This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
The American Education system, like many other Liberal run institutions, is not about educating students. It’s first and foremost about employing teachers and feeding the Unions. The second objective is the money. “Education” is a cash cow and low hanging fruit for the government to collect more because it is always “for the children”.
Finally, they need to show some minor improvement (but not too much) so they can point to the affect of their efforts. They do this by constantly changing the way their efforts are scored and/or graded. There is no baseline so we measure against the world in some semi-objective comparison.
This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!