Math education has always been a failure, or a "crisis." The number of people who come out of school with any functional math ability has been fairly constant over the decades, and depends a lot on family background and economic class. I'm not even sure that differences across countries are all that significant when people reach adulthood.

Don't get me wrong. I was one of the successful ones, but I think math education is in need of reform. In fact I would reform it quite radically.