Given the magnitude of these problems, a new administration may be tempted to de-prioritize another extremely important issue: education. Obama has frequently emphasized the need to fix America's education system. He has rightly pointed out that education is more important now than ever. As the world becomes more integrated, and unskilled jobs are shipped overseas, Americans must have the training necessary to compete in a knowledge-driven economy.
But talk is cheap. Many candidates have espoused the need to fix education during their campaigns for the presidency only to get sidetracked by other things. We cannot afford to have that happen again.
Now is the time to act. While our higher education system remains the envy of the world, we are losing ground in primary and secondary education. We have the potential to be great - public schools like Stuyvesant High School in New York, N.Y., offer among the best educations in the world - but many of our schools are failing. Our generation may be the first since World War II not to be more educated than our parents', in part due to the achievement gap between Blacks and Hispanics compared to Whites and Asians.
The solutions must not be limited to standardized tests. We need programs that attract, train and retain excellent teachers. We need to commit more resources to early childhood education and teacher compensation.
Most importantly, we need to change how Americans perceive the importance of education. Obama attained the presidency by inspiring people. He must now inspire a nation to take seriously its responsibility to give its children the tools to succeed. Parents must become more involved in their children's education. Children must learn to value education and respect their teachers; young people must be convinced that teaching is a noble undertaking.
On Princeton's campus, Teach For America (TFA) has proven that this is not an impossible task. TFA competes head to head with private corporations offering lucrative compensation packages and attracts hundreds of applications each year. TFA has succeeded in convincing many young people that teaching is a worthy and rewarding profession, if only temporarily. But nationally, education majors currently have among the lowest SAT scores of any group of college students. The new administration must help school districts to attract the most qualified individuals to the profession and then retain them, particularly during their first years as teachers when the attrition rate is extremely high.
The United States' rise to preeminence in the 20th century coincided with its having the best-educated citizenry in the world - a claim we can no longer make. Therefore, fixing America's broken education system needs to be at the top of Obama's to-do list from day one. If Princeton has taught us anything, it is the power of education to secure a better tomorrow for ourselves and our nation.
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