The ostensibly most-educated Americans have the worst grasp of basic civics. Why?
One place to look is the SAT. State governments impose varying curriculum requirements on public schools, but practically all are beholden to the SAT, which has a near-monopoly on college entry exams. This allows the College Board to dictate what happens in the classroom, because no school wants to set its students up for failure on an exam of that magnitude. Nor can they afford to.
https://americanmind.org/features/american-education/how-the-sat-killed-civics/