It's not uncommon to find unflattering statistics about our nation's educational achievements; while countries like Finland and China are getting ahead in math and science, our average SAT reading scores have dropped to a record low, and high school dropout rates teeter around 50 percent in many of our major cities. It's quite the stark contrast to a few decades ago, when the United States was at the pinnacle of achievement in math and sciences and the most powerful industrialized country in the world—and it should prompt us to ask what has gone wrong since our country's golden age of education.