The US should strive to have better standards -- but it seems that there are interests that aim to have a less-educated population. There are strong forces thwa

The US should strive to have better standards -- but it seems that there are interests that aim to have a less-educated population. There are strong forces thwarting the establishment of a well-paid and well-educated teaching profession in the US, strong forces against having standards in education (witness the fight against Common Core), and then strong forces determined to co-opt any minor successes in that direction (witness the crap materials produced by our major ed publishers labeled "common core", and the incredible profusion of badly-written tests that are in the end only designed for profit). The US citizenry allows this, overall. Partly there is the manipulation of reasonable desires for "freedom" and "local control," and part of it comes from the social attitudes toward math and science that lead to STEM being disproportionately dominated by children of immigrants in the US.