Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, where this editorial first appeared. He is also the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer.

A month ago, a disturbing advertisement started popping up regularly on television stations whose audience included residents of New Jersey.

The ad portrayed three children, all seemingly cute, carefree, playful and inquisitive. One girl was shown reaching for a flower. A boy gazed through a magnifying glass at a small sphere. Another boy blew bubbles into the wind. But then, the mood changed, with this unsettling message: “Amelia will never be a doctor. Carter will never be an engineer. Noah will never be an architect.” Citing statistics from New Jersey’s educational watchdog, the state Department of Education, the ad then continued: “We know because 55% of New Jersey fourth graders can’t do math at grade level. By the sixth grade, it’s 64%. Most simply never catch up.”

Welcome to the dirty secret of American education. Our kids are falling behind. Worse, we have known this for years — decades, actually. So why is this issue not front and center in today’s contentious national politics? Here, in New Jersey where a governor’s race is gearing up for a nationally significant fall election, why aren’t more candidates talking about what may turn out to be a lost generation of students?  

We hear, of course, much about education today – especially from Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. But that discourse – primarily within the politically frozen confines of the Beltway — focuses mostly on bureaucracy and the possible dismantling of the federal Department of Education. All adult issues. Just this week, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend millions of dollars in federal grants to fix teacher shortages in states, claiming that the money was also being used for diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Why are our kids lagging behind on reading and math?

Lost in this swamp of discord is a far more compelling and weighty issue — the fact that an increasing number of kids can’t read and do math the way their parents and grandparents did. Put another way: America is raising a generation of students who have fallen behind. Memo to Democrats and Republicans: Why wasn’t this a major issue in last fall’s presidential election? Or a topic for scores of congressional campaigns? Or even a debating point in many local and state elections? 

Good question. Plenty of elected officials know that far too many of America’s kids are not performing well in school. The facts have been circulating for years.

But almost no official wants to turn this issue into a national crusade. Our nation’s educational bureaucracy seems more focused on the pros and cons of transgender bathrooms in schools and whether some of the early works of acclaimed children’s book author Dr. Seuss should be banned because some images could be viewed as racist whereas his later books were just fine. (Full disclosure: My family has a signed copy of “The Cat in The Hat.”)

The hugely consequential issues of classroom performances that impact the vast majority of students seem like casualties of America’s culture wars or just a silly plotline from Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.” The ugly truth is that far too many children are probably incapable of reading one of Seuss’ most quoted lines: “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. Would you eat them in a box?  Would you eat them with a fox?” Even worse, perhaps, would kids understand the numbering and rhyme patterns in Seuss’ “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.”

America has a so-called “moonshot” program to cure cancer — basically a national effort, on par with NASA’s ambitious, no-holds-barred plan to travel to the moon during the 1960s, to marshal America’s resources to conquer a devastating and far-too-mysterious disease. Why not a “moonshot” effort to fix education?

One of the most disturbing aspects of the recent TV ad, which is sponsored by the school reform group, “Wake Up Call NJ,” is that it focuses on New Jersey and actual test scores supplied by the state government. In other words, this isn’t some weird conspiracy theory circulated by a basement podcaster. This is based on official statistics that are available for everyone to see. 

Critics will surely focus on trashing the leaders of “Wake Up Call NJ” and the fact that one served in the administration of former Gov. Chris Christie in a controversial role of improving teacher evaluations even though he had never been a teacher.

But if this problem is reduced to mere politics, it will never be solved. It won’t even be faced.

The irony of those disturbing test scores, of course, is that New Jersey is known for having some of the best schools in the nation. The so-called “Garden State” may have many other problems. Exhibit A these days is the shocking corruption scandal involving former Sen. Bob Menendez. Another is New Jersey’s all-too-comfortable and long relationship with toxic dumping. But New Jersey is hardly a bottom dweller of educational achievement — certainly not on par with some of the nation’s chronically low-performing schools in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

For years New Jersey could rightly point to its schools as a source of pride and cite a long list of stellar graduates, ranging from novelist Phillip Roth to poet Ntozake Shange to rock star Bruce Springsteen to actors Meryl Streep, Paul Robeson and Jack Nicholson and comic and social critic Jon Stewart. To name just a few.

So what happened?

Funding? Bureaucracy? COVID? What’s really to blame?

Conservatives frequently blame what they describe as a overly heavy focus on diversity in schools and curriculums. Or they blame teachers’ unions and the cumbersome education bureaucracy in government that eats up billions in tax dollars. Progressives, on the other hand, often blame a lack of funding for schools or a renewed focus on test scores as a measure of learning or the increasing intrusion of politics into school curriculums.   

Still others blame the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced students into at-home learning for more than a year. Others point to family discord, the lack of computer skills for poorer African Americans and Hispanics, the continuing distraction of cellphones and their link to reduced attention spans for kids and a lack of teachers.

In other words, the finger pointing has multiple targets — some of them legitimate. 

But, sadly, none of these targets explains the whole problem. Yes, the COVID pandemic was a massive hindrance for education. And cellphones continue as a source of a distraction for students in the classroom and at home. And, yes, bad teachers pop up in schools now and then. But at the same time, I’ve long felt that teachers are some of the hardest-working and least appreciated cornerstones of society. They shoulder far too much blame for student performance.

The same is true of government funding for schools. Yes, the state has far too many old school buildings that cry out for modernization or a wrecking ball. Some Newark students attend classes in buildings that date back to World War I. But when it comes to tax dollars earmarked for schools, New Jersey ranks among the top states in America.

In other words, this is a problem that requires far more than the usual finger-pointing that is now the default heartbeat of American politics.  Something fundamental has gone wrong in American education if so many kids can’t solve basic math problems and read.

It’s time America admitted that. Or as that TV ad from Wake Up Call NJ noted: “The first step is knowing there’s a problem.”

This challenge may be one of the most difficult for America to overcome in the next decade. After all, here in New Jersey, we thought our schools were among the best in the nation. The downturn in test scores is a sobering reality to face — for conservatives and for progressives alike.

Nevertheless, it is an issue that needs to be faced. We’re raising far too many kids who can’t read or work with numbers.

That’s not a future any of us should want.