Depends on which students in which school districts the author means! He's taking a system that's composed of fruit ranging from mangoes to horse-apples, mixing it together and complaining that the result doesn't taste very good.
I do know for a fact that kids in our local school district can go toe-to-toe with students in any East Asian school system. If parents in other US school districts aren't holding their administrators' feet to the fire, you'd have to ask them why. They sure are in ours.
"I do know for a fact that kids in our local school district can go toe-to-toe with students in any East Asian school system."
My daughter attended a very mediocre Japanese public school in grades 1-6. In 1999, in the 7th grade, I put her in a strict Catholic boarding school in the States.
In our first phone call, she asked, "How come we're doing 4th grade math?"
They require math here in grade school that you can get all the way through college without ever seeing in the US.
Polls have shown that just about every parent believes exactly that. "It's the other schools" that are lagging.