That’s a big chunk of it, but it’s far from the only factor.
Class sizes.
Parental involvement (or lack thereof) in their kids’ educations.
Presumption of delinquency and prison-like school environments.
Disastrous sex and drug education policies motivated by panicky morons and feckless politicians.
Disparate school funding due to regional inequality in taxable income.
Emphasis on passing standardized tests at the expense of applicable problem-solving skill sets because funding gets awarded to whichever schools can induce the most students to score highest on the poorly made tests.
Students that are bored or disinterested in or simply not good at passing poorly made standardized tests being dumped into remedial education despite any aptitude for real problem solving.
Poor and misused remedial education.
A whole generation of parents and teachers that are themselves a product of this declining system and thus often lack any exposure to a higher benchmark or real education and are fatalistically resigned to a doomed system.
Lack of real competition to incentivize the system to improve.
Underpaid and underqualified educators whose careers (such as they are) are tied to standardized testing, disciplinary enforcement and not pissing off the pet special interests of parents who though often unwilling to participate in their own children’s’ education, will gladly grandstand for their neighbors their personal politics and prickly sense of affront.
Teachers getting canned for teaching evolution.
Teachers getting canned for teaching controversial literature.
Teachers getting canned for teaching anything politically sensitive.
This list could go one for some while.
TL;DR ~ Welcome to America, land of the lowest common denominator.
