NCLB: Nation At Risk vs. Sandia Report

No Child Left Behind is based upon public perceptions that public education in the U.S. is failing. The media jumped all over the “Nation at Risk” report and swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. The Sandia report corrected many of the lies in the original report. However, the powers-that-be at the time buried the report and it never saw the light of day until much too late. The systematic suppression of the report is characterized in the later-denied statement that Deputy Secretary of Education said, “You bury this or I’ll bury you.”

from 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 early1980s.
• 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 (1990)What was actually happening:

• Between 1975 and 1988, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup.
• Between1977 and 1988, math proficiency among seventeen-year-olds improveds lightly 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 ator 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 alldeveloped nations in 1988.

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

These are the authors of the predecessor to No Child Left Behind. Their mission in education was to tear down the public education system in the United States.

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