Not everyone is happy with education in America right now. And that's not surprising, since U.S. students are still behind the rest of the world in terms of academic progress.

In 2012, research from Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance found that some countries, like Latvia, Chile and Brazil, have made triple the amount of gains compared to American students. Other countries, like Poland, Germany and Portugal, have gained in academics at double rate, too, The Huffington Post reported. In fact, 11 countries are ahead of America's education by two schools years.

And while the United States has made some gains in education, those gains are "hardly remarkable by world standards," the report said.

This may seem troubling from an American standpoint, but this sort of report highlights what's been a trend over the last 90 years, rising education across the world.

In fact, as the chart below shows, the world has never been more educated than it is right now.

A lot of this growth, according to The Economist, can be attributed to American values.

"America's early and lasting enthusiasm for higher education has given it the biggest and best-funded system in the world," The Economist reported. "Hardly surprising, then, that other countries are emulating its model as they send ever more of their school-leavers to get a university education."

For more on education

The simple thing that can reduce childhood obesity in schools
This new class at the University of Kentucky may sound cheesy, but it's got some meat to it