My mother went to school to find a brand new sweater that my younger sister left. While getting out the lost and found box the teacher was complaining about how many articles of clothes that the students left. Almost all of them belonged to my sister (she is very small, few other children are her size).
The higher scores that you see in other countries is the result of limiting who can take these standardized tests. Only students who are well suited to take the tests have the resources, or the encouragement to do so. In the US virtually all students take achievement tests, and as a result the scores appear lower than other countries. When Chinese educators came to the US for a conference a few years ago, they were highly impressed at how well our system of egalitarianism, vs. elitism worked.
Evolution does not suggest that the strongest survive, at least among humans. Consider that the most successful humans usually have small families whereas less successful humans are more likely to have larger families. Thus, their genetic material is more likely to survive in the long run.
My mother went to school to find a brand new sweater that my younger sister left. While getting out the lost and found box the teacher was complaining about how many articles of clothes that the students left. Almost all of them belonged to my sister (she is very small, few other children are her size).