America aspires to be the best - producing the good, the bad, and the ugly: putting a man on the moon, wars of choice, and a three-time hot dog eating-champion.

But what happened to American education being the best? One study published in the USA Today describes how students with similar admissions statistics can graduate at different rates depending on the institution.  What was the defining factor between success and failure?  Institutions that are more challenging graduate more students.

Today, the pressure is on the instructor to get kids to pass, to leave no child behind, and move everyone on to the next level. This means they have to cater to the lower end of the class, rather than to the best students.  In essence, we are trading the prospect of having better students, who are ready for the global economy, for more students who are ready for basic jobs.  We are trading efficiency for equality.

Follow up:

Imagine knowing your doctor passed anatomy with a C, or an engineer designing a high-traffic bridge, that barely passed physics, because her professor mercifully curved the grade from a failing percentage, to a passing letter grade.  Some of the students who graduate to become the people we trust with public safety are not being taught to the level of proficiency that we would expect. This trend of letting more and more students pass classes and earn degrees, without showing mastery of the topic, forces the top tier students to seek advanced degrees to set them apart.  I argue that it is this mechanism that is making the value of a college education less important every year.

Children should not be encouraged to pass -- they should be encouraged to excel.  Instructors need to teach to the top of the class, to raise the standards of education.  The United States of America can't produce the best professionals in the world with an average educational system.