The US education system is actually one of the best in the world. We outscore nearly every country on demographically adjust PISA benchmarks. There’s no better place to be an average student. My problem with the US education system is that it systematically and intentionally holds back our highest achieving students due to the pathological anti-excellence ideology that has infected nearly all education policymakers. Rather than grouping students by ability and allowing them to learn as fast as they want, policymakers insist that schools should be equalizers, and any students with the potential to excel should instead be held back until their struggling classmates catch up. Our entire education system could be fixed with one simple patch of “teach students at a pace that matches their ability” but instead we’re forced to create dramatic workarounds because the entire system is ideologically opposed to allowing high achievers to excel