And the second part of that statement is baloney. While everyone knows that the United States does badly in educational equality, the idea that we do well by able students is directly disagreed with by scholars who have spent years studying the issue.
http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/
"Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world’s industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests. Moreover, while the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP varies considerably among the 50 states, not even the best state does well in international comparison. A 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, succinctly put the issue into perspective: 'Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world.'"
The full report underlying this online article can be found here:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...
Anyway, this is implausible based on recent reports that millions of United States students find school boringly easy,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-07-09/scho...
"The findings, out today from the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that champions "progressive ideas,' analyze three years of questionnaires from the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test given each year. Among the findings:
•37% of fourth-graders say their math work is "often" or 'always' too easy;
•57% of eighth-graders say their history work is 'often' or 'always' too easy;
•39% of 12th-graders say they rarely write about what they read in class."
The claim is also implausible on the basis of comparisons of the national score distribution in a variety of countries on the TIMSS and PIRLS data on achievement in mathematics, science, and reading.
http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1....
(See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in mathematics.)
http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_S_IR_Chapter1....
(See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in science, where the United States fares somewhat better, comparatively, than in mathematics.)
http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/PDF/P06_IR_Ch1.pdf
(Exhibit 1.1 in this PIRLS document shows reading achievement distributions for fourth grade, not including eighth grade data as in the two charts linked above.)
The United States certainly has societal advantages that result in better economic performance than could be expected from the results of its school system. The United States is internally peaceful, stable, free
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-wor...
and noncorrupt
http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/
enough to attract immigration from all over the world, and several United States immigration categories strongly favor persons who received strong primary and secondary educations in their native countries. The "brain drain" is a phenomenon of long standing, and helps the United States make up for what it doesn't do for its own native-born students.
AFTER EDIT: The Hacker News management writes in the Hacker News welcome letter about how to write a good comment:
"The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience."
And I just remembered, as I am about to do an activity with my son, that my personal experience includes running an ongoing course in advanced mathematics (prealgebra mathematics for elementary age pupils) that draws client from throughout the native-born and immigrant community in Minnesota, a state with strong public schools. My course location is in one of the very best school districts in Minnesota. But parents who are American-born and graduates of MIT, and first-generation immigrant parents from China, from India, from Poland, from Romania, from Ghana, from Korea, from Pakistan, and from other countries I may have forgotten sign up their children for my courses, even though they already live in school districts that are considered good school districts, because they know very well that American schools don't do as good a job teaching foundational mathematics as schools in many other countries.
http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf
http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf
I learned this in Taiwan, where the school system in general does better at lest cost than in the United States. It is the basis of my current occupation that people living in the United States who are actually aware of the situation in other countries seek mathematics education besides that which is poorly provided by United States public schools.