Ingenuity. Creativity. Original thinking.

It&8217;s one thing to practice memorization. It&8217;s another to take what you&8217;ve learned and build on it.

That&8217;s the difference between students in American schools and students in many other countries.

You hear so many reports of how schools are in China, India, Europe, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Dubai and so on. How their scores are high. How their students are attentive and bright.

It is interesting, however, that so many wealthy foreigners send their children to America for higher education. That&8217;s because U.S. colleges hands down exceed most of the rest of the world, and that couldn&8217;t happen if it weren&8217;t for America&8217;s public schools.

Something must be going well in the schools. Perhaps the problem is the measuring stick.

Americans measure elementary and secondary school students too often via tests that require sheer mnemonics, all with too much statehouse politics gumming up the measuring system. Too often tests are geared so politicians can make claims in campaigns about how they &8220;improved&8221; education. In the end, teachers end up teaching to some bogus test, rather than following a true set of curricula. (In other words, the children might know the Battle of Hastings was in 1066, but they don&8217;t know the context.) You don&8217;t see governors attempting to force state-mandated tests on college seniors.

The way to measure a student is with teachers and the tests those teachers set. They know the students best.

The way to measure a teacher is with principals, superintendents and performance reviews, not with state-mandated goals for schools, not with pigeonhole standards that fail to take into account the distinct characteristics of communities.

Perhaps if Americans let the teachers do what they are trained to do, we might find ourselves with a less-politicized and better education system. The job of the politicians should be to fund the schools and to fund them fairly, not run the schools.

Somehow, despite obstacles, something is going right in American schools. Thanks to our teachers and professors, America continues to be a major economic power. Don&8217;t take educators for granted.

Just because kids in a foreign country can recite back what was told them doesn&8217;t mean they can take it to the next level. You can&8217;t measure that. Those children might take a lesson to their minds, but can they take it to their hearts? Only good teachers can show them that.