The Death and Life of the Great American School System
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This rhetoric represented a remarkable turn of events. It showed how the politics of education had been transformed. The same views might as well have appeared in conservative journals, such as National Review or the Weekly Standard. Slogans long advocated by policy wonks on the right had migrated to and been embraced by policy wonks on the left. When Democratic think tanks say their party should support accountability and school choice, while rebuffing the teachers’ unions, you can bet that something has fundamentally changed in the political scene. In 2008, these issues, which had been the exclusive property of the conservative wing of the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, had somehow managed to captivate education thinkers in the Democratic Party as well.
WHERE DID EDUCATION REFORM GO WRONG? Ask the question, and you’ll get different answers, depending on whom you ask. But all roads eventually lead back to a major report released in 1983 called A Nation at Risk.
It is important to understand A Nation at Risk (ANAR), its role in the rise and fall of the standards movement, and its contrast with No Child Left Behind. ANAR encouraged states and the nation to craft genuine curriculum standards in many subjects; this movement foundered when the history standards came under attack. Consequently, education leaders retreated into the relative safety of standardized testing of basic skills, which was a poor substitute for a full-fledged program of curriculum and assessments. In the trade-off, our education system ended up with no curricular goals, low standards, and dumbed-down tests.
A Nation at Risk was a response to the radical school reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Whoever remembers that era fondly is sure to dislike ANAR; conversely, whoever was skeptical toward the freewheeling reforms of those years is likely to admire ANAR. No one who lived in that time will forget the proliferation of experiments and movements in the nation’s schools. Reformers differed mainly in terms of how radical their proposals were. The reforms of the era were proffered with the best of intentions; some stemmed from a desire to advance racial equity in the classroom and to broaden the curriculum to respect the cultural diversity of the population. Others were intended to liberate students from burdensome requirements. Still others proceeded in the spirit of A. S. Neill’s Summerhill, where any sort of adult authority was strictly forbidden. Tear down the walls between the classrooms, said some reformers. Free the children, free the schools, abolish all rules and requirements. Let the English teacher teach math, and the math teacher teach English. Let students design their own courses and learn whatever they feel like learning whenever (or if ever) they feel like learning. Get rid of graduation requirements, college entrance requirements, grades, tests, and textbooks. Down with the canon. On it went, with reformers, radicals, and revolutionaries competing to outdo one another.14
And then one day in 1975, the New York Times reported on its front page that scores on the SAT—the nation’s premier college entrance examination—had fallen steadily for over a decade.15 The College Board, which sponsors the SAT, appointed an august commission to consider the likely causes of the score decline. The SAT commission in 1977 found plenty of reasons, including the increased numbers of minority students taking the test, whose test scores on average were lower than those of traditional test takers. But, said the commission, the test score decline was not entirely explained by the changing ethnic composition of the test takers. Some erosion in academic learning had probably been caused by large social forces, such as increased television viewing and the rising divorce rate, as well as political upheavals, such as the Vietnam War and Water-gate. Significantly, the commission also concluded that changes in the schools’ practices had contributed to the steady slippage of SAT scores, especially in the verbal portion. Students were taking fewer basic academic courses and more fluffy electives; there was less assignment of homework, more absenteeism, and “less thoughtful and critical reading”; and, the commission noted, “careful writing has apparently about gone out of style.”16 The SAT report was soon followed by doleful federal reports about the state of the nation’s schools, documenting falling enrollments in math and science and in foreign language study.17
Then in 1983 came A Nation at Risk, the all-time blockbuster of education reports. It was prepared by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a group appointed by President Reagan’s secretary of education, Terrel Bell. Bell was a subversive in the Reagan cabinet, a former school superintendent and a bona fide member of the education establishment. Whenever the president launched into a lecture about his desire to restore school prayer or to promote vouchers, Secretary Bell was notably silent.18
The report was an immediate sensation. Its conclusions were alarming, and its language was blunt to the point of being incendiary. It opened with the claim that “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. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.” The nation, it warned, has “been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” Beset by conflicting demands, our educational institutions “seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them.”19
In the years since A Nation at Risk was published, academics, educators, and pundits have debated whether the report was an accurate appraisal of academic standards or merely alarmist rhetoric by the Reagan administration, intended to undermine public education. The language was flamboyant, but that’s how a report about education gets public attention. If it had been written in the usual somber, leaden tones of most national commissions, we would not be discussing it a generation later. A Nation at Risk was written in plain English, with just enough flair to capture the attention of the press. Its argument and recommendations made sense to nonspecialists. People who were not educators could understand its message, which thoughtfully addressed the fundamental issues in education. The national news media featured stories about the “crisis in education.” The report got what it wanted: the public’s attention.
