The Opinionator

A Nation at Risk: 25 Years Later

    Twenty five years ago last week the US Department of Education released the landmark education report "A Nation at Risk." This single document captured the imagination of the US public and secured the future of the United States Department of Education. Aa a cabinet level agency, the department  was slated for removal by the Reagan administration..  Although the report is on "education" and "the schools" the unspoken focus has been on the public schools of America, not independent ones or the home schooled.

      When the "A Nation at Risk" bandwagon rolled out almost all politicians scrambled to get on board.  Since advocating improvements can usually mean spending money, it was a delicate balancing act inflicted upon those riding the bandwagon.  Inspired by Rush Limbaugh and a few Reagan apparatchiks to keep saying "You don't solve  problems by throwing money at them" the accelerating bandwagon appealed to many zero tax increase advocates.  The issue became one of testing kids whenever possible and the mantra to support this obtrusive obsession was "accountability."  The unspoken spirit of this was that the schools were screwing up because no one had the courage or resolution to lean on them.

      What is astounding to me in the past 25 years, is that so little has changed.  Urban schools are still doing terribly, riddled with violence and replete with tales of heart-breaking failure.  Drop out rates are still high, higher than ever in some places because the introduction of "rigor" has lifted the bar causing fewer to get over it. Just in the past few weeks Uncle Sam has mandated the definition of drop out rate so that schools cannot make themselves look like they are holding more kids by spinning the statistic. The instances of defeated school budget proposals have never been higher and school officials in recent years have described themselves as captains of sinking ships, forced to decide who to throw overboard every year as sacrifices to budget reductions. The public could care less.

     The eternal issues of dispute in public education seem to be unresolved.  People will always argue whether the better way to learn to read is by sounding out syllables, or by focusing on meaning.  Another debate is whether children should be grouped by those of similar ability or by mixed abilities.  There are many who still yearn for the days of spelling bees and repeated drills in penmanship.  In short, we don't seem to have learned much in 25 years of "pilot projects," and the cataloging of "best practices."

       There are still the ubiquitous debates about what constitutes basics and what constitute frills. To some basics must include religious values.  To others it is patriotism. To still others basics must include practical and useful things like filling out a resume, operating a cash register or filing tax returns. I keep running into about the same number of sluggish kids at cash registers having trouble making change as I did a quarter of a century ago.

      For many advocates of educational improvement the answer is testing students again and again. I remember the farmer in the Midwest who observed that where he is from, if you want to fatten the pig you feed him, not weigh him.  In spite of our best efforts to use testing as a way to instill knowledge, it is unclear if we really have figured out what to do with what that tells us. As we gather more testing data than ever before, we learn that colleges are doing away with the Scholastic Aptitude Tests as predictors of Academic excellence.  They argue that they are looking for qualities which can't be measured on a paper and pencil test.

      Almost all politicians ride the easy horse of "Quality education at a fair price." Will it take another twenty five years to conclude that scolding schools has very little to do with improving them?