The US isn’t the only country having trouble teaching high-school physics. Australia has similar issues.
Physics teachers not up to scratch: study
One quote caught my eye:
“The person that’s teaching them might have some competence in science but just can’t grab that ‘aha’ moment.”
Not that I’m endorsing under-qualified high-school physics teachers, but I suspect that the ‘aha’ moment for science happens before high school. There are a lot of opportunities for teachers to turn students on, or off, before the teenage distractions show up in life. And physics tends to be taught last in high school science sequences, so the potential audience has already dwindled if students are turned off by chemistry or biology.