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The thing is, there is no national education system. Each state does their own thing, and even within a single state there is a huge variance based on socio-economic level.
There are excellent schools and there are awful schools all over. There is no one standard.
Each state does their own thing
Kind of...
92% of American k-12 use the same textbooks published by McGraw-Hill, and they've always played to the lowest common denominator. Which is often Texas.
If Texas says they won't buy a history/science/whatever textbook that says _____ then the rest of the 92% who learned from McGraw-Hill books also never learned it from their textbooks.
With the rise of standardized testing, nothing is taught except what's on the text. If a student gets that done they're "done" and the focus is on the kids who can't pass it yet.
Shits fucked and it's 100% an institutional problem.
And that's not even getting into how involved Ghislene Maxwell's dad was with it in the 80s, and his connection to all the spy work and child rape during the same time.
To think people haven't been manipulating the American education system to get the result (idiots) that they want for generations would be woefully naive.
It's not about teaching kids to think, it's teaching them not to question authority.
That doesn't mean we stop educating, it means we start actually educating instead of indoctrinating.
I don't know how other school systems did things, but for me not every class every year was 100% straight out of the textbooks. Some certainly were, usually math subjects or science could be.
It's anecdotal but I often find the "why weren't we taught x" type of statements, I remember learning whatever thing in school. I know people will forget stuff and just say they never learned it (I mean, kids do that all the time IN school let alone a decade later) but there's got to be bigger differences than just public vs private. (I was public)
I don't know what though.
You had me until you got to a private school, which is largely affiliated with a religion. Those cess pools preach mumbo jumbo to impressionable minds and pretend it's factual.
Me:
There's only 8% that are different
You:
That doesn't mean they're better!!!!
Strong argument for public education...
I like to think I got the benefit of said private school, while thankfully the religion didn't stick past the age of forming critical thinking skills.
Further helped that I pursued a degree in science afterwards.
I did have a number of instances throughout my college career where I realized how many others, likely from public schools previously, struggled in classes that I saw as review from high school, so I'm also thankful for the quality of education it provided. It also gave me more perspective on christianity having read a decent chunk of the Bible over those k-12 years.. More well rounded perspective is never a bad thing. Now I'm just better equipped to recognize the bullshit.
I don't take exception to learning about religions and their histories. I took an Eastern religion class in college and quite enjoyed it. The difference is that it wasn't presented as factual but as an explanation for cultural and societal behaviors.
And the excellent school and awful school can only be a few miles apart.
The feedback loops that local funding creates are vicious too:
desirable neighborhood -> higher prices -> more taxes -> better funded school -> desirable neighborhood (for families)
undesirable neighborhood -> low prices and no population increase -> worse funded school -> undesirable for families
As you said, next to one another. By sheer luck I happened to live in an apartment building that somehow belonged to a rich school district. Next building over was in the poor school district.
Yeah, there is a 'loop' in that some people live in cheaper areas, but send their children to private schools.
But the 'tax' on really good pubic schools commands such a premier, that often it is more expensive to send your kids to a really god public school than it is to a private one. The top 10 districts in my state all have home values that are over a million dollars, but all those schools are better than most private schools.
In the Des Moines area all the difference schools share the same funding. Some schools are still vastly better than others.
As I've said before the largest factor seems to be parents that don't value education teach their kids to not learn much in school.
the largest factor is how rich your parents are. parental income overwhelmingly predicts student outcome, like 90% of it.
Only about 10 percent of students are gifted or ungifted enough to significantly over or under perform the baseline their parental income establishes
That doesn't establish a cause though. well off parents teach their kids to value education.
There's no one "American" educational system.
Under the Federal system, each State regulates itself, and each town can do what it wants. Two towns in the same state can have wildly different standards and outcomes, depending on the local Board of Education.
While accurate, that's also misleading. While true, there is not a single American education system, there are certain federal regulations, and the disparate systems tend to all use the same or similar books. The fun part of that is that large states like texas can influence what is(n't) printed in them, which affects just about all districts. The educational quality received by students across the country is degraded by the politics of one of the largest Republican states.