A Nation at Risk was notable for what it did not say. It did not echo Reagan’s oft-expressed wish to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. It did not support or even discuss his other favorite education causes: vouchers and school prayer. It did not refer to market-based competition and choice among schools; it did not suggest restructuring schools or school systems. It said nothing about closing schools, privatization, state takeover of districts, or other heavy-handed forms of accountability. It referred only briefly, almost in passing, to testing. Instead, it addressed problems that were intrinsic to schooling, such as curriculum, graduation requirements, teacher preparation, and the quality of textbooks; it said nothing about the governance or organization of school districts, because these were not seen as causes of low performance.
Far from being a revolutionary document, the report was an impassioned plea to make our schools function better in their core mission as academic institutions and to make our education system live up to our nation’s ideals. It warned that the nation would be harmed economically and socially unless education was dramatically improved for all children. While it did not specifically address issues of race and class, the report repeatedly stressed that the quality of education must improve across the board. What was truly at risk, it said, was the promise that “all, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost.”20 To that end, the report recommended stronger high school graduation requirements; higher standards for academic performance and student conduct; more time devoted to instruction and homework; and higher standards for entry into the teaching profession and better salaries for teachers.
The statistics it cited showed declining SAT scores from 1963 to 1980, as well as a decline in the number and proportion of high-scoring students on tha
t test; lowered scores on standardized achievement tests; poor performance on international assessments; large numbers of functionally illiterate adults and seventeen-year-olds; the expansion of remedial courses on college campuses; and the cost of remedial training to the military and businesses.21
The primary cause of this inadequate academic performance, the commission said, was the steady erosion of the content of the curriculum: “Secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose. In effect, we have a cafeteria-style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses. Students have migrated from vocational and college preparatory programs to ‘general track’ courses in large numbers.” The proportion in this general track—neither academic nor vocational—had grown from 12 percent in 1964 to 42 percent in 1979. This percentage exceeded that of enrollment in either the academic or the vocational track. This “curricular smorgasbord,” combined with extensive student choice, led to a situation in which only small proportions of high school students completed standard, intermediate, and advanced courses. Second, the commission cited data to demonstrate that academic expectations had fallen over time—that students were not doing much homework, that high school graduation requirements were minimal, that college entry requirements had fallen, and that students were not taking as many courses in math and science as their peers in other nations.22
Although the report offered many recommendations, the most consequential, listed first in the report, was that high school graduation requirements should be strengthened. All high school students, the commission urged, should study what it called “The Five New Basics.” This was to consist of four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of science, three years of social studies, and one-half year of computer science. In addition, college-bound students should study at least two years of a foreign language. The commission proposed that foreign language study begin in elementary school and that schools include courses in the arts and vocational education in addition to the new basics.23
The commission did not just list the subjects to be studied; it succinctly defined the essential goals of each subject, without using jargon. For example, the commission said that the teaching of English “should equip graduates to: (a) comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and use what they read; (b) write well-organized, effective papers; (c) listen effectively and discuss ideas intelligently; and (d) know our literary heritage and how it enhances imagination and ethical understanding, and how it relates to the customs, ideas, and values of today’s life and culture.” The teaching of mathematics “should equip graduates to: (a) understand geometric and algebraic concepts; (b) understand elementary probability and statistics; (c) apply mathematics in everyday situations; and (d) estimate, approximate, measure, and test the accuracy of their calculations.” In addition to the traditional course of study for college-bound students, the commission recommended that “new, equally demanding mathematics curricula” be developed “for those who do not plan to continue their formal education immediately.”24 Again, none of this was revolutionary; the commission called on schools to educate all students well and to prepare them for whatever path they chose after high school.
A Nation at Risk proposed that four-year colleges and universities raise their admissions requirements. It urged scholars and professional societies to help upgrade the quality of textbooks and other teaching materials. It called on states to evaluate textbooks for their quality and to request that publishers present evidence of the effectiveness of their teaching materials, based on field trials and evaluations.
