U.S. students are falling behind.

This statement shouldn’t come as a surprise to most, as it’s  a fact discussed often in recent times. There’s even a movie about it, “Waiting for Superman.” Clearly, the U.S. education system is broken. The question is how do we fix it? Do we even need to fix it?

Students in America go to school 180 days a year. Meanwhile, students in Japan have a 243-day school year. It’s no surprise, then, that so many successful young people come out of Japan. It doesn’t matter how rigorous our school systems are, we can’t keep pace with Japan if our students go to school some 60 days less per year. And Japan isn’t the only country with 200-plus school days a year.

Unfortunately, the length of the school year is not the only problem with the U.S. education system. From kindergarten through high school at least, students aren’t challenged enough to maximize their potential. Courses move only as fast as the slowest student can learn. Therefore, almost every other learner is breezing through the class without challenging his or her brain. Imagine a weight-lifting class where everyone lifts the same amount of weight. The weakest student, Little Timmy, can only bench the bar, but everyone else can lift the bar one-handed. While Little Timmy will increase his strength, no one else will develop any muscle. That’s America’s education system in a nutshell.

By this logic, students should be placed in separate classrooms based on their abilities. Many schools try to do this to an extent by offering advanced placement (AP) classes, but it’s mainly voluntary. On the other hand, obligating students to be in AP classes also presents problems. It would obviously require more teachers and more money. Then there would be the inevitable complaints from parents whose children are at a different level than they believe their kids should be. But the bigger problem for underachieving students is that they would be in an environment where they’re expected to underachieve without any overachieving students to give them an example of how to excel academically. Therefore, low-achieving students would continue to be low-achievers.

So, how does the problem of underachieving students affect Americans in general? Who cares about all the students who don’t have what it takes to go to college? Everyone has different abilities; the ones with less brains can take those jobs at Wal-Mart, while college students get the higher-paying jobs more suited to their abilities. Their failure doesn’t prevent our success, does it?

Unfortunately, it does. The failure of the American education system contributed to the economic meltdown and may prevent the U.S. from continuing to be the world’s top economy. Not that the unemployment rate wouldn’t be high right now if every American went to college — lots of people with college degrees are out of jobs, too — but many industries are being sent to Japan and China because they have smarter people and more of them. It’s not nearly that simple, but education is definitely a factor. We need to send more kids to college while restoring the economy, so that the U.S. can get back to being the most innovative country in the world with the most opportunity. Again, there are many other reasons for the poor economy, but having more smart people surely won’t hurt. And there’s a bonus — more students means more professors, more staff, more of whoever it is that makes this place run smoothly. More jobs.

Forty percent of young Americans have college degrees. That is the same number as Americans over sixty. Meanwhile, 56 percent of young adults in Canada graduate from college. It’s not that we’ve slowed down, we just haven’t kept up with other developed countries.

The point is that young people aren’t getting the education they need in order to live up to their potential. If America is to continue to be the “Land of Opportunity,” the greatest country in the world, it needs to have the best education system in the world. Education reform should be one of the top priorities for President Obama and the 112th Congress. Teachers, as well as parents, need to consistently challenge kids throughout their education. A stronger education system would help fix many of America’s problems.