Reassessing the View That American Schools Are Broken

[...]The main conclusion from this review is that thewidely held belief that American schools have failed—thatthey are performing worse today than they have in the past,that a high school degree is no longer valuable, and thatadditional resources yield no benefits in the current system—is not supported by the evidence. The evidence suggests thatthe perceived crisis in education has been greatly exaggerated,if indeed there is a crisis at all. Nonetheless, major changes inU.S. schooling might produce more desirable results.However, it would not be prudent to radically restructure theU.S. education system out of misplaced frustration that thecurrent system has failed miserably or out of an unsupportedpresumption that progress cannot be made in the context ofthe existing system. In light of these findings, the conclusionoffers incremental proposals to improve our schools.[...]