This seemed apparent to me when I was in school. I can't imagine it's changed much.
Either society isn't giving a prospective good parent the resources to achieve success. Any or many reasons exist; rent is too high, jobs got replaced by AI craze, only qualified for jobs that aren't valued at a living wage. If the parents do have the resources but still fail, society is at fault as the kids haven't been rehomed to other environments.
> it is society's fault
We can't step in and fix everything. Systems don't scale like that. There has to be individual responsibility.
> Either society isn't giving a prospective good parent the resources to achieve success
Some parents simply do not care.
> haven't been rehomed to other environments
There are already enough kids without parents. You'd be making the problem worse.
> jobs got replaced by AI craze
Hasn't even come close to happening yet.
Okay, a failing student is the fault of the parents. Now what?
Do you think parents want their children to fail? Failing children are generally associated with low socioeconomic status.
So, now, you have to fix low socioeconomic status. Now what?
etc.
You are correct that schools and teachers can only do so much. However, schools and teachers must also operate in the reality of what actually exists rather than what they would like.
A scoring system is only useful when comparing parts of the entire population. If the score is only used in the US, for example, then it's only really useful for comparing states relative to each other.
When looking at the entire population and saying US students only pass the US proficiency test 20% of the time, there's no relative comparison to look at. We could simply change the test or the scoring system if we wanted a higher or lower result in the population.
Schools are doing a piss-poor job of educating people. Only 20% of schools can muster a 70% proficiency score, with the vast majority being much worse.
What this indicates is a startlingly large number of students are receiving an education that holds no value whatsoever.
Further, as already mentioned by someone else, the military will still use its own test as a means to determine where to place a recruit.