Says who? Where do you think the vast majority of students at US engineering schools come from? That's right, public schools, where the program they take to get into engineering school is rigorous and essentially begins in junior high school.
Students going to engineering school in my district usually begin taking either algebra or geometry (a few!) in eighth grade. Then in high school their program is as follows. They don't have to take both chemistry and phyiscs but many take both:
Freshman year:
Either honors geometry or honors Algebra 2 / Trigonometry
Honors Biology(which is equivalent to the college course which I taught labs for)
Sophomore year:
Honors Algebra 2 / Trig or Honors Precalculus
Honors Chemistry
Honors Physics
Junior year:
Honors precalculus or Calculus I (college credit)
Advanced Physics (college credit)
Advanced Chemistry (either can also be taken senior year)
Senior year:
Calculus 1 (college credit) or Calculus 2/Differential equations (college credit)
Another St. Louis district is offering Calculus 3 / Differential Equations 2 to its high school seniors.
Don't tell me how bad public schools are when it comes to providing the advanced classes needed to get into engineering schools. Better suburban districts *are* providing this preparation. Most students in any given district are not *intellectually capable* of pursuing this type of course of study.
What should concern us more is that students who *are* capable aren't doing it (EE and CS enrollment is down a third this year already) because *why work so hard* if you can't get a job easily, or if you do, your job is outsourced?
While there are fine public schools out there (usually in affluent districts) your average public school s-cks in terms of preparation for the sciences (to say nothing about the other subjects).