Education has always been the backbone of American productivity, for generations American students were the best and brightest the world had to offer. Unfortunately, for nearly 20 years the state of primary and secondary education in America has fallen off.

It is not that our students are worse than their predecessors, far from it, in fact American students today are ahead of virtually all those who came before them. Instead, our students have not accelerated as fast as students elsewhere in the developed world. By American standards we are getting better but, after having watched much of the world pass us by, much of our student body is falling behind internationally.

On March 9, The New York Times, published an article detailing how more and more Americans are being passed up by international standards. In the U.S. Senate there has been some movement to take on America’s educational deficiencies.

The Senate Education Committee hopes to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and finally make progress on federal public school policy.

As it currently stands only about seven out of 10 American students complete primary and secondary school with a high school diploma. By comparison 96 percent of South Korean students graduate with a diploma.

On top of having lower graduation rates than many other developed nations, American students score lower on math, science and reading exams than the top international standards.

According to the Program for International Student Assessment, Finland has the best educational system in the world. Once ravaged nations like Japan, South Korea and China have made huge progress in the past several decades. Even former Soviet bloc nations, led by Poland, have seen major improvements over short periods. Meanwhile, the U.S. has be mired in mediocrity.

Andreas Schleicher of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that if the U.S. were able to match the fever pitch success of Poland it could “translate into a long-term economic value of over $40 trillion.”

Such a vast sum, $40 trillion, is nearly four times the value of the entire American economy. With proper educational investments, the United States could essentially guarantee that it would never again fall into a state of economic deterioration and near collapse.

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, believes that we must take a stance on America’s educational future. In the last two years the United States government signed away more than one trillion dollars to ensure that banks and financial institutions didn’t have to face the consequences of their bad bets.

We were quick to rescue Wall Street from itself, but we have taken no action to stop the bleeding in education. Most education in the United States is state-run, and it is therefore part of the state budget. With 49 of the 50 states now running deficits, deep cuts are being made into basic budgets for music, art, gym, language and afterschool programs.

With the $700 billion bailout alone the federal government could have easily funded all state education budgets several times over. Instead, it sits by and watches as schools cut back to 4-day school weeks, lay off thousands of teachers, and wipe out basic programs meant to keep students happy and healthy.

The bailout may, or may not, have saved us from an immediate crisis of epic proportions. But what are we supposed to tell our children decades from now when they see that they have been surpassed by students everywhere else on the globe. Students today become workers tomorrow, and American students aren’t measuring up.

We let the problems inherent in health care, finance and the government’s own budget linger for more than a decade without ever addressing them. We cannot afford to do the same with the one area, education, which truly is the backbone of our entire nation.

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