Twenty-five years after the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report spurred widespread calls to reform the nation’s elementary and secondary schools, “stunningly few” of the report’s recommendations actually have been followed, according to a new analysis published with the support of several leading philanthropies.
The chief obstacle to school reform has not been a lack of knowledge of how to improve elementary and secondary education, but political resistance to necessary change, according to the analysis by Strong American Schools, a public-awareness campaign established by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
“We have enough common-sense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools,” the report concludes. But, it says, “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.”
The new analysis, “A Stagnant Nation: Why American Schools Are Still at Risk,” cites several examples of cases where well-organized special-interest groups have blocked changes advocated in the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report, which was issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, appointed by the education secretary at the time, Terrel H. Bell.
“A Stagnant Nation” notes, for example, that “A Nation at Risk” said that school districts and state legislatures should strongly consider lengthening the typical school day from six hours to seven and the school year from 180 days to between 200 and 220 days. A quarter-century later, the report says, only Massachusetts has taken action to significantly expand the time schools devote to learning, as other states have given in to resistance from special-interest groups such as resort owners and companies that employ teenagers.
“A Stagnant Nation” is especially critical of the nation’s teachers unions, which it blames for the failure of most states and school districts to follow the “Nation at Risk” report’s calls for the adoption of performance-based pay, career ladders, and recruitment incentives to improve the supply of teachers.
The group behind the new report, Strong American Schools, has been criticized by some prominent education analysts — including Gerald W. Bracey, a fellow at the Education and Policy Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder — who accuse it of overstating the problems of American schools to promote policy changes favored by corporate interests. —Peter Schmidt
