That's by design. France has a cabinet with full control over education in the entire nation. In the United States, education is in the hands of locally elected school boards and the role of the federal and state secretaries of education seems to be mostly limited to dumping money on those people. (And attaching conditions to that money in general seems to be fairly controversial, as the present discussion shows.)

There's no way such a system can produce uniform results.

(The wisdom in forcing voters to elect all sorts of local commissions is another matter entirely. I struggle to see how anyone can make an informed choice, in ballots with 10 or more elected positions, but they seem normal in America.)

The US has always had a state-run or private education system, since even before it was founded as a country. And the U.S. is among the top 10 most educated countries in the world, with over 50% of population having at least a bachelor's degree.

It's pretty simple to vote on local offices: are you happy with the current state of education in your district? Good, keep the incumbents around. Otherwise change out school board members until you achieve the desired results.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232951/university-degree...