Stanford Magazine has a good dual-viewpoint article on the question of how good or how bad the American education system is doing today. Personally, I tend to put more faith in the second viewpoint -- that the spite all the negative hype, American children are actually doing pretty well. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, more kids are graduating, more kids are going to college (especially more females), and while our schools are by no means perfect, we are certainly not in a "crisis."

Continuing in this vein, the National Center for Education Statistics released a report last Friday showing that public schools educate children basically at least as well as private schools. Of course the Federal Education Department barely mentioned anything about the report, since the administration is much more in favor of vouchers to send kids to private schools.