James Glassman:

Every three years, the Program for International Student Assessment ranks the education levels of 15-year-olds around the world. The most recent test, in 2006, brought back results from 30 industrialized nations that were hardly inspiring for U.S. teachers and parents. American students’ science scores lagged behind those of their counterparts in 20 countries, including Finland, Japan, Germany and Belgium. The numbers from the math test were even worse: The U.S. came in 25th. The “rising tide of mediocrity” in American schools — famously so described in 1983 by a government report called “A Nation at Risk” — would now appear to be about chin-high.
In response to “A Nation at Risk,” Terry Moe and John Chubb in 1990 published “Politics, Markets and America’s Schools,” which identified special-interest groups — mainly teachers unions — as the culprits in preventing the reforms urged in the report. Now Messrs. Moe and Chubb have returned to the subject with “Liberating Learning,” a more optimistic sequel. The authors believe there exists a magic bullet that is capable of shattering the unions’ political power and, at last, bringing the sort of reform and excellence to U.S. K-12 education that might make U.S. students competitive with Finnish teenagers. The ammunition? Technology.