You think they don't leave kids behind in China or Japan or Korea? I think the dirty little secret of all those international achievment comparisons is that most of the countries doing better than us are only testing the kids who got on the college track, while we include everyone in our metrics. I wonder where we'd come out in a fair comparison.
I suspect they do, but the real dirty secrets in Japan and Korea (and perhaps China) are that
- a. It's not what you learn in college, it's what college you go to. There's much less incentive to do well once you get into the best college you can. So for many kids education really stops at the end of high school.
b. This means that they cram what's done in the States in ten years (from first grade to about sophmore in college) into roughly eight. They do this by cramming after school, on weekends, etc.
c. Children in Korea and Japan are horribly overstressed and generally very unhappy.
d. Some of the cliches you hear about creative work, thinking as opposed to cramming, etc. are true.
Confucianism has oriented these societies towards test taking and fact memorization as a culture for 1500 years. Societally, they're good at it. But it takes toll on their kids, and it delivers high quality goods on a multiple-choice test, but not fantasically well when you're trying to create something. (Note that many Koreans and Japanese then go on to do well in colloge, learn lots there, learn to write, learn to create, etc. But they do this is spite of the system, not because of it.)
Another dirty secret is that acheivement comparisons between Eastern (or some Eastern anyhow) systems and the US education system compare apples to oranges. US advanced ed. is not about making kids that test well, it's about making thinkers and writers. It's still doing a great job of that, if you ignore all the people going to college now who wouldn't have 50 years ago. Those peope now go to college to learn a trade and get rooked. That's not what US higher Ed. is about.
US public primary ed. (and virtually all Western primary Ed) is aimed at making workers and always has been. It's doing a great job of that, assuming all our jobs include the ability to say "want fries with that?" Truely it is. When something keeps "failing" so consistently, you need to take a step back and realize it's not failing in the eyes of everyone, or there'd be general concensus to fix the problem. Western public primary ed. is succeeding, as far as many people are concerned. They don't use it directly, and they like the current outcome, though they'd like the same outcome cheaper, thank you very much.
They can hire the top 5% from US colleges as the real thinkers and the top 30% of Asian schools (more H1B's, please) to be the semi-clever layer, but they'll always need people to offer to supersize their meal, and the more of those people competing with each other there are in the pool, the cheaper such workers will be.
It all works just fine, thank you.