I would not call it anti-intellectualism, we have a culture which no longer celebrates success over one's peers. For some reason it is offensive to many that some students are better than others and any celebration of such is frowned upon. How do you breed success oriented children who consistently strive to be improve in a system like that?

There are of course other issue, where many students are categorized based on race and/or upbringing and this effectively curtails their educational opportunities.