Nations have many goals in mind when they design their education systems. Instilling in young people both a desire for democracy and the knowledge to perpetuate it and enabling them to understand and appreciate achievements of humanity, to reason for themselves, and to understand and empathize with others. However, a nation that ignores the need to also educate its young people to earn a living does so at its--and their--peril. That is more true now than ever. Research by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce shows that the middle class is shredding. Not all of its members are getting poorer, but there is a clear divide between those who have some college and those who do not. Education holds the key to personal and national economic well-being, more now than at any time in history. However, it may well be that even those Americans who are very well educated may find their incomes falling, simply because companies all over the world are getting access to very large numbers of people who are as well educated as America's best-educated students and are willing to work for much less. In this article, the author suggests raising the academic standards of American students by changing the basic system for elementary and secondary education, which has been largely unchanged in a century, to compete with students from best-performing countries. He also discusses the proposals offered by the Commission to change the system.