As a foreigner (not even living in the US any more!) married to a former teacher in the Boston Public Schools I can just offer a comparison between the US and European systems.

It seems to me that the main difference is that in the US money for education comes largely from local sources. Which means that poorer areas get less money than richer ones, hence increasing the gap between rich and poors. In Europe, by contrast, money if managed at country level, which makes it much easier to send money to the places where it can make a difference.

Despite Massachussets being a fairly progressive place (and probably the best place on Earth to be a Perl geek!) no amount of state or federal funding seems to be able to overcome the basic fact that poor people do not pay enough taxes to pay for a decent school system (except if you're a rat or a cockroach!).

Now (to try to come back slighltly on-topic) how this impacts the Perl Monks population is probably easy to find out: have a poll on race/ethnicity/whatever, especially amongst US citizens here and you'll likely to find an overwhelming majority of white folks, at least if I can judge by the crowd at the Perl Conference or YAPC.

PS: sorry PotPieMan, as I am typing that it looks like dubya carried Florida and the Presidency with it :--(