The cited findings, don't refute the culture argument though, and maybe even reenforces it. In US culture being illiterate is bad, being bad at math is not looked down up on. The stats show good at reading and bad at math.

While there are STEM (Science Tech Engineering and Math) initiatives, I have yet to see one that actually includes math. You see results in science but not math.

The U.S. isn’t “bad” at math. I found some updated charts that break down the data for 2022 (the underlying data is all from OECD and NCES). White kids in the U.S. outperform non-immigrant kids from every European country except Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Estonia: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1732244690408214720?s=4.... Though to be fair, the US and Europe are all notable behind the developed asian countries (Singapore, Japan, Korea) which may indicate a lesser cultural focus on STEM.