The real education crisis is not what you think it is
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Perry Bacon Jr. argued that we don’t have an education crisis in America. If we’re judging by international test scores or long-term NAEP trends, maybe he’s right. But there is an underlying problem that we need to address: When we define success by yesterday’s metrics, we miss the deeper crisis already unfolding in plain sight.
This isn’t only about failing test scores. It’s about failing relevance.
The crisis in American education isn’t only that students are doing worse than they were decades ago. It’s that the world has changed, and our schools are struggling to keep pace. That is on us. We have amazing educators in the United States, especially in Utah. We fail them when we fail to lead and come together on education.
In a time of AI disruption, global competition, and workforce transformation, we are still asking whether children can pass standardized tests when we should be asking whether they’re learning to lead, adapt, solve real-world problems, develop financial literacy, and build emotional intelligence.