Chester Finn, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former assistant secretary of education during the Reagan years, thinks the law is designed backward. It allows states to set their own standards, then micromanages how they achieve them. It doesn't take a degree in behavioral science to understand that states will lower their standards to make it appear they are doing well.

This explains, for instance, how Wisconsin could report its tests show 81 percent of fourth-graders are proficient in reading, while the national assessment test put it at 35 percent.

Finn met with the Deseret News editorial board this week. He was in town to deliver a message that included an indictment of Utah's education system, which he said, "scores low on any rating system."

Finn thinks a federal law could bring results if it set standards and then let states find their own ways to achieve them. He believes local control of education "has kept schools solidly in the 1950s, even though the economy has changed."

He believes the constant emphasis on Utah's dead-last ranking in per pupil spending is "ridiculous." No one can draw a connection between per pupil spending and educational excellence.

Whether the nation begins to feel any real sense of urgency soon is doubtful. America remains strong and vibrant for many reasons, including a political and social system that encourages hard work, creativity and innovation. Writing in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria said American education works well but only for the wealthy. The issue is one of access.

That's a dire problem, all right. It's just not one the average middle-class American is likely to see as urgent.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com