The US isn't doing so well when it comes to education. There are a few well know flagship schools and examples that seem to dominate the discussion, but those also seem to obscure reality. The average or mean student isn't great when compared to those of other advanced industrial nations and you need those numbers to get anywhere. A few stellar examples won't cut it.
Well, as uneducated as we are, an awful lot of innovation starts in the US.
One reason is that the cost of entry into becoming a business isn't terribly high and there are risk takers willing to put money into a good idea. Sure, they're going to take a sizable chunk of the ownership but that's the way capitalism works. There were a huge number of multi-millionaires created the day Facebook went public.
We're having a problem defining equality in financial terms. The right's definition is equality at the starting line. Everybody has the opportunity to get a good education at a reasonable cost but they have to do the work. The left wants equality at the finish; equal outcome without equal effort. That isn't going to happen!
California is the 5th largest economy in the world but we have the highest poverty rate in the US when housing is included. The median home price is over $500k. Why? Because we make it easy to be poor. We have programs for everything!
Kids have exactly one choice: Get a really good education and work in STEM. If not, flip burgers for a living because the jobs in the middle are going away. There'll still be a lot of jobs in retail and quite a few in manufacturing (and some of those pay well) but as the US shifts to a technology based society, you're either in or you're out. You can either write code or you're going to go hungry (not literally but close).
Our top universities are pretty good. Cal-Tech, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and that bunch. But our state universities are also pretty good as are the state colleges (even the community colleges). The students who complete the programs and can't find a job chose the wrong major. Trust me, there's no point in majoring in navel gazing.
I wish we did a better job teaching math in the lower grades. The problem may just be that the teachers don't understand it either. Given that Calc I is supposed to be the first math course upon entry to a STEM program, there is the assumption that the incoming students have already mastered Algebra, Geometry and Trig. Unfortunately, our high schools don't always meet that need. There are a number of societal reasons for this but an incoming student will almost always have to spend a year taking Pre-Calc. The 5 year STEM program just stretched out to 6.
We have a problem segregating students and this keeps the 'average' level of achievement in the lower grades at a pretty low level. By chance, there are dull/disinterested/disruptive students and bright students in a class and the material will be taught to the lowest common denominator and that's pretty low. There are some charter schools working on this but it isn't going to be enough. We really need a scheme for dividing up the classes. The AP concept helps but that starts in high school (I think) and that's pretty late.
In effect, education doesn't really kick into high gear until college.
And, yes, we import bright people from all over the world. I would like to see us pick up the pace on that. Go out and harvest all the brain power we can get!