How do we fix this should be the question asked. Is it even possible at this point?
I guess there is no free lunch, each person who realizes the importance of education has to start taking it seriously right now and spend their lives getting their community to start taking it seriously and maybe hopefully the next generation can emerge much better off. We let this mess fester for decades and now we are paying for it for the rest of our lives because there is no free lunch.
Education is a public good, therefore good education is socialist, and Americans are very hyper-individualist (aka antisocial). History suggests that Americans generally only move toward communal support systems during extreme crises, like the shift during the Great Depression. Even Covid wasn't enough to get people asking for universal healthcare, it has to be much worse.
Overcoming 'American Exceptionalism' to adopt a successful model like the Finnish education system would probably require a massive crisis. The current system will just limp along until then.
I'd argue from the founding of the country all the way up to Nixon/Reagan the country took education seriously. It wasn't due to economic crisis as there were many since the founding. There was this sense of societal responsibility that has disappeared.