Obligatory Sold a Story podcast link.
I can't help but feel that a lot of this is deliberate, the end result of decades of dismantling the public education system to further divide kids into the upper class in private schools, religious fundamentalists in home schooling, and everyone else abandoned to keep the population uneducated and in worse economic precarity.
Somebody please tell me that the kids are alright 
I knew things were bad - just statistically (something like 60% of Americans have below a 5th grade reading level) - but it's alarming that it seems to be getting worse according to those on the ground. As far as I can tell, the only reason the United States keeps up is by exerting massive brain drain on the rest of the world. I work at one of those Fortune 500 companies or whatever that shit is and the vast majority of my "high skill" coworkers are people from other countries.