This is a great article, written in 2015. How could I have missed it!
It was written by Salvator Babones, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Policy Studies.
He begins:
When did reform become a dirty word? Thirty years of education reform have brought a barren, test-bound curriculum that stigmatizes students, vilifies teachers, and encourages administrators to commit wholesale fraud in order to hit the testing goals that have been set for them. Strangely, reform has gone from being a progressive cause to being a conservative curse. It used to be that good people pursued reform to make the world a better place, usually by bringing public services under transparent, meritocratic, democratically governed public control. Today, reform more often involves firing people and dismantling public services in the pursuit of private gain. Where did it all go so wrong? Who stole our ever-progressing public sector, and in the process stole one of our most effective words for improving it?
At least so far as education reform is concerned, the answer is clear. The current age of education reform can be traced to the landmark 1983 report A Nation at Risk, subtitled “The Imperative for Educational Reform.” Future dictionaries may mark this report as the turning point when the definition of reform changed from cause to a curse. In 1981 Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell appointed an 18-person commission to look into the state of US schools. He charged the commission with addressing “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. No students or recent graduates. No everyday parents. No representatives of parents’ organizations. No social workers, school psychologists, or guidance counselors. No representatives of teacher’s unions (God forbid). Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education.
It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination. A Nation at Risk began from the assumption that our public schools were failing. Of course our public schools were failing. Our public schools are always failing. No investigative panel has ever found that our public schools are succeeding. But if public schools have been failing for so long—if they were already failing in 1983 and have been failing ever since—then very few of us alive today could possibly have had a decent education. So who are we to offer solutions for fixing these failing schools? We are ourselves the products of the very failing schools we propose to fix.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe many of those that served on the committee that produced “A Nation at Risk” were influenced by the teachings and economic perspective of Milton Friedman. Friedman’s writings promoted the belief that the free market could solve our problems if government got out of its way. This was the view he espoused in his book “Capitalism and Freedom,” published in 1962. He followed up with several other books in which he maintained that we need to blow up the status quo in order to move forward. These were popular beliefs taught in college economics classes of the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and beyond.
Failing to…..save the economy? prevent invasion from another country?
Sputnik, if anyone recalls, lead to the “National Defense Education Act.”
If in doubt, blame public schools. The economy tanked in 2008. “Everyone knows” that happened because public schools and teachers who work in them are corrupt and incompetent.
The crisis rhetoric and scapegoating is unrelenting.
It would have been more accurately names, the commission to justify the prordained goal of privatization and profIt. It has never been about equitable education and certainly not about realizing more integrated schools.
I keep thinking of Jim Crow DAZE.
Instead of supporting the Pentagon budget for over 171 billion, allocate those funds to education.
Outstanding article. Every sentence a truth that rings clear as a bell. Thank you.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
When did “reform” become a curse word?
As many here know, the Sandia Report thoroughly refuted a nation at risk, but was censored for a time and remains largely unknown. https://projectcensored.org/3-the-sandia-report-on-education-a-perfect-lesson-in-censorship/
The truth is here:
What the report claimed:
The Sandia Report (1990)
What was actually happening:
How did this happen you ask?
“The Sandia report, however, broke the scores down by various subgroups, and something astonishing emerged. Nearly every subgroup — ethnic minorities, rich kids, poor kids, middle class kids, top students, average students, low-ranked students — held steady or improved during those years. Yet overall scores dropped. How could that be?
Simple — statisticians call it Simpson’s paradox: The average can change in one direction while all the subgroups change in the opposite direction if proportions among the subgroups are changing. Early in the period studied, only top students took the test. But during those twenty years, the pool of test takers expanded to include many lower-ranked students. Because the proportion of top students to all students was shrinking, the scores inevitably dropped. That decline signified not failure but rather progress toward what had been a national goal: extending educational opportunities to a broader range of the population.”
I was aware of the Sandia Report, but….Do we know who suppressed the circulation of this report and on what pretext?
It was commissioned by the Department of Energy during Bush 1. The Bush administration did not publish it because it undercut administration view of “crisis.” It was widely circulated by supporters like Gerald Bracey. No Internet at that time.
And it is all because the commission was dominated by public school administrators? Give me a break…
Yep. Relying on adminimals one almost always gets sycophantic toady nonsense.
Good article. Thanks for the link! All should read the whole article as what Diane quotes is just a small bit of the whole.
From the article:
“The second reason that strong public schools are in the national interest is that the most important purpose of public education is not to educate students. It is to build the American nation.”
Can’t agree with that statement. In looking at the rationales as stated in each state’s constitution I’ve summarized the purpose of public education as found in those documents:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”