American students continue to post mediocre results on international tests. The Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, compares 15-year-olds from industrialized countries in math, science, and reading. Despite the fact that the U.S. ranks fifth in the amount of dollars spent per student, in results released recently for 2012, our students rank about in the middle of the 65 countries studied. And we’ve slipped in all categories in comparison to international competitors in the 3 years since the tests were previously given. East Asian countries like Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea consistently score the highest.

Members of the educational elite and parents alike are always scrambling for ways to raise the achievement level of American students.

What is decidedly not the answer is to adopt national standards and a national curriculum. But that’s exactly what education planners say we do need. We’ve been trying this for two decades with dismal results. The current push is called Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Conservatives lament that students no are longer required to acquire a set body of knowledge. So, many welcomed the Common Core. Early in his presidency, President Obama earmarked $4.35 billion in federal stimulus spending to a program called Race to the Top. This was an education initiative that doled out financial rewards to states that adopted what became the Common Core standards.  Forty-five states did adopt them. But now they’re seeing that it’s just another top down hammer that causes teachers to spend the bulk of class time teaching to the test.

Common standards end up dumbing down the curriculum and depressing results. In attempting to erase differences between urban and suburban schools, government redistributes education spending from suburb to city. Equalizing education across the nation pulls good districts down.

In this century we’ve had Goals 2000, School-to-Work, Careers, and No Child Left Behind. These federal programs were planned by elitists who think they know what is best for our kids. Common Core is another iteration of the failed idea that the feds should control education.

So how do we improve our system of education? The Center for American Prosperity applauds a movement beginning to take shape in the U.S. to competitively pay teachers according to their quality of instruction. They say, “Merit pay promises to revolutionize public education by rewarding good teachers for their excellence while exposing poor ones.”

PISA reports also highlight the fact that top performing countries like China and Singapore pay teachers well and also trust them and give them tremendous freedom to chose textbooks, develop lesson plans and experiment with ways of teaching.     By contrast, American teachers must comply with a growing body of standards and tests that leaves little room for teachers to use their God-given creativity in teaching.

Control of school curricula should return to localities where the Constitution places it. That way it would be easier for teachers to be allowed to teach.