When the topic of America's mediocre international ranking in student achievement comes up, there are a few typical reactions among adults.

Invariably, there's denial: Our students are more creative and innovative than those in countries that produce robotic test-takers. The test is somehow flawed. Those low-performing students must be at other (read: poor) schools.

Or there's anxiety: Our children are going to be left behind in the global economy. This fear leads those who can afford it to pour more time and resources into their children and their education, continually upping the ante and the latent stress levels.

And, of course, there's blame. Pick your target: lazy students, bad parents, lousy teachers, greedy unions, inefficient bureaucracies, not enough government funding or too much governmental meddling. It's easier, though ultimately futile, to scapegoat than commit to ideas of how we can improve our system.

Each of these knee-jerk reactions miss the most disquieting questions of all: Why do the most privileged American teenagers in the best schools and with well-educated parents still perform worse in math than affluent children in 27 other countries? Why does our country spend more than other countries on students but get less in performance? Why has America's performance on a common measuring stick remained essentially flat for decades, while students in other countries have skyrocketed to the top in a short amount of time?

Journalist Amanda Ripley investigated these mysteries in her book "The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way." She took the Program for International Student Assessment herself and found it to be a sound yardstick. She then followed three American teenagers who chose to spend a year in school at one of three high-performing countries: Finland, South Korea and Poland. She looked at what American schools, students and families were doing differently than their counterparts in the top-performing countries.

She, and the students she followed, discovered curricula and schoolwork far more rigorous than ours in their schools abroad. They met teachers who were better prepared to teach and more respected for their profession. It was harder to become a teacher in these other countries. Their selective teacher training schools attracted the brightest and best. Their cultures ingrained high expectations for all students, and the competition among peers raised the bar. While the American communities focused heavily on sports, the countries with the smartest students focused on academic skills, critical thinking and training programs.

Ripley's work should inform the current discussion about President Obama's proposal to offer two free years of community college to any student who maintains a 2.5 grade-point average and makes progress toward a degree or technical certificate in a high-demand field.

There is an appeal to the idea of making the basics of higher education available to all students willing to work for it, to give them a shot at the American dream. It's in the country's best interest to have a trained and educated workforce that can fill the jobs at home and grow the economy.

But how well do community colleges actually perform? They tackle the outcome of an underperforming K-12 system. They serve close to half of all undergraduates in the U.S., and nearly half those students require remedial coursework. It seems ludicrous to inject rigor into a system struggling to bring students to baseline, doesn't it?

But consider the natural consequence of setting the bar too low: "Far too few of those students persist to achieve the educational outcomes that would change their lives and their families' lives for generations to come. By six years after college entry, only 46 percent of community college students have earned a certificate or associate degree, have transferred to a 4-year institution, or are still enrolled," wrote Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, in a 2012 opinion piece.

Yes, community colleges expand college attainment rates for students who otherwise wouldn't attend college at all. Making higher education more accessible is an important goal. But community colleges -- as well as our lagging K-12 schools -- should take this proposal as a challenge to incorporate greater academic rigor, high expectations and consequences for all vested parties.

Are we less willing to have that discussion because deep down, we don't believe American students can be the smartest in the world?

A steady stream of letters arrived in Heidi Hogan's mailbox from the same woman two or three times a week.

The two women had lost touch for 10 years, but once they reconnected, the notes rolled in for 23 years, as reliable as the sunrise.

The writer found Hogan at a low moment. She had just lost her mother-in-law, to whom she had been very close.

Ten years earlier, when she was 22, Hogan was in a car accident with her young family. Her husband, 23, and their daughter, 14 months, died in the accident. She and her son, 3, survived. Her mother-in-law had remained a connection to all she had lost, and was more like a mother to her than her own mom. The loss hit her hard.

And that's when her godmother found her again.

Lenore Anderson had been a church secretary in Milwaukee when she met Hogan's parents. Anderson's own parents had died when she was young and she had no immediate family to speak of. Hogan's parents took her under their wing. She frequently joined their family for dinner after church. They asked her to be Hogan's godmother when she was born.

Soon after, Anderson moved away to earn her bachelor's degree, ending up at St. Louis' Washington University, where she earned her master's in social work in 1961. While Hogan grew up in Wisconsin, her godmother worked in crisis intervention in the roughest parts of St. Louis. Anderson visited the Hogans about once a year.

Anderson never married, nor had children herself. But when she met a child or any person she liked, she bonded strongly with them. Her goddaughter was certainly in that circle. Years after the accident, Hogan remarried, had two more children and adopted a child with special needs. Anderson visited the kids, sent them gifts and wrote their mother the weekly letters.

She worked as a social worker in the St. Louis area for more than 50 years, and when my husband hired her more than a decade ago, she developed an affection for our children. Every Easter, Halloween and Christmas, packages would arrive for both of them from her.

We were hardly alone as recipients of her generosity.

