We took her to wizard con, it's a huge deal to her and we had a great time. Only days later she's in trouble again at school with 2 detentions in the same day for not listening to teachers and not doing homework.
I thought the same thing: Spend more "quality" time with the kid and maybe she'll become more involved in her own life. I'll go out of my way to do something with her or help her somehow and the next day she's stabbing me in the back doing the same stuff as before. That's the way it feels anyway. I try not to take it personally but it's damn hard.
As for riding the kid's ass too hard... I've put a lot of thought into this also. We had some punishments laid out and she broke the rules (got detention for not doing homework). Instead of punishing her I thought about it and we worked out a plan to help her make sure she has all her books and assignments before we leave school grounds, that she writes it all down and we check it. The plan was we all share some responsibility in helping her get her homework done. So no punishment was handed down and we genuinely tried to help. A week later she gets 2 detentions in a single day which equaled 2 months of restriction. We laid it out to her that if she got another detention she had to serve the punishment for the last thing she did wrong and the new thing.
The kid likes to draw. I've wanted to take her down to the French Quarter by Jackson Square on the weekends so she could see all the independent artists. The kid would rather sleep in though... She loves Tim Burton but if Tim Burton was on our front doorstep at 9am on a Saturday she'd lay in bed a couple more hours...
Famm: You're being a douche. The spirit of the forum is nondouchery.
Her dad lives on the other side of the lake about an hour away. He pulls every other weekend dad duty. He's a nice guy, I like him but he's not involved at all in parenting.
I'm up late now because I woke up hearing them argue about 1:30 before the wife came to bed crying. She held it in until she got to the bedroom but that was as far as she could make it. I get so god damn angry at the kid for upsetting my wife so much. I chilled myself the fuck out and tried to think big picture before I did anything.
To whoever it was rambling off about wasting money on private school and then more on college later on... This is her first year of private school. She went to a school where her grandfather works that's K-8 and it was free and not a bad school. We wanted to give her a better opportunity than we had growing up hence the private school this year. As for college... that's far away but if she doesn't improve I assure you we won't be footing the bill for college. Also, my wife actually makes more than I do so if she wants to send her kid to private school it'd be damn hard to argue against it even if I didn't agree with her.
I'm fully on board with seeking the advice of some professional. I'm pretty sure that's where we're headed but I'm trying to cover all my bases on how to proactively help this kid.