What issue could be more important to a nation's future than education?
A country is about people. How Americans act, work, think, choose -- live -- reflects their values.
K-12 education, of course, is about learning to read and do math. This is what we measure in test scores.
But education is a lot more than acquisition of technical skills. It is about transmission of values and our sense of meaning of what life is about.
It's these values that determine how we act, behave, work and deal with life's many challenges.
Polling tells us that Americans are generally unhappy about education in our country.
In a recent Gallup poll, 53% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, and 33% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, said they are "completely/somewhat satisfied with the quality of K-12 education."
Dissatisfaction with education in our country is not limited to those on the receiving end. A recent Pew Research survey shows there is also considerable dissatisfaction with those providing it -- the teachers themselves.
Per the Pew survey, among all U.S.........