Crying wolf? Learning from history?

When the Program for International Student Achievement ranking were released a few weeks ago, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the numbers — which showed U.S. students still lagging behind other nations — were "a wake-up call."

Walt Gardner points out that we've already heard this song. 

In a 1958 feature in Life Magazine, readers were treated to the side-by-side photos of two high school juniors. "One was a dour Alexei Kutzkov in Moscow and the other was a beaming Stephen Lapekas in Chicago," Gardner writes. 

The headline? "Schoolboys point up a U.S. weakness."

"As simplistic as the article seems, it achieved its objective of creating widespread anxiety," Gardner says. "This state was then exacerbated by the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. Its most famous line is familiar: 'If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.'"

Of course, Gardner says, that's not what happened. The Soviet Union collapsed. The United States entered into the most protracted period of economic growth since its founding. The rest is history.

Are we crying wolf? Or is this a different time, a different place, a different crisis?