‘A Nation At Risk’: 4 Decades Of Ambitious Education Reforms Have Had Mixed Results
Important lessons can be learned by examining what has taken place since the release of the report, which warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity.”
The National Commission on Excellence in Education鈥檚 release of a report titled 鈥溾 in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report lamented 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.鈥
Using Cold War language, the report also famously stated: “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.鈥
The report ushered in four decades of ambitious education reforms at the state and federal levels. Those reforms included landmark policy shifts like George W. Bush鈥檚 , Barack Obama鈥檚 program and major state reforms in areas including teacher quality, school choice and test-based accountability for schools and teachers.
But what is the legacy of 鈥淎 Nation at Risk鈥 40 years after its publication? And what are the implications for school reform in the coming years?
As a scholar of education who , I believe important lessons can be learned about American education by examining what has taken place since the release of the report. Here are three:
1. Reforms Improved Outcomes, But Progress Has Slowed Or Reversed In The Past Decade
The U.S. has had major challenges with educational performance that long predate “A Nation at Risk.鈥 One is that too many students are not mastering grade-level material. Another is that not enough are enrolling in and completing college given the . Additionally, large gaps exist in both of those areas based on race and ethnicity and income.
Since the report, students from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups have , and gaps have narrowed considerably since the 1970s 鈥 especially in the early grades. Yet low levels of achievement and gaps in achievement remain.
For instance, even before the coronavirus pandemic, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, meaning they weren鈥檛 reading at grade level. Since Covid-19, national assessment results in reading and math indicate the pandemic ; for instance, in eighth grade math the number of students scoring below basic .
The nation has also made tremendous progress in outcomes beyond academic tests. For instance, the , dropping from about about 14% around the time of the report to about 6% now. Meanwhile, the proportion of 25-to-29-year-olds to about .
2. Reforms Didn’t Address The Root Causes Of The Problems
The report spurred four decades of intense reform led by states and the federal government. But these reforms have largely not addressed the major causes of poor educational performance 鈥 poverty and other factors outside of school, as well as highly decentralized educational systems that thwart meaningful school improvement.
For example, ; to quality early childhood education; and many children live in .
The result of these factors in the early years is that only about half of children , and even .
While schools can help lessen these disparities in school readiness between more and less advantaged children, the report failed to look beyond schools for solutions to problems that stem from social inequality.
The narrow view of “A Nation at Risk鈥 is notable because the widely accepted wisdom of the time, especially among Republicans, and going back to the 1966 , was that schools aren鈥檛 a primary driver of inequality. After all, the Coleman Report found that differences in school resources, like money and books, didn鈥檛 account for differences in student achievement between more and less advantaged children.
Even the education efforts since the report have not been able to address the structural barriers in U.S. education to large-scale improvement. For instance, in a recent book I show that state and federal policies over the past 30 years that focus on improving schools through better and clearer standards have .
A big part of why standards and other education reforms have failed has to do with the fact that school systems in the U.S. are remarkably decentralized. About and their individual teachers exercise over what actually happens in classrooms.
The inability of policymakers at higher levels 鈥 such as states or the federal government 鈥 to meaningfully change school practice partially explains why other major reforms have failed to achieve real results. Examples include the and . In a more centralized system, policies enacted at the state and federal levels could be implemented as intended; that is rarely the case in U.S. education.
3. Political Coalitions That Brought Reform Have Fallen Apart
As on other topics, Americans are . From “A Nation at Risk鈥 through even much of the Obama administration, many aspects of the education reform agenda had bipartisan agreement.
to enact standards and testing reforms that set expectations for student learning and measured student progress against those expectations in the 1980s and 1990s. for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, calling for more rigorous standards and more frequent testing to drive educational improvement.
And some versions of school choice 鈥 especially charter schools 鈥 were administrations in Washington and nationwide. Even the , which aimed to create consistent expectations for student learning in math and English nationwide, were . That is, they were created and endorsed by leaders from both parties.
This broad reform coalition is no more.
Debates over what to teach children in schools are between schools and parents. Republican states are removing racial and LGBT-related topics from the curriculum. Meanwhile, .
And continue to drive down public school enrollment in states across the nation. Over have been lost from public schools, and private school enrollment has increased 4% since the onset of Covid-19.
The result of these trends is that the reform consensus that brought about a broadly national approach to education reform is splintering into red state and blue state versions. I expect red state reform will likely emphasize school choice and a back-to-basics curriculum focused on reading, math and the avoidance of controversial topics. I expect blue state reform will likely emphasize whole-child supports like mental health, social-emotional learning and curriculum that is intended to reflect the culture of the nation鈥檚 increasingly diverse student body.
The problems raised in “A Nation at Risk鈥 remain as important as they were in 1983. In my view, national leaders need to continue to improve educational opportunity and performance for America鈥檚 schoolchildren. Improved education benefits individuals 鈥 those with college degrees have , and even than those with a high school degree or lower. Education also , leading to greater economic growth. But 40 years after the report, policymakers don鈥檛 seem to have learned the lesson that schools alone won鈥檛 solve the nation鈥檚 educational problems. And if that鈥檚 true, the nation remains at risk.
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