It’s not until something we care about is under attack that we realize how much it is cherished.

That’s the way it was when Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives made the mistake of proposing that funding be extended to faith-based schools at the beginning of the last provincial election. Ontarians quickly realized that diverting money to 50,000 students in private schools at the expense of the two million students in the publicly funded school system threatened what they valued most and they voted accordingly.

Here we are again at election time, except this time education seems to be getting the silent treatment by the two parties in opposition. These sounds of silence signal complacency, a more insidious enemy of public education.

While it is true that I have had a front-row seat in Ontario’s progress as an external adviser to the premier, similar opportunities with other governments of all political stripes around the world have provided me with a good perspective on what works. We now know a great deal about how to accomplish what I call “whole system reform” — all students benefitting. It is partly having the right policies and largely doing the right things and doing those things relentlessly over time.

What about the results so far in Ontario?

Literacy and numeracy, measured as high proficiency including thinking, communication skills and problem-solving, have increased by 15 per cent across the 4,000 public schools, while the gap for the disadvantaged — special-education students, those in poverty and recent immigrants — got smaller. This means that 85,000 more students in Ontario have achieved high levels of proficiency in literacy and numeracy than would have been the case if achievement had stayed at the 2003 level.

In our 900 high schools, after years of stagnation, graduation rates have climbed an astounding 13 percentage points — from 68 per cent in 2004 to 81 per cent in 2010 — and are still rising. This level of high-school improvement is unprecedented in the world. The numbers again: 72,000 more graduates than would have been the case had graduation rates remained at 68 per cent. Many more youths are off the streets and into further education and employment.

Think of this as the equivalent of an entire city we could call Best Future, Ont., the size of Sudbury, filled with more than 150,000 inhabitants with better futures. And now full-day kindergarten for 4- and 5-year olds. Going forward, each year our Best Future city is projected to add 25,000 highly educated inhabitants each year. We know that how children are doing at age 5 predicts with uncanny accuracy how they will be doing when they are 15 and beyond.

Speaking of 15-year-olds, OECD’s Program for International Assessment of Students, (PISA), found in its latest assessment (2009) that Ontario’s 15-year-olds ranked in the top six countries in the world in performance assessment in literacy, math and sciences. Not only is Canada a high-performing country, Ontario was cited by OECD and by a recent McKinsey report as one of the world’s most rapidly improving school systems. External experts identify leadership and focus as the causes of our success.

Other top-performing countries and wannabes see themselves in an international race to get better. Visitors from Finland, Singapore and the U.S., to name a few, have been knocking down our doors to see how we accomplished these impressive system-wide results. So far we are doing well, but the race has just begun.

Whether Ontario’s education system will be transformed after eight years of progress into one that can challenge for the best in the world or slides backward depends critically on what happens next. What we can’t afford is the silence of complacency. For anyone who plans to form the next Ontario government, keeping the momentum going on education improvement requires deep personal commitment and active, focused involvement. It won’t take much neglect to lose the benefit of all the effort and investments of the past number of years.

We need to hear from all of our leaders about their version of the Best Future community, not as a campaign slogan, but in terms of how they are going to spend their time and our money in specific terms. So far the silence is deafening — and dangerous to our collective prosperity and well-being.

Michael Fullan is professor emeritus at OISE/University of Toronto.