Fallout from Nation at Risk

The bible of school reform is “Nation at Risk.” It is where opponents of public education point when they claim that public education has failed. However, was not a scientifically, research-based report. Instead it was a cold-war era, politically biased harangue assembled with inflammatory language to promote President Reagan’s anti-education agenda. A news-hungry media swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, swarming around the sensational sound bytes in the report. Like most sound-byte oriented nightly news media, it was shallow and lacking facts and sources. The news frenzy ingrained the idea of failed schools into politics and the public psyche.

Education at Risk: Fallout from a Flawed Report | Edutopia

“A Nation at Risk” (1983)What the report claimed:

• American students are never first and frequently last academically compared to students in other industrialized nations.
• American student achievement declined dramatically after Russia launched Sputnik, and hit bottom in the early 1980s.
• SAT scores fell markedly between 1960 and 1980. Student achievement levels in science were declining steadily.
• Business and the military were spending millions on remedial education for new hires and recruits.

The Sandia report was commissioned to provide research data to support the hollow Nation at Risk. The report refuted rather than supported the Nation at Risk report.

The Sandia Report (1990) What was actually happening:

• Between 1975 and 1988, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup.
• Between 1977 and 1988, math proficiency among seventeen-year-olds improved slightly for whites, notably for minorities.
• Between 1971 and 1988, reading skills among all student subgroups held steady or improved.
• Between 1977 and 1988, in science, the number of seventeen-year-olds at or above basic competency levels stayed the same or improved slightly.
• Between 1970 and 1988, the number of twenty-two-year-old Americans with bachelor degrees increased every year; the United States led all developed nations in 1988.

The government never released the Sandia report. It went into peer review and there died a quiet death. Hardly anyone else knew it even existed until, in 1993, the Journal of Educational Research, read by only a small group of specialists, printed the report.

Accidental Architects: The Regan Cabinet.
Top Row: (7th person from left to right). Edwin Meese III, counselor to the president. He urged Reagan to reject the “Nation at Risk” report. Middle Row: (1st person from left to right)Terrell H. Bell, secretary of education. He hoped to link the country’s economic woes to the state of our schools. Bottom Row: (2nd person from left to right) George H. W. Bush, vice president. In 1989, as president, Bush convened a national education summit — and no educators were invited. (3rd person from left to right) Ronald Reagan, president. He inaccurately linked the report to school prayer, vouchers, and the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. (5th person from left to right) Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense. During his tenure, the Department of Defense’s budget soared to $300 billion. Meanwhile, Republicans were trying to abolish the Department of Education. Credit: Corbis

The fallout from the “Nation at Risk” report resulted in the No Child Left Behind. “No Child Left Behind” will accomplish President Reagan’s goal of many years ago: The label all public schools as having failed. This label will culminate in 2013, when every student in public education will be expected to pass the test. Are there any students in a school that won’t pass? Every school fails that has a student that fails the test. Winners will be vouchers and private schools. Losers will be public schools and all those who stay in them. All hail “Nation at Risk,” it son - “No Child Left Behind,” and it’s future generation - vouchers.

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