Public education disparity in America is crazy. I had a good upbringing, I was an only child and both my parents had full time jobs. The only time I can really remember feeling jealous about seeing something someone else had an opportunity as when they were a kid was when I went to a performance at Milton High School. It's a public highschool in Georgia and genuinely looked nicer than the college I went to. While I was in highschool, we had more trailers* outside than classrooms inside.

And I know that with a global perspective I still did have a very privileged education, but like the OP says, when we're talking about what "the richest country on earth" is doing, it just doesn't add up. It's not like I wasn't aware my highschool was shitty, even while I was there I knew it was, because we'd go to other ones for various events. But even the nicest ones I saw, that one still felt an order of magnitude nicer. A lot of it had to do with the performance. The school had some sort of partnership with Cirque de Solel (no idea how to spell it, and also I may have misunderstood and it wasn't actually a partnership and just a play that they originally made). Seeing a fully packed, massive auditorium for a highschool performance that also involved acrobatics was just crazy. The arts are always underfunded, so I can only imagine how nice everything else was at this school. It's basically in the wealthiest area of my state.

*: People outside the US or certain parts of the US might not know what this refers to. It's like a mobile classroom (compared to a permanent structure, lol, same way a "mobile home" is "mobile"). These were used because the population growth in the area outpaced school constitution. So instead of building a new school which takes long, just throw trailers at the problem. But my highschool genuinely did have more trailers outside than rooms inside.

And just to reiterate, this was a public highschool. We should be investing more in our future by investing in education, both college and k12.