It took about three hours, but I've got gold in all of my schools, with the exception of a couple of tests in driving school. Granted, gold isn't necessary to pass, but it gets cool vehicles spawning outside of the school.
Apparently there's a decent controller being sold out there that has the white/black buttons moved to shoulder buttons. Or you can do what I did, and pop open your controller, buy a couple buttons from radio shack, and add new white/black buttons near the triggers. I am doing drive-bys with insane kills now.
You should turn off the trainer and go back to the flight school. Just give it a shot in first person and see how it works. It will probably make you less bitter about the experience.
Also, look up San Andreas at gamefaqs. There's an excellent school faq (for PS2, but ti's all the same info) which explains what you're going for in the missions to get golds since the game only tells you what you need to qualify, but not what you need to achieve 100%.