“If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets,” the report says, “we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all — old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority.” A fine sentiment, but unconvincing as a program.

Education is a complicated business, and politics is a blunt instrument. Political management of education requires a great deal of aggregation and simplification, which is one of the reasons why there is so much emphasis on standardization and testing. In government as in any enterprise, managers focus on measuring what can be measured. Standardized tests play an important role in evaluating students and institutions both, and there is no reliably useful replacement for them, but they only tell us so much.

One of the things they do tell us, though, is that our current government-dominated model of education has been a catastrophe for African-American students. They are not the only social catastrophe for African Americans, and the effects of those catastrophes are difficult to disaggregate. But the data are reasonably clear.