Why do public schools suck and what should we do about them?

Forty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, a scathing indictment of public K-12 schools in America. "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," announced the report's authors, who included Nobel Prize–winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti. The report catalyzed massive increases in per-pupil spending, yet by almost every measure, educational outcomes are worse now than in 1983.

In "Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools Are Failing Today's Students," the Libertas Institute's Connor Boyack and the American Federation for Children's Corey DeAngelis outline what's wrong with the ways our public schools function—and they offer concrete solutions to improve outcomes for children.

Join Nick Gillespie this Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for a live interview with Boyack and DeAngelis on the burgeoning school-choice movement.