Like the Scandinavian countries, which also have the highest reported rates of happiness in the world. Why, at the government level, do we not look at best practices worldwide?
Because there is a ruling class and for the rulers it is not about best practices or happiness, it is about maximizing wealth and maintaining power.
Education and healthcare (which should be considered human rights not industries) are very helpful in seeing some of the tools the ruling class uses to maintain power. Both education and healthcare are standardized enough they are rated by Country and while the US spends more on both than any other country the US is not even close to being rated number 1 in either category.
Yet, to your point, when one points to other countries as evidence how well other systems work (with less funding) that person will be demonized as Anti-American. Even in the current pandemic where the numbers speak for themselves, we are subjected to having to hear the ruling class get on TV and tell us how we are #1 and doing better than every other Country and even worse in many cases this ruling class refers to the pandemic in the past tense and proclaim how they defeated it. It is Machiavellianism incarnate.
I've seriously been wondering why there isn't a field of study dedicated to comparing government policies across countries. I'm sure such a field of study exists, but I have no idea what the name of that field is - does that fall under public policy? Comparative politics? The fact that I can't put a name on it is the very problem as it shows the field (if it even exists) has very little influence on public policy (unlike say economics, which has the Council of Economic Advisors, CBO, BLS, Fed, U.S. treasury, etc).
The real goal of education is to teach people how to think. Logic, rhetoric, analysis, scientific method, how to identify logical fallacies, understanding statistics, falsifiable theories, analyzing history not only through secondary sources, but actively seeking out primary sources to corroborate secondary sources, so on and so forth.
A useful education for a healthy well-functioning society is about inquiry, not regurgitation.
I mean, if I were designing a system to reinforce inequality in districts and schools, local property taxes would be first on my list of policies.
If you go to Scandinavia or study comparative politics, the answer is simple: Scandinavia is Scandinavia, the US is the US. They are different places with outcomes that reflect different values and choices.
What people ignore about Scandinavia: mono-cultural society (if you tried some of the integration stuff that these countries do in the US, you would have people loading guns), huge tax burden on middle class (in the US people who currently pay no tax will have to hand over 40%+ of their income), small population, heavily monopolistic economy, significant exposure to trade/reliance on individual companies, significant natural resources (Norway has 20% of the US oil reserves, their population is smaller than almost every state in the US). Saying they are happier is very woolly, particularly as most countries in that region are societies that place significant social pressure on individuals to conform and be happy (their rates of depression and suicide are high, indeed when Sweden was the socialist paradise their rate of suicide was highest in the world).
Also, you ignore that most Scandinavian countries have moved towards the US model after decades of underperformance and then financial crisis. Even Denmark which has huge trade union membership has the most flexible labour anywhere...again, what people understand about Scandinavia is usually based on their preconceptions about America and their belief in a perfect, easy ideal that confirms their views about the world.
The US gets things far more right than wrong. It is, by far, the most successful economy that has existed to this point. No other large country has replicated that success (all the East Asian economies used Germany as their model, which has resulted in significant baggage). You can say that some stuff needs to be changed...okay, but it isn't as simple as just copying Scandinavia. That will never happen, and won't work if it did. It just makes no sense. The solution to an American problem is American, not Swedish.