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Perhaps America is "getting dumber" as this title, which lacks an sense of creativity or even worthwhile word choice, suggests. You can't help but argue that Americans are becoming more and more inept when someone responds to this question by saying "You could have went to school and went your 4 years in high school and didn't get your diploma cause you didn't past the test." I'm sorry, but there are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't know where to start. I do apologize to the user who penned it, but the irony was too perfect to pass up!

First, what people need to understand is that children are being asked to learn in a society that has changed dramatically in the past decade. With the Internet being available in almost every home, school, library and coffee shop - children are exposed to the world, not only around them, but beyond them in a way that few of us could have ever imagined as children. Kids today live in an on demand world - TV on demand, Internet on demand, shopping on demand, food on demand, even friends on demand! Everything is fast and everything is now. Can you imagine asking these children to sit down and read a chapter in a text book...without any special effects, without high-definition sound, without instant downloads and without instant gratification?

Schools today are struggling to meet the needs of these learners. You can only dress up a lesson plan so much before the kids will see straight through your scheme of tricking them into learning. Schools today are expected to keep up with the demands of these children and parents - expected to show instant test results, instant grade improvements, instant behavioral changes - without the technology, training, or equitable funding to do so.

America is "getting dumber" - because they refuse to do the simple things that will improve the basic state of education in America. No Child Left Behind (which provides enough fuel for me to rant for hours) insists on holding administrators and teachers accountable for student progress. Where is the legislation that holds parents accountable for their child's success? Almost any education professional will tell you that student's success is directly related to parental involvement.
Some would argue that teachers are government paid employees (although others might add "under" to the paid part), so they need to be held accountable for the work they do. You can't hold a parent accountable for whether or not they are a good parent.

But if we

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