Do you remember that the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned about the terrible condition of America’s public schools, setting off the frenzy of “reform” that has now fermented into high-stakes testing, privatization, profiteering, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, and enriching testing companies?

Here is a description of the composition of the Commission that wrote the report:

The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. … 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.

Perhaps the most famous line in the report was this one:

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.

A reader of this blog who goes by the tag “Ohio Algebra Teacher” offered a new version of that famous line:

If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.