Rahm Emanuel, who served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama, wrote in The Post that the country is not sufficiently focused on “the real crisis — namely, our children’s failure to meet basic standards in reading, writing and arithmetic.” “Has America given up on children’s learning?” was the headline of a recent New York Times article.

This doom and gloom have gone way too far. In reality, America’s public schools are educating children at levels similar to other countries and providing countless nonacademic benefits to our society.

You’ve no doubt heard about the big post-covid-19 dips in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a set of tests conducted by U.S. education officials. But other metrics are worth considering. Fifteen-year-olds in countries across the world take exams in reading, math and science as part of the Program for International Student Assessment. In the most recent PISA, conducted in 2022, U.S. students scored similarly to those in Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations that are considered America’s peers.

U.S. students scored similar to other Westernized countries in the 2018 PISA and in other international tests.

The overwhelming majority of American students are reaching “baseline proficiency,” in math, reading and science, according to PISA. That’s almost certainly because of our public school systems, where about 87 percent of students in grades K-12 get their education. U.S. politicians for a while were pushing the aspirational idea that most students should score proficient or above on the NAEP tests. That is a very high and probably unrealistic standard. Most of America’s students are reaching the NAEP “basic” level, mirroring the PISA results.

The PISA scores show that countries around the world lost ground educationally during the pandemic and that most nations have a substantial test score gap between students from rich families and those from poorer ones. So while the achievement gap and covid-19 learning loss are big problems, they’re not unique flaws of American education.

While recent NAEP results have been disappointing, they show a positive long-term story. Students ages 9 and 13 have taken NAEP tests in reading and math since the 1960s. Nine-year-olds scored on average 234 in math in 2022, compared with 219 in the early 1970s.

The average math score for Black students has gone from 192 to 212; from 203 to 223 for Latinos; and 224 to 244 for White students. Reading scores have also increased.

“When you hear things like, ‘These are the worst results in a generation,’ keep in mind that what that means is that kids on average are learning as much as their parents did and quite a bit more than their grandparents,” said Karin Chenoweth, an author of several books on education who runs a group called Democracy and Education.

To be sure, these numbers are not great. Students in the United States are doing significantly worse than those in nations such as Japan and South Korea. It’s unfortunate that one-third of American students in math and one-fifth in science and reading aren’t reaching basic standards, according to PISA. The most recent NAEP results suggest that about half of Native American, Black and Latino eighth-graders aren’t reaching basic reading levels, and the gap between them and White students remains huge.

These are not facts you hear often, particularly from Republican leaders: The vast majority of American students are learning at normal levels by international standards, and the U.S. education system is doing about as well as many other big nations.

Three other indicators suggest American education is not failing. First, most parents (around 70 percent) say they are satisfied with their kid’s school. Second, programs that would shift money from public to private schools usually are opposed by voters, even in red states.

Third, the U.S. has a thriving economy, full of people working productively in their jobs. It is hard to imagine that being the case if most Americans aren’t learning anything in public schools.

And the education conversation in America often ignores the enormous nonacademic benefits of public schools. They are places where students are generally safe during the day. They often provide free meals. Students from wealthy families meeting their counterparts from lower-income households and cisgender kids connecting with their nonbinary or transgender peers is valuable and educational even if it doesn’t raise test scores.

“People on the right, they’re always talking about the spiritual crisis and how terrible it is that the church pews are emptied out and everybody’s alone and playing video games. But their whole policy prescription is to get rid of the last institution that brings people together,” education writer Jennifer Berkshire said.

Jack Schneider, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s education school, said “Americans consistently name lots of things that schools do other than just raising achievement: … being exposed to civic mindsets, preparation for life in a diverse democracy, arts and music, education and creativity, critical thinking, learning how to get along with others.”

Politics drives much of the negativity about public schools. Many conservative activists and Republican lawmakers would prefer a system of private education, in which families choose schools aligned with their religious faith and other values. Undermining the public school system helps build the case for vouchers.

“Public schools still have to be better,” Chenoweth said. “The problem is that the legitimate criticisms of schools are being used as a cudgel to say, you know, ‘This whole public education thing is stupid.’”

For centrist Democrats, casting American schools in a state of crisis because of the pandemic closures helps them marginalize teachers unions, which are more associated with the party’s left. Teachers unions were a big driver of school closures in some communities.

Public schools in America aren’t perfect. They don’t teach low-income children well — and too often blame poverty as opposed to schools’ failures. Some have too many fights and other behavior problems that undermine safety. It would have been better if they stayed open during the pandemic.

But the alarmist portrayals of our schools are wrong and undermine support for public education. I spent 13 years in public schools in Louisville and was extremely well-prepared for college and my career — and I’m part of one group (African Americans) that our schools supposedly can’t educate. America should fully commit to getting test scores back where they were before the pandemic — and hopefully even higher — without ignoring the great things happening in our schools every day.