Since the 1980s, assaulting public education has been a blood sport of politicians and journalists, fueled by disinformation and political ideology.

The 1983 publication of "A Nation at Risk," which tried to tie trends in college aptitude tests to declining U.S. international economic competitiveness, incited the assault on the nation's schools. Villification of public education by politicians and the press accelerated in the 1990s, even though the nation's economy blossomed. If teachers were the reason for economic problems in 1980s, they should have received some credit for the nation's economic recovery in the 1990s.

Actually, criticism of public education is an effort by some to erode the public's trust in its teachers in order to leverage education privatization by charter schools, for-profit businesses and vouchers. Clearly, our public education system is only broken in the eyes of thinkers who do not understand the complexities of trying to educate an extreme culturally and racially diverse population.

Negative comparisons of American education to systems in other nations often are an apples-and-oranges proposition. For instance, comparing diverse U.S. students to students of culturally homogeneous countries such as Singapore, Japan and Finland, where there is virtually no immigration, may have little validity.

Much is made of the U.S. dropout rate, which is a serious problem. But, strangely, the efforts of schools to both stop dropouts and to retrieve those who have left the system largely go unrecognized. In fact, when the Sandia National Laboratories compared the U.S. high school participation rate of 17-year-olds with 18 industrialized countries, they found that only Finland and Belgium had higher percentage rates. Further, they found that the U.S. education system sends 26 percent of the population through college, and provides 60 percent with 12 to 15 years of education. Only 14 percent have fewer than 12 years of schooling. So, if the politicians are genuinely interested in reducing the dropout rate, they need to fund research to determine who is dropping out and why they are leaving early; then, a rational plan to intervene can be designed. It

should also be noted that other industrialized countries separate the college-bound from young people bound for industrial training. It is a social stratification traditionally abhorrent to our citizens, but one that negatively affects international high school test score comparisons with the U.S. educational system.

Despite the fad for charter schools, vouchers and the like, the much-berated public schools have actually fared quite well in test score comparisons with the alternatives. Two rigorous studies published by Columbia University's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education and another by the U.S. Department of Education showed that, when National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) student data was adjusted for comparative demographics, public education was ahead by as much as a half grade level in math and language test scores. The data simply do not support allegations of public education being a "dysfunctional system."

The No Child Left Behind law has been hailed as the savior for closing the test-score achievement gap for minority and low-income children, but there is no evidence that the under-funded and highly punitive act has affected achievement gap closure. The government bases its claims of improvement on comparison of 1999 and 2004 NAEP test scores, but NCLB was not passed until the fall of 2002 and signed by the president in 2003. Two objective research studies, the Harvard Civil Rights Project and Policy Analysis for California Education, have shown virtually no national progress in either reading or math since 2003. Nor is there evidence that NCLB has reduced achievement gaps for racial and ethnic groups.

If there is genuine interest in closing the various achievement gaps, public policy should be based on research. Of the several validated factors in academic achievement, small class size in primary classrooms, high expectations by teachers, involvement by parents and adequate preparation of all students entering the first grade are considered the most important factors.

Numerous studies have concluded that quality preschool preparation is critically important to subsequent academic competitiveness. But, instead of putting money on research-based interventions, the present administration is instead requesting $300 million for high school vouchers and mandating hundreds of millions to be spent on student testing by states and school districts.

While the research-based case has been made for preparing every able child for first grade, nothing has been done on a national basis to move toward that goal. Until rational decisions based on research are applied to the problems of public education, the real problems will remain unaddressed.

M.L. Johnson of Fort Collins is a retired public-school and university teacher who now does research in early childhood education and autism intervention.