Despite its many problems, we generally assume that the U.S.’s education system is still the best in the world. Or is it? A new report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education suggests that in many areas, the U.S. (and in particular several states) has now fallen behind other countries in how well it prepares its students for college, having affordable higher education, and other measures of overall quality of education:

While the report found progress in some areas over the time period that the center has been producing these report cards (this is the fourth biennial study), in other areas, especially related to costs, states appear to be backsliding. . . . What the data suggest, Callan said, is a system in which American higher education is resting on its laurels from the period of time before the rest of the world started to pay attention to higher education. . . .

The report card is best known for its grades for individual states — and the grades were particular poor for affordability, with 43 states receiving an F and no states earning an A or a B. . . . The report looks both at state totals and also at subgroups, with states earning better grades if they don’t have large gaps in the performance of different racial and ethnic groups. Generally, the report found that such gaps are widespread and significant.

This data and report paint a rather somber, but probably not entirely shocking, picture of the American educational system. As the article and report notes, there is plenty of blame to go around. If there is one area of American society that truly needs a genuine bipartisan effort to improve itself, it is the educational system. If we cannot bridge political ideologies and work together on this one, the education system will continue to decline and hurt all of us, but especially racial/ethnic groups that are most at risk.

In other words and in the context of the ever-evolving globalized international community, our country will be in dire straits if this continues. If that happens, we all fail.