I'm fairly sure the reference points matter here. Business leaders, and policy makers, in the USA look at Germany and Japan as reference points. They don't look at Greece or Italy or Spain. Opinion makers in the USA tend to think that the USA should strive to be the best at everything. For them, being slightly better than the OECD average is a failure, not a triumph. Policy makers in the USA tend to worry about the trade deficit, and they wonder why the USA seems less competitive in international trade than Germany or Japan. This anxiety manifests in various ways, and one of those ways is the attitude toward the schools.