What if America's education problem is that the children don't have parents who can nurture them?

Because we have stagnant or decreasing real wages? Because the cost of daycare, housing, health, and advanced education have all gone up? Because we're making it harder to declare bankruptcy? Because we're criminalizing activities, and ripping families apart?

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that our education is ranked poorly.

And pointing to education, as though it's a system we can study in isolation, and claim that it's a failure, therefore other state-run systems must also be failures, isn't really being honest?

And maybe it's worthwhile to look at other countries with the economic conditions we're proposing. Like single payer healthcare. Because we can look at them.

You're absolutely right that "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will magically be either efficient or high quality."

But people like you seem to delight in using that as an argument against government programs that have been shown to be effective, again and again, in country after country.

So then I can say, "just because something is run or controlled by the state does not mean it will be either inefficient or low quality."

And we've both said something completely meaningless, and now can we please get back to looking at examples from other countries, and try to learn from them?