Yep.
It's like technically there is no federal drinking age.
A state could set it at 12 if they wanted.
But for decades the Fed have said if any state deviates from 21, they don't get anymore interstate funding which would cripple a state within a few generations, but not before voters would kick out every state level politician who caused the mess.
Especially in 2026, people need to get real about how shit works instead of just glancing at the surface.
My highschool served a metric fuckton of kids, 2,000 kids, 9th-12th grade yet at one point couldn't afford paper. A couple of my teachers didn't even fully understand the subject they were teaching, my math teacher was constantly being corrected by the students who actually knew what they were doing.
Not so much related to the education, but a general rule of thumb was to carry popcorn with you because there was always a fight going on and occasionally students would throw their desks at a teacher.
Fun fact: the current head of the EPA graduated from that school. Nothing good comes out of that school.
This comment here is the answer.
The sports teams got most of the funding and they'd have sports coaches "teaching" the science classes which was a complete and total joke.
You could read the McGraw Hill book on your own if you were bored though.
It depends on the neighborhood. The poorer the neighborhood, the worse the schools. The poorer the state, the worse the schools. I don't think it's really that much different from any other country in that respect. It's just that America has extremely high income inequality, so there are a lot of blighted areas with blighted schools. Some states in the US are developed and some are rural backwater. The more rural backwater your state is, the worse the overall standard for the schools is going to be. Meaning, in general, even the best schools in a backwater state will be worse off than an average school in a wealthy city.
While what you says it true, beware that some of the worst schools are well funded. The issue isn't money to schools, it is the people on poor areas don't value education and teach their kids learning doesn't matter
It’s a total mixed bag. You can easily have the best school and the worst school just miles apart. The best school imaginable is probably in an affluent area, in a progressive state, and is private. The worst is probably in a public school in a low-income rural area in a red state. The country is so huge you’re going to have the whole spectrum of school quality, it’s the social inequality that’s the hallmark of American education
Ding ding ding!
My high school was in the nicer part of town, literally separated by a river from the rest of the city. Back then for second languages our school had Spanish, French, ASL, German, and even Latin! Our school had science teachers that won statewide awards, our football team was very competitive, the marching band (and music program in general) was phenomenal.
This was just a public school, and I've more than come to terms that the experience I had is nowhere near the norm compared to the rest of the country.
Quality is highly variable by region, and within region by wealth of the area for public schools. Then, there are also private schools in the mix for even deeper opt-in segregation by wealth
I feel like nobody in American schools care about learning except for Asian Americans... which is probably because of strict parenting lol.
I know one Cantonese speaker that got very Americanized (had an English nickname on top of a Pinyin birth name) and didn't about about grades very much either.
Like the classroom is just chaos...
Like I often just hated going there...
Especially when we moved to Philly, these schools dropped from like a 8/10 to like 1/10 rating
Bullying, casual racism, constant fighting in hallways, like every day, teacher be trying to teach then kids be yelling and its like a riot and so everyone end up having to deal with consequences, and also authoritarian staff... felt like a prison...
Highschool literally had airport style security lmfao
Horrible...
Why is probably why houses here are so cheap...
Probably could learn more from the internet too
Also the "school shooter" thing is statistically not gonna happen to you... you're much more likely to get buillied and possibly get dragged into a fight and that school bullying issue is probably is much bigger thing to worry about...
Replace the "school shooting" with the constant fear of getting beaten up in school...
and also the casual racism against Asian Americans...
Also funny thing: High school required 2 years of language class. At first I got put into the spanish class... it was fucking hell... kids literally be fighting with the teacher... so I transferred from the spanish language class to a Chinese language class and the behavior is like 99% better... lmfao (Hint: cuz half of the class is like ethnic Chinese)
I'm not from USA, but it's tragically bad there. I sometimes see indexes come out for things like education or literacy rates, I look further down past my own country on the list and see the USA. For a nation that can fund corporations and military up to their eyeballs, it is an absolute choice and systemic problems to allow that to continue.