A Nation at Risk urged “significantly more time” for learning. High school students, it said, should receive more homework. ANAR called on school districts and states to lengthen the school day (to seven hours) and the school year (from the current 180 days to as many as 200 or 220 days). It called for firm, fair codes of conduct and for special classes or schools for children who were continually disruptive.
Those preparing to teach, said the commission, should be expected to meet high educational standards, by demonstrating not only their aptitude for teaching but also their competence in an academic discipline. Teachers’ salaries should be increased and should be “professionally competitive, market-sensitive, and performance-based.” Decisions about salary, tenure, promotion, and retention should be tied to peer review “so that superior teachers can be rewarded, average ones encouraged, and poor ones either improved or terminated.”25 The report recommended differential pay for teachers in relation to their quality, but proposed that judgments about teacher quality include peer review.
The commission correctly observed that “learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the ‘information age’ we are entering.”26 And it was right to say that those who are uneducated or poorly educated would be effectively excluded from material rewards and the chance to participate fully in our shared political and civic life. It was right to point to the curriculum as the heart of the matter, the definition of what students are expected to learn. When the curriculum is incoherent and insubstantial, students are cheated.
A Nation at Risk was certainly not part of a right-wing plot to destroy public education or a precursor to the privatization movement of the 1990s and early twenty-first century.27 Nor did it offer simple solutions to complex problems or demand the impossible. Every one of its recommendations was within the scope of the schools as they existed then and as they exist now, and none had any potential to harm public education. The report treated public education as a professional, purposeful enterprise that ought to have clear, attainable goals.
Some critics complained that the commission should have paid more attention to social and economic factors that affect educational outcomes, such as poverty, housing, welfare, and health.28 That’s a fair criticism. But the commission was asked to report on the quality of education in the nation’s schools, so it focused on the academic aspects of education. When critics said ANAR unfairly blamed the nation’s economic woes in the early 1980s on the schools, they took their argument too far, as if schools have nothing at all to do with a nation’s economic health. When the economy subsequently improved, the critics asked, “Why aren’t the schools getting credit for the upturn?” The critics confused the relationship between schools and the economy. Of course schools create human and social capital. Of course they are not the immediate cause of good times or bad times. Schools did not cause the Great Depression, nor can they claim credit for boom times. But economists have long recognized that good schools are important for a nation’s future economic, civic, social, and cultural development.
The one consequential error of A Nation at Risk was its implication that the fundamental problems of American education resided solely in the nation’s high schools and could be corrected by changes to that institution. The report assumed that elementary schools and junior high schools or middle schools were in fine shape and needed no special attention. But a closer look might have persuaded the commission that many students arrived in high school without the foundation of basic skills and knowledge essential to a good high school education. If the high school curriculum was a smorgasbord, the curriculum in the early grades was equally haphazard, lacking in coherence or content. This meant that students began their fresh-man year of high school with widely varying levels of preparation, many without even the most rudimentary knowledge of history, science, literature, or other subjects. The commission blamed the high schools for the undereducated students who arrived at their doors. Whatever its deficiencies, the high school was not the cause of the poor preparation of its first-year students.
Today, when we contrast the rhetoric of A Nation at Risk with the reality of the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2002, A Nation at Risk looks positively idealistic, liberal, and prescient. A Nation at Risk was a report, not a legal mandate; if leaders in states and school districts wanted to implement its recomm
endations, they could; but they were also free to ignore the report and its recommendations. No Child Left Behind, however, was a federal law; any state or district that refused to comply with its mandates risked losing millions of dollars targeted to its neediest students. A Nation at Risk envisioned a public school system that offered a rich, well-balanced, and coherent curriculum, similar to what was available to students in the academic track in successful school districts. No Child Left Behind, by contrast, was bereft of any educational ideas. It was a technocratic approach to school reform that measured “success” only in relation to standardized test scores in two skill-based subjects, with the expectation that this limited training would strengthen our nation’s economic competitiveness with other nations. This was misguided, since the nations with the most successful school systems do not impose such a narrow focus on their schools.
Whereas the authors of A Nation at Risk concerned themselves with the quality and breadth of the curriculum that every youngster should study, No Child Left Behind concerned itself only with basic skills. A Nation at Risk was animated by a vision of good education as the foundation of a better life for individuals and for our democratic society, but No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its “success.” It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.