I think because public school sucks, you have to go the same speed as everyone else. If you are a fast student (like myself) you have to go the same speed as everyone else, if you are a slow student they put you in a special class and make you feel stupid. There is no help and if you don’t understand something, well tough cookies.

As you can tell I don’t like public school, I was home schooled and private schooled my whole life. Except about 6 mouths that I went to public school. (Grammar was and is still my worse subject)

There is no simple answer for a complex problem. What I can tell you is that we have true comprehensive education and our population is certainly NOT uniform. We are compared to countries that do not have to deal with these two issues.

many countries on the list shuttle out children early from the higher education system and they are not included in the scores. I certainly would not want someone to make a decision on me prior to college.

There are far more problems with the comparison than those two issues, but they ARE issues.

Because in my opinion, the students are too empowered. We are allowed to choose what classes we take, whether or not we want to go to them, and what we are going to get out of it. If you don’t like it, we’ll sue you. In other countries you are made to excel, you have to actually learn the materials to pass the tests that promote you grades. Here we just have the bare minimum of information shoved down our throats right before the test so that the schools can continue to recieve the money they are getting.. for who knows what! It’s not set up for actual learning, teaching, or mastering of any subject.