but ask yourself why. You could assume because loads of money is wasted and that will be true to extent. But a big factor will be, its less the quality of the education and more the quality of the parents. You can spend all you want it at school, but if the kids parents are smack heads or not there at all, and no other support mechanism is in place, you got very lucky if that kid does well at school.
So I would say if America has such poor school results, its a symptom of a broken society, as is having one of the worst homelessness issues in the western world, and the biggest prison population, worst obesity levels, etc etc.

You have to ask, why does the richest country in the world score so badly on so many metrics.