Why are school stats so bad when the ones in your area are so good?

The US has three school systems, actually:
1. Those of college towns, affluent suburbs, and the non-necrotic parts of cities.
2. Inner city schools.
3. Rural and exurban schools, along with homeschools.

If you look at education in the #1 area, it's generally OK. It's what comes out of the other two systems that drags the averages down.

That's how you get a majority of American high school grads unable to read an employment, house purchase, auto loan or credit card contract, much less analyze it critically--much less tell fact from opinion--much less weigh emotionalistic propaganda dispassionately.

The burgeoning anti-vaccine movement alone proves how many of us are little more than talking chimps (though they do unintentionally prove evolution by showing humans who only made it halfway there).