The current system in the US was not created as a program to efficiently educate a modern workforce to maintain a modern economy , so it fails miserablyIf anything, the problem with the US education system is that it was designed to do that, and does it well.
Low-income public schools have metal detectors and a significant police presence. Show up a minute late to class (the bells were put there at the request of industrialists) and you'll lose points. They're treated like possible future criminals. High-income public schools have open campuses and forgiving attitudes toward late work and adolescent mischief, but still have lots of rules about when people can do what. Prep schools have guidance counselors that tell you exactly what you need to do, and who will start setting you up at 14, to get into whatever undergraduate college you choose--they train you to expect to be handed everything you want by society.
Whether it's by design or emergence, the system funnels people into socioeconomic strata that neatly correspond to the one they were born into. In the middle class, this means they get an education that is by-and-large competently delivered and that offers a little bit of autonomy but does not, in general, reward creativity.
The average middle school, with its stultifying rules, its emphasis on memorization and busywork, and its reward/punishment systems, is great training for the median industrial job. High school, with the culture of status-seeking and social pettiness, is great preparation for the white-collar corporate world. College trains people for the kind of job that would have been available to them fifty years ago; but in today's economy, all the decent opportunities are spoken-for.