Outright bad schools in the US are incredibly bad. I had no idea how bad until my spouse substitute-taught at a couple of them, a few years back. Like, fear-for-your-life-every-day bad. Like, there's a 100% chance that at least one kid you're in class with will be in prison for killing a classmate before you graduate. That kind of bad. That's a whole other matter from completely ordinary US schools being a very bad experience, and far more grave. Those places are straight-up misery machines. Shameful monuments to our moral inadequacy.
I think the difference as far as how the problems might be addressed, is that ordinary schools are bad in ways that are basically on purpose, while the worst US schools are bad largely due to catastrophic society-wide failures that aren't really the school's fault, and hardly within their ability to even begin to fix.
I think the difference as far as how the problems might be addressed, is that ordinary schools are bad in ways that are basically on purpose, while the worst US schools are bad largely due to catastrophic society-wide failures that aren't really the school's fault, and hardly within their ability to even begin to fix.