Who's Exceptional?

I was reading Thomas Friedman's editorial in the New York Times this morning, but what really caught my eye was the response by "misterwi" who said "It takes more than fairy dust and repeating 'American Exceptionalism' and 'the best country in the world' to actually BE the best country in the world." The reason it caught my eye and struck a cord is that we're falling behind many other countries in nearly every category for which statistics are kept. It's hard to be the "Exceptional" person in the room if most of the others in the room are better educated than you. It'd hard to claim to be the best place in the world if too many of your people can't find a job. So if education is so important, why is it that its the first place to feel the ax? When taxes absolutely must be cut, how come it's education that takes the hit? And then to add insult to injury, you hear the claim that more money does not translate into better education. As if less would improve it. We need to improve our education system. Who in the world would think that to do the research and make the changes needed to our system would somehow be cheaper? And at the same time continue to educate? Because it isn't something we can just put on hold until we've decided on a new and improved model. We still have lots of school age youth who need that education. Because I don't think anyone is advocating that we discard those students. So not only are we cutting  back on the education dollar, but we're not going forward with a strong national research project to improve the system. When we found ourselves behind in the space race, we created NASA to put us on top. Where's the school NASA? Where's the K-16 or even K-14 plan? Hey, we don't even have a new K-12 plan. Not even a new preschool plan. What do we hear? "We don't want a one size fits all system." Really? How many school districts are there in this country? Is that how many plans you expect? If so, you better give up the Exceptionalism idea. Why? Because too many districts will want to save money and cut the heart out of their systems or will want to teach theology instead of science.