"A nation at risk" spurs two decades of failure - Education Reform

Twenty years after the historic "A Nation at Risk" report set off a nearly continuous wave of education reforms, most of those goals were never met. Maris Vinovskis, Bentley Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who advised the Department of Education during three presidential administrations, notes that all the presidents elected since "A Nation at Risk" was released in 1983 have passed broad education plans--including George H.W. Bush's "America 2000," Bill Clinton's "Goals 2000," and George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind"--each with specific goals that have yet to be achieved. According to Vinovskis, both political parties focus on short-term solutions rather than investing in long-term research that could show exactly which proposed reforms work and which don't.

"They keep spinning their wheels," he contends. "Everybody wants their own plan, so we go through these big initiatives in an approach where we try a fad and don't really measure it to see whether it [actually] works."

Federal education policy "has evolved in fits and starts," with various presidents and governors each offering their own reforms because of a political focus on "short-term solutions that would satisfy the demands of policymakers and the voting public for immediate action. The process of identifying promising education practices, rigorously testing their effectiveness in model programs, and then trying them out in different settings often can take 15 to 20 years. Yet, since 'A Nation at Risk,' few in Federal policymaking--and perhaps just as few in K-12 schools--have demonstrated the patience for rigorous and sustained efforts at finding solutions."

He argues that the report, like the U.S. reaction to the Soviet launching of the first satellite, Sputnik in 1957, galvanized the nation to take quick action by using crisis language that convinced policymakers to push rapid reforms. These came even as most Americans thought their own children were getting a good education while expressing concerns about the overall educational system. The 1983 report by a presidential commission argued, "Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves."

Vinovskis feels a major flaw in the report was the assumption that we "already knew what had to be done to improve education."

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