[ewanmcteagle]

We don't fully understand what the best approach is. Yes, we can see that a lot of US education is poor but the US also generates a huge amount of creative output and invention and it isn't all from immigrants. It's also not clear that it would be good to penalize students so strongly (by not allowing them higher education) if they did poorly in school. There are a lot of developmental reasons why someone might do poorly in school and be successful later in life. One of the strengths of the US system is that a person can go onto higher education in one way or another or even go back to school when old. It's possible that the US (by accident) may be doing something right. Maybe it could be better but too much "better" may also cost something else. Comparisons of education system based on academic achievement risk leaving something out of their analysis.