New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff says forget about censorship, pornography, and indoctrination. The central problem in American education is simply that too many kids aren’t getting the education they need.

Only 32 percent of America’s fourth graders are proficient at reading, according to a national test referred to as ‘the nation’s report card.

Likewise, American children’s math skills are dismal. In the PISA international math test for 15-year-olds, American students rank far behind the leaders (Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea) and also well behind peer countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and Poland.

If education is one of the best metrics to forecast where countries will be in 25 or 50 years, as I believe, then we are hurting our children. Excessive school closures caused a huge

educational setback. American children still have not nearly  caught up in either reading or math, and children in

poor districts suffered the most.

Citing follies on the left and right, Kristoff also notes, “The states that do the best job teaching kids, based on test results, aren’t just liberal or just conservative ones. They include blue states like Massachusetts and New Jersey, and red states like Florida and Utah.

“Dallas, for example, improved math scores by tripling the number of eighth grade students taking algebra,” This growth included a large increase in Black and Latino students. Mississippi schools also have made remarkable progress in reading and math. Kristoff observes, “If Mississippi, which still hasn’t come close to fixing poverty or racism, manages to get kids reading, there’s no excuse for the rest of the country.”

Some of the solutions to weak education are simple: tutoring, eyeglasses, hearing aids. Others are complicated, and one, in particular, is scandalously overlooked. The graduation rate for Bureau of Indian Education high schools is only 53 percent. Fixing that would be a big step toward breaking cycles of poverty in Native communities.

The enemy is us, says Kristoff. “We are setting up too many of our kids for failure — and instead of focusing on that crisis, we adults scream at each other about banning books that, at this rate, far too many kids won’t even be able to read.”