America's occasional, often alarmist reassessments of the public school system usually leave something constructive in their wake. Sometimes the benefits are concrete, such as the subsidies for science and language instruction under the Na- tional Defense Education Act of 1958. Sometimes they are psy- chological-merely a residue of healthy nationwide anxiety. There are already signs that the current wave of soul-searching will follow this pattern; that America is, once again, summoning the resolve...