What the Iraq Study Group said about the Iraq War situation -- "grim and deteriorating" -- has been echoed by another bipartisan commission, this one studying the state of American education.

It didn't use those exact words, but the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce warned that unless U.S. schools are improved radically, the country's standard of living will plunge over the next 20 years.

The commission, whose members included four former Cabinet officers, proposed a series of radical and most likely controversial changes designed to keep the United States from falling behind foreign competitors.

The reforms mainly require action at the state level, and one gutsy governor will be needed to start the process and serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

As this study and numerous other reports on competitiveness have warned, other countries -- led by India and China -- increasingly are offering the world's employers highly skilled work forces at lower costs than American labor, causing jobs and investment to move offshore.

The only reason that employers would depend on Americans, the panel said, is "if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot."

That has to be superior skills, know-how, technology and innovation, yet U.S. schools -- the second costliest in the world per pupil -- badly lag behind in performance on international tests.