And before anyone mentions things like poverty - those are intrinsically linked to education. A nation that takes education seriously takes poverty seriously. user givesomefucks has an interesting comment on other systemic problems contributing to it.
Gestures wildly at fucking everything.
They spend a ton of money but they don’t get much in return.
My suspicion is that they spend a lot of money on non academic endeavours like football and marching band. Heres a current example of a school district spending $21m on a sports complex.. Search “Texas High School Football” on your favourite engine.
Attempts are made to solve the problem with standardised testing, which is incentivised, which simply leads to teaching to the test.
Yes, it's pretty terrible. This doesn't mean the teachers are bad. Most of them are doing their best to work within a system that doesn't care about them or their students.
Going to college really shocked me when I realized just how bad my school teaching was. History and English were especially poor. I was regularly embarrassed to be one the few students completely unaware of significant events and people despite being an honors student with an advanced diploma. STEM subjects were fine, but I took advanced an college level courses in high school. I’m not sure how it would be for regular students.
Growing up in the US, other responders are correct that school systems vary a lot depending on what state/district you live in. Over the course of my K-12 education, I attended 10 different schools across three states because my family moved a lot. There were times where I would switch schools and suddenly be way ahead in some subject and have completely skipped over some other topics. As an example, I never took a course in world history, but ended up having three separate US history courses because the different districts taught those subjects in different grades.
I do take issue with some of the commenters painting all US schools with a broad brush as terrible. There are excellent schools in the US and excellent school systems. As an example, I currently live in Massachusetts, and if you took it as its own country, it would be one of the best school systems in the world. In general, the states that prioritize education and pay teachers well end up with better educational outcomes. It's not that surprising really, but a huge portion of the country seems to ignore that fact or spend money in less efficient ways.
The school district where I grew up had a dropout rate of 50% by Junior year of highschool. Junior year was the earliest they allowed highschool students to drop out.
America is a big country. The schools in Finland are different from the schools in Italy.
No.
The 'system' is like any other place. The rich schools are amazing, and the poor schools are awful. And most schools are somewhere in the middle.
Just like our top universities are the best in the world. But our mid tier ones and below, are bad and falling apart due to neglect.
The USA has a dual economy, one for the wealthy, and one for the non-wealthy. The non-wealthy one is a bad economy, but it doesn't generate the bulk of our GDP and growth. It's the rich people that have, and make all the money and all the education. If you are wealthy in the USA you are getting the best education in the world, if you aren't, you are getting a pretty poor education.
Yeah the honest answer is there is no single "American education system". Primary education is splintered into thousands of different counties, each with their own curriculum and funding, with varying degrees of state and national oversight. Some are good, some are terrible. My public school education was pretty solid overall, despite the clear shortage of funding.
On the other hand, despite rising costs, the US university system is still world-class.
I went to a well funded school district in an affluent part of the state.
It was standard practice in the state for the schools to separate out the "honors" students from the rest of the student population, to the point where PE was one of the classes with honors students kept from the main student body.
It was wildly apparent that students in the honors classes were treated with a lot more favor than students in general education.
Just look at the results. And one of the most stupid ideas of their education system is home schooling.
Both my kids are in public schools in an ok California school district. But by ok I mean underfunded but with an active PTA that successfully keeps a lot of the music and arts programs functional. The grade 1 to 8 curriculum here is good, and not filled with 'wokeness' like the MAGAs scream about. The high-school curriculum really lacked depth particularly in language arts. My son's 9th grade english class literally read cliffs notes of books and summaries instead of reading the books themselves. It's been hit and miss in high-school and really depended on the teacher. Both kids have done very well but I take some credit for that due to their parents consistent involvement and engagement throughout the years.
As for school shootings, at least here, I'm not too worried. Our schools are locked down like prisons during teaching hours. It does weigh on my kids minds though. They've talked about their feelings doing "active shooter" drills. It's just a scary reality for them that I certainly never had to deal with.
