Our guest blogger is James Kvaal, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

America’s prosperity was built partly on its strong schools. For most of the last century, America led the world in educational achievement. Our academic edge drove the United States’ exceptional economic growth and low income inequality, according to Harvard professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz.

The rapid increases in schooling were impressive. In only 30 years — between 1910 and 1940 — the number of 18-year-olds with high school diplomas increased from 9 percent to 50 percent. And 30 years later, about half of American students were attending at least some college — leading the world.

But since the 1970s, the U.S. educational system has rested on its laurels, and we are losing ground. Educational achievement among young workers (between the ages of 25 and 34) has slipped to tenth in the world, according to new analysis from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

In part, that’s because tuition has grown by 439 percent over the past 25 years while family incomes have increased by only 147 percent, according to the Center. More resources are needed to keep tuition low and expand scholarships. The College Board makes a compelling case for financial aid reforms that could help more students earn their college degrees.

But there are broader problems as well. We also need to raise high school graduation rates, which average only about 73 percent by some estimates. Stronger academic preparation is needed, particularly in struggling urban schools. And we need to raise students’ aspirations and help them navigate the complicated college and financial aid systems.

As the debate over whether or not to provide a $25 billion loan to America’s ailing auto industry rages on, conservatives have propagated the myth that the auto workers’ unions are to blame for the Big Three melting down. For instance, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett has proclaimed “You retire and you get health care for life? Since when? I mean, no wonder the Big Three are broke.”

Last night, Leo Gerard, president of United Steelworkers International, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show to dispel this falsehood. “Unions are being set up as if they are the reason that America can’t be that competitive and that business has failed,” Maddow said. “Do you feel that is a political attack on unions as a union leader right now?” Gerard replied, “Of course it’s a phony attack” to blame “an auto worker that makes $57,000 a year.” Watch it:

The idea that unions have brought Detroit to its knees is patently ridiculous. The unions have made multiple concessions in recent years, accepting buyouts and offering to cover the health insurance costs of retirees. The Big Three, meanwhile, created a business model in which they “could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks.” As Tom Friedman wrote, “instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.”

Lost in this whole debate are the obvious economic benefits for workers that are derived from being in a union, including increased wages, better health care, and better pensions. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted this week, joining a union can have a profound effect on the wages and benefits that women receive in the workplace, in particular:

On average, unionization raised women’s wages by 11.2 percent – about $2.00 per hour – compared to non-union women with similar characteristics. Among women workers, those in unions were about 19 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and about 25 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension.

Fortunately, President-elect Obama has shown that he supports strengthening unions. One of the people being considered to head the Department of Labor — a department that has been “widely criticized for walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety” — is Mary Beth Maxwell, founding executive director of American Rights at Work and an advocate for stronger unions.

Transcript: Read more