When you look at statistics regarding American education, you'll see an unaltering decline in SAT and ACT scores achieved since the implementation of Carter's DOE. Those college admission standards have been lowered to the point that high school graduates have to take remedial courses in basic studies in order to be admitted to college level courses. Education has not improved statistically one time since.
I have been a supervisor most of my working life. In the last 15 years I was blessed to work with some of the finest young men I've known, intelligent, innovative. But guess what, they can't hand write a legible word or sentence. They can't spell. They can't do basic math. For example, I would ask a man to get a list of chemicals we had on location and the total quantity we had. He (not just one person- all of them) invariably handed me a list. When I couldn't read it I would ask, "What is this?" and hand the list back to them. They would say, "I don't know." I would say, "Didn't you just write this?" The answer was always "Yes, but I don't know what it says." These weren't isolated incidents, I worked in over 17 states and the pattern was always the same. Men who should never have felt this way were ashamed of themselves. They had done what was required at school, graduated at the top of their classes and were essentially functional illiterates. I taught them how to read write and do basic math in a handful of days, what the school systems under the evil hand of the DOE could not do in 12 years.
Do not let yourself be deceived by any deceptively named bureaucracy.