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Federal Report Fuels a Quarter-Century of Restructuring, and Controversy
There's nothing new about the Feds beating up on teachers.
Valerie Strauss
Twenty-five years ago, the federal government report "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" launched an era of efforts to improve public schools that continues today.
The authors used combative language, starting with the title, to issue a call to action to elected officials and educators to set new academic standards and improve teacher quality. The report was the product of an 18-member panel assembled in 1981 by Terrel H. Bell, who was secretary of education at the time, to examine the public education system.
The report wasn't the first call for education reform, but it garnered unusual attention because of its plain language, which linked the future of the economy to public schooling, and because of the times in which it was delivered.
Ronald Reagan was president, and many newly resurgent conservatives wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, institute school vouchers and make other changes to the public education system. Some, including then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III, opposed the report because it made no mention of those issues. Others said many of its conclusions and recommendations were based on inaccurate data and hazy reasoning.
Still, the report fueled new interest in education reform, launched the standards movement and influenced the Bush administration's creation of the No Child Left Behind law.
Here are some key events related to school reform since "A Nation at Risk" was published:
- April 1983: "A Nation at Risk" warns that the country's future is threatened by its inadequate public education system. It recommends that all high school students be required to take four courses in English; three each in math, science and social studies; and a half-credit in computer science, with a foreign-language requirement for students heading to college.
"The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people," the report states.
And: "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."
Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. thought the report inadequate, saying it made recommendations that "you and I would come up with over the phone." And Russell Baker, the New York Times humorist, gave the report's authors "an A+ in mediocrity."
- 1989: President George H.W. Bush, with the help of then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, convenes the nation's governors in the first National Education Summit, in Charlottesville, to discuss education improvement.
- 1994: President Bill Clinton signs into law the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, which supports states in developing standards for student learning and achievement.
- 1995: David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle publish "The Manufactured Crisis," which questions the data used in "A Nation at Risk" and says legislators used bad information to enact bad reforms. The still-influential book said the 1983 report characterized the quality of public education as far worse than it was. Other critics say the report focused too heavily on high schools.
- 1997: The publication Education Week, in its first state-by-state analysis of public education, says states have little to show for their efforts to improve schools after "A Nation at Risk."
- 2001: President Bush, who calls himself "the education president," wins congressional approval for the No Child Left Behind Act. He signs the measure, which stresses accountability through high-stakes testing, into law in January 2002.
- 2008: Educators have scheduled several conferences to discuss the effect of the report.
Gerald Bracey, an education researcher, tells the Huffington Post: "A Nation at Risk should have been published on April 1, 1983. It was a great April Fools Day joke on America. (Given what it did to public education, though, educators can be forgiven if they smile not)."
— Valerie Strauss
Washington Post
2008-04-07
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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