If she was at a garage sale or in the senior center and spotted something one of her clients or "adopted" children would like, she bought it and sent it. One of the children she counseled early in her career, when he was 10 years old, stayed in her life for more than 40 years. When she had to move from her home in the city to an assisted living center, he took the bus across town to her home to help her pack and move.

As she got older, the osteoarthritis in her back got so bad that she hunched over and pushed the seat of her walker, instead of the handles, to get around. But she continued to work and was devoted to her clients. She would find out which candies the youngest ones liked and keep their favorites on hand.

It was always a mystery to me why a woman so vivacious, with such a generous soul, beautiful through and through, never married or had a family of her own. When I asked Hogan if she knew why Anderson never had children, she said: I'm going to assume I was hers.

Perhaps Anderson figured out that loving people didn't require anything more than a giving heart.

"She saw the world as her oyster, and it presented pearls to her in the form of other people," said Pat Way, Anderson's longtime friend. When Way saw her in a hospital bed, in septic shock from an infection the day before she died, the first thing her friend said was, "You better call Betty and tell her I may not be in tomorrow." She was worried about seeing her clients the next day.

Hogan said she cried for 24 hours after she learned of Anderson's death on Jan. 2. She thought of her father, whom she had adored and who died when she was 15, meeting Anderson in heaven.

"I imagined him thanking her for taking care of me."

At home, there's an unfinished letter Hogan had been writing to her godmother that never got mailed.

When Mary Jane Turrubiartes' youngest child dragged her to the gym near the end of 2012, it was the last place she wanted to be.

Her daughter Elida, now 21, knew her mom was unhappy. Turrubiartes was nearing 200 pounds, pushing a size 18 and taking four medications for high blood pressure, along with steroid medicine for asthma. She was prediabetic and her cholesterol was high.

Her self-esteem was even worse than her health.

"She was always so negative about herself," Elida said. She said she didn't want her mother to die because of health problems related to her weight.

Turrubiartes, now 48, knew her marriage of 20 years had been bad for a long time. She struggled with emotional demons she wasn't ready to confront.

But she listened to her daughter and went with her to the gym in the suburbs of Houston where she met a personal trainer -- my brother.

She sat in his office with her daughter and listened to him say she could change her life.

"I'm too old," she said. "I'm too fat." Her daughter and her new trainer refused to accept that.

So, like so many others with the same intention near the start of a new year, Turrubiartes signed up to begin training. It was pretty miserable at first. And it didn't get much better for a while. After a particularly difficult workout, when she felt discouraged and wondered whether she should continue training, her trainer said to her: You need to look in a mirror and figure out what is going on with you.

"Who does he think he is?" she thought to herself. She wanted to quit.

She talked to her mom, who encouraged her to stick with it. Elida told her to keep going, too. They were proud of her effort.

She had been through a lot of hardship, even before this particular journey began.

Back in 2000, Turrubiartes had nearly lost her own life when she was 36 weeks pregnant. Doctors induced her to give birth because of preeclampsia, a condition in pregnancy when women develop high blood pressure. Her baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

He died in the hospital two weeks after he was born.

"I just got numb after that," she said. "I went into this place in my head where I was on autopilot. I didn't grieve. I went back to work right away."

Years later, the weight started really adding up. She was the one who cooked for her entire family. She loved to bake for them, too.

"I was eating everything I was cooking and baking," she said. "I was so unhappy, I don't think I even knew it."

At the gym, 13 years later, she was dealing with those emotions while transforming her body.

After changing her diet and about six months of training three days a week, the pounds started falling off pretty quickly.

Her doctors were amazed at her progress, and she slowly got off nearly all her medication. The hardest decision she made was realizing she had to move on from a marriage that had only been getting worse.

"I gave everything to my husband and kids. I thought we were going to grow old together. I'm not 30. It's kind of scary being alone," she said.

She filed for a divorce that should be finalized in a few months.

"There were days when I was so down in the dumps, I didn't want to go anywhere," Turrubiartes said, let alone a gym. But she forced herself. The things she was able to do while training gave her courage. It made her stronger physically and mentally.

She lost more than 50 pounds over the course of that year. She's now down to a size 8. She decided to study for her certification to become a trainer while she continued to work. She passed the test in October, and wants to train other women and help them regain their confidence.

Her daughter had seen how unhappy she was with herself, even when she couldn't face it.

"If it wasn't for her, I probably would never have done it," said Turrubiartes.

Elida said her mom may not realize it, but her dedication to making her life better has encouraged her just as much.

The transformation in her life has been bittersweet.

"It's sad because the family is broken up," she said, crying. "But I'm at a better place physically, mentally and emotionally."

Her daughter had helped her realize: I can't be unhappy like this anymore. And she's starting to see herself differently.

"If someone tells me I'm pretty, I'll say, 'No, I'm not,' she said. "My girls will say, 'Mom, learn to take a compliment.'"

Sometimes when she gets dressed and passes by a mirror, she does a double-take and backs up to take another look.

"Oh, OK," she'll think to herself.

"I'm learning how to take a compliment."