I'm not trying to say that the US educational performance is great, just that it's not terrible. I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but there's a narrative that US schools are failing horribly and that just isn't true.
Wouldn't you agree that "failing" is relative? Given just how much money the US has, wouldn't you agree that we should expect better outcomes? Wouldn't it be a failure that despite our massive wealth, we are below OECD average in any subject?
The PISA scores are below average in 2022 but not significantly so. Most countries have had a pretty bad decline in test scores due to covid, but that's (hopefully) a one-time problem and future cohorts will do better.
I'm not saying that's a good thing. We're a very rich country and we should do better.
But the US also has a lot of systematic problems that peer countries don't, like child poverty, that are likely a bigger cause of subpar test scores than bad schools.
There's a difference between "below average and rising" versus "below average and falling". The US, over this period, happens to be the latter: below average and falling.
Merely focusing on "below average" without acknowledging the trend -- declining -- seems to be disingenuous.
