Education quality is a tip of the iceberg.
Talk to someone who went to a public school in say the dominican republic. I've heard stories of years of kids just waiting around with next to no actual teaching involved from someone who was physically there in their childhood. If you don't go to a private school odds are you aren't going to get any real education or structure beyond what you pick up at home... and odds are your parents were in the same boat.
The US education system has been nothing like that, it is going to get like that in the south though. In remote low population areas it's very possible to get bad - and clearly some teenage pregnancies disrupt things in the US, but in the DR it's a lot worse.
Sure and Santiago is a horrible example. I was just there a few months ago. It feels the most like boston of anywhere else in latin america. When I was in el salvador I thought I was gonna get robbed at the airport, where they pat you down at each departure gate.
The wages are livable, the neighborhoods are safe(mostly), the housing is affordable, the food is terrible (compared to lima anyway.) I couldn't get enough of the mountains.
In lima I was getting cased by pickpockets, in santiago I didn't ever feel that way. Lima's traffic is on another level. Santiago's rush hour is much more organized and you have way more street lights and better drivers. In lima as a pedestrian you have to RUN so they don't hit you. In santiago they stop and let you cross - something nearly unheard of in a lot of other latin american nations.