Illegal immigrants, technology, law suits and regulations, urban centers run by Democrats, and government schooling all coming together in the perfect storm?
One of my pet peeves is how too many people I meet love to bash American education.
Reality is that the US system is the world's best and the attacks are mindless. As an aside, my experience is that the Census Br. does have an agenda that's biased toward the extreme leftist view that the poor'n'needy are a swelling teeming hoard --thus the 'falling income' shtick. That said, the 'education premium' is a fact that's independently confirmed by BLS data, and it's huge.
So while most people say U.S. education is bogus, everyone making money choices finds that it's worth it because it works.