An interesting question!
It was posed by a highly intelligent woman, married but without children, who has a good job that does not overlap with any aspect of the educational system. The query was in response to a conversational observation by myself that America ranks in the 20’s worldwide when it comes to academic excellence.
Okay, here are some possible reasons:
*Americans are implicitly (mostly) arrogant, believing without the necessity for thought that the USA is number one in everything. After all, “we are the best country, right!” Ignorance is an inevitable partner of such an attitude.
*White America has nothing to gain—in terms of money or power—from a better-educated non-white population. An exception is made for those ultra-smart Asians (to some, conceptually thought of as being “white” because of their attitudinal and aspirational overlap) who are crucial to the engineering know-how behind many of the iDevices and social media technical innovations without which we apparently believe we simply could not function.
*The complete acceptance of single motherhood as simply a lifestyle decision is highly correlated with poorly paid, energy-depleted women who are often so exhausted by making ends meet that they are challenged to be there for their children in a way that is relevant to education.
*Relative newcomers to the country have misunderstood our non-national education system and have been less questioning of matters educational than would be true otherwise.
*In much of urban America, it is difficult to confront defensive teachers unions about the necessity for evaluation without appearing vindictive toward labor and minorities. And usually it is equally difficult for minority leaders to go public with productive criticism of their counterparts within the system.
*Taxpayers in affluent geographic areas who have indirectly sent substantial monies to financially challenged sectors of their states have become convinced that much of it has been for naught and doing more is simply a waste.
*The realization that economic mobility is not what it used to be is somewhat discouraging to those who might invest time, energy, and funds in education reform. If the pump cannot be primed in such fashion, why exert on the handle. Better to attack underlying conditions, particularly poverty.
*In the slightly modified words of the iconoclastic educator John Taylor Gatto, the education system actually does a good job once it is realized that the true metric for analyzing outcomes is whether the training of young people to become consumers, and nothing more, has been successful. Note that the big push regarding the growing Hispanic population is how white businesses can better market to them, not how their educational attainment can be lifted. The latter is being accomplished on their own.