Australia, England and Scotland are ahead of us. But all English-language countries lag behind their competitors. Better we look at Brazil, Denmark, France, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, or Sweden. We have local control of K-12 education. A constitutional guarantee of equal expenditure per pupil.
Teachers are civil servants with lifetime tenure and higher pay.
Apprentice-trained workers in all fields have a mastery of both academic subject matter and occupational proficiency. Every student can see the immediate value of academic study especially the apprentice-bound. As one report put it, virtually all German apprentices have six years of a foreign language, plus political science and economics equivalent to our community college level. Better quality control. Less equipment down time.