News Briefs

Tarnished silver anniversary of ‘Nation at Risk’ report

May 8, 2008 4:00 PM

Twenty-five years ago, the Reagan-appointed National Commission on Excellence in Education issued “A Nation at Risk,” which reported poor academic performance at nearly every school level and warned that the education system was “being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity.” The report jump-started talks about accountability, testing and standards, and led to the increased federal role in education reflected in 2002’s No Child Left Behind legislation.

The report also had the unintended consequence of holding back Reagan’s initial education program, which had included supporting private schools through vouchers and tuition tax credits, reducing federal education spending and abolishing the federal U.S. Education Department. After the report, says Albert Shanker biographer Richard Kahlenberg, “Reagan had to back off on the spending cuts for education. He continued to mouth rhetoric about vouchers and privatization, but it got no traction at all.” While still inadequate, federal K-12 school aid grew from $16 billion in 1980 to nearly $72 billion in 2007.

The AFT supported the initial goals of the report, which emphasized standards, accountability, and raising expectations. While the report spurred national attention to schools, AFT President Ed McElroy said that progress since then “has sputtered in fits and starts,” with too many policymakers “experimenting with discredited ‘reforms.’ ... And the federal No Child Left Behind Act, with its focus on testing above all else, has proved a distraction from the real work of school improvement.”

Meanwhile, education writer Richard Rothstein thinks the commission cried wolf even as test scores were rising. “We should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing,” he said. He blames the commission for “narrowing the curriculum in an effort to boost math and reading test scores.”

USA Today, April 22

AFT LeaderNet, April 24

Cato Unbound, April 7