America must improve the quality of public schools–because the success of today’s students will shape the destiny of our great nation for the next century. Our prosperity and standard of living will be determined by their knowledge in the emerging industries of tomorrow–the life sciences and biomedical research and technology. If we want our nation to continue to lead in the world, our students must first learn in the classroom.

We are at a tipping point, and Pres. Barack Obama and Congress will have a dramatic impact on the direction we choose. For too long, education policy has been politicized in ways that prevent the transformational reforms that are needed to usher in a new era of educational quality. On one end of the spectrum are those who believe the federal government should manage our public school system; some even believe the role of the federal government is to dictate every aspect of education from academic standards to teacher pay to class size. On the other end of the spectrum are those who believe the federal government has no role in public education; some even believe that parents–not government at any level–have the sole responsibility for educating their children. Between these extreme perspectives lies a vast expanse of common ground, which is fertile for people who are more interested in solving problems than playing politics.

Everyone can agree that rigorous academic standards are the foundation of any good education system. While states should remain responsible for setting academic standards, it is clearly in our national interest to ensure that these educational benchmarks are rigorous enough to prepare students to succeed in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. To be blunt, high-school dropouts and high-school graduates who don’t have the skills to compete in this new knowledge-based era are more dependent on government services, drag down our economy, and drive up taxes for hard-working families.

Under the current law, states demonstrate student achievement by meeting or exceeding their own standards. As a result, states that lower standards avoid the penalty and stigma of failure in the near term, while states that raise standards are punished for falling short, even though their tougher goal is far superior in promoting our country’s long-term success. While establishing a single national standard for proficiency may sound like the ideal solution, such an approach would stifle the dynamic cycle of reform that is necessary to sustain rising student achievement. If striving for the national average becomes the goal, success will be redefined as mediocrity rather than excellence.

Instead, state standards should be measured against student achievement on the well-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a standardized test in reading, writing, math, and science that is given to a demographic representation of students in each state every other year. When a majority of students succeed on state tests, but fail on the national test, it is a clear indication that state standards are too low and need to be raised in return for federal funding.

Under the federal system of accountability, schools are graded based on the subgroups of students who achieve the state academic standards based on annual tests. While measuring schools on whether students are learning is an absolute requirement if we are serious about improving the quality of education, the current pass-or-fail system creates another disincentive to rigorous academic standards: Here, too, states that lower standards will have more students pass their state tests and will be rewarded in the short term with a passing mark. States that raise standards may never achieve 100 percent proficiency among their student population, which means they will fail and face penalties. Likewise, the current grading system doesn’t differentiate between a school in which 90 percent of students are succeeding and a school in which the same number of students are failing.

What the federal government should do instead is measure progress as well as performance on a graduated scale–A to F–just as most students are graded. Such a system will remove the deterrent to rigorous academic standards, reward schools that are great but not perfect, and acknowledge that improvement is worthy of recognition, even if students are not yet performing on grade level.

The policy of accountability, when implemented, disproves the commonly held myths that have resulted in flawed education policies. In Florida, accountability proved that poor minority students can learn and achieve to the same high standards to which we hold students from middle-income and wealthy families. Certainly they may need more support along the way, but they are clearly capable of learning and even excelling.

For accountability to work, empirical data–not anecdotes, fears, or beliefs–needs to guide the development of education policy. States need to track each student’s performance from one year to the next. Perhaps this was not possible a few years ago, but it is common today. Florida’s data system can tell you a student’s individual test score in every grade from third to eleventh, who his teacher was each year, and whether he gained or lost ground from one year to the next. We know which students are transferring to private schools and which students are dropping out of school altogether. From this information, we can make informed decisions about which policies are working and which policies aren’t.

With every election comes new opportunity to build on success. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was the first step to reversing decades of decline in public schools across our nation. Its reauthorization with a new iteration of reforms that foster higher academic standards and greater accountability will ensure that our country remains a leader in the world economy.