Well, free agents are the sleeping giants of American Politics. Because of health insurance, because the tax code is tilted against them, and because of many wrongheaded zoning policies, Free Agents will rebel one of these days. Any politician smart enough to court these workers could find him or herself in a very powerful position. Our education system is built to crank out Organization Men. Grocery stores don't.
Schools are so far behind they've become, in some sense, irrelevant.
The United States always scores at the bottom. Yet our economy is, and has been, stronger than any of these countries that do so well on these tests. I think the reason is that American Workers are creative, able, and talented in spite of their formal educations. That's why I think that at some point soon we'll see some fairly radical changes in our education system. Some examples would be home schooling, which is already the fastest growing movement in education.