Landmark 1983 report, ‘A Nation at Risk,’ warned of school mediocrity.
By Gloria Romero
(From OC Register, April 30th, 2013)
Education-reform advocates throughout the country recently convened to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the landmark 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” from the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Intended as a wakeup call, the report declared 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.”
One of its most foreboding lines warned, “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.”
While the report, indeed, jump-started a national dialogue on reform efforts, very few of the commission’s recommendations were ever implemented.
We remain a nation at risk. And, in today’s global economy and with demand for international competitiveness that has pressurized and irrevocably transformed the need for a more-rigorously educated workforce, we face heightened risks.
The report’s warnings and call to action continue to reverberate. Today, 1 in 4 American students fail to earn a high school degree on time. We trail other nations in the percentage of students who complete college. The achievement gap between too many minority students and many of their white counterparts continues to exact demands for constitutional relief in our state and national judicial systems. Education has become an issue of national defense, economic prosperity and civil rights.
The members of the commission, drawn from government, business and the education arena, concluded that American schools were failing to produce a competitive workforce. They identified key themes needing addressing – themes that sound all too familiar today, including low test scores and weak teacher preparation programs. They recommended taking steps to improve teacher quality, dedicating more classroom time to the new basics, increasing academic rigor and raising standards for college admission.
Ironically, during the 30th anniversary commemorations of the report, the California Teachers Association led the charge in Sacramento to defeat legislation authored by Democratic Sen. Ron Calderon of Montebello, which would have increased rigor and accountability in how California teachers are evaluated. The bill had strong support from education reformers.
Are our schools better off now than they were 30 years ago? Today, 29 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup responded that they have confidence in K-12 schools – a low mark since Gallup commenced asking education questions. Despite the nation spending twice as much on education than was spent 30 years ago, our international rankings on math and science remain anemic. We’ve seen reading scores rise only one point from 1980-2008 among 17-year-olds about to graduate high school.
Our nation is still at risk. What needs to be done? More studies and commissions? Absolutely not.
On the 25th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” the same handwringing over what to do was best addressed by the nonpartisan group Strong American Schools: “Now is not the time for more educational research or reports or commissions. We have enough commonsense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools.
“The missing ingredient isn’t even educational at all. It’s political. Too often, state and local leaders have tried to enact reforms of the kind recommended in ‘A Nation at Risk,’ only to be stymied by organized special interests and political inertia. Without vigorous national leadership to improve education, states and local school systems simply cannot overcome the obstacles to making the big changes necessary to significantly improve our nation’s K-12 schools.”
How many more anniversaries will we “commemorate” before our students, and nation itself, are no longer at risk?