The document that launched four decades of disastrous education policies was titled “A Nation at Risk.” It was a document produced by a commission appointed by Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell.
Reagan wanted to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, which was created in the last year of President Jimmy Carter’s term in office. Secretary Bell wanted to save the Department so he persuaded the President to let him appoint the National Commission on Excellence in Education. This Commission released its report, “A Nation at Risk,” in 1983.
The report was a dire description of the failings of American education. It painted a picture of falling test scores and mediocrity that were causing terrible damage to the national economy.
Thomas Ultican, retired teacher of advanced math and physics in California, noted that the conservative Hoover Institution released a book praising “A Nation at Risk” on its 40th birthday.
Ultican had done his research on the report and concluded that it was a hit job, asham, a pack of lies. He recently heard James Harvey, who served on the staff of the commission that wrote the report; Harvey confirmed that the commission had literally cooked the books. It began its work determined to slime America’s public schools, and it cherry-picked data to make its case.
As he shows in his review of that 1983 bombshell, it was not only filled with statistics sl lies, but it launched forty years of destructive “reforms.”
“A Nation at Risk” was misleading, dishonest, and deeply corrupt in both its intentions and its effects.
Inform yourselves: read this slashing critique of a “landmark” publication that has harmed generations of students and educators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excerpt from my book:
We Should Know Better By Now
How did a particularly aggressive iteration of the factory-style of training achieve dominance in the 21st century? Propaganda and money.
The contemporary manifestation of propaganda began with a 1983 report commissioned by the Reagan administration, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. [13] This report claimed to provide evidence that a deteriorating educational system was undermining America’s vitality. It was a big lie, exposed by more honest work in subsequent years, particularly the Sandia Report commissioned in 1990. [14] This subsequent work received little fanfare and nothing changed. Education reform in 2016 is based on the same big lie in new clothing. It has been a 33-year war on public education, teachers and teachers unions. It seems all of America believes that our schools are bad and that education reform is a critical need.
A Nation at Risk appeared to provide unassailable statistical proof that student achievement had dropped. The average scores the report cited were not fiction. They were lower. But it didn’t mean what the report concluded.
The 1990 Sandia Report found seemingly contradictory facts. The average test scores of all American students had gone down, as A Nation at Risk claimed, but the average test scores of every single sub-group (by class, race, and every other variable) of American students had gone up! How can that be? Enter Simpson’s Paradox, a simple and fascinating statistical phenomenon.
To illustrate:
10 students in subgroup A each scored 80 points.
10 students in subgroup B each scored 60 points.
10 students in subgroup C each scored 40 points.
Average score = 60 (1,800 points divided by 30 students).
Change the subgroup size:
10 students in subgroup A each scored 85.
20 students in subgroup B each scored 65.
30 students in subgroup C each scored 45.
Average score = 58.3 (3,500 divided by 60 students).
The overall average dropped from 60 to 58.3 yet every student group actually improved by 6 to 12%!
This is essentially what happened in America. Population growth and increased student enrollment in less privileged communities changed the relative sizes of groups by race and class. But the achievement of every group, including the poorest kids, went up.
The same thing is true in 2016. Politicians and reformers cite poor results on tests, particularly the so-called gold standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In both cases, a Simpson’s Paradox examination reveals that each subgroup of students in America is doing slightly better than before. We just have more poverty and income inequality, so the subgroups have continued to shift in size as in the illustration above.
The costs of this lie are enormous too. The ill-considered No Child Left Behind law left schools and children in test-stress tatters. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on tests, test preparation, Common Core, and other medicine for a disease that has been misdiagnosed. America’s most shameful problems are racism, poverty and inequality, not teacher unions or insufficient testing.
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An excerpt from my book:
We Should Know Better By Now
How did a particularly aggressive iteration of the factory-style of training achieve dominance in the 21st century? Propaganda and money.
The contemporary manifestation of propaganda began with a 1983 report commissioned by the Reagan administration, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. [13] This report claimed to provide evidence that a deteriorating educational system was undermining America’s vitality. It was a big lie, exposed by more honest work in subsequent years, particularly the Sandia Report commissioned in 1990. [14] This subsequent work received little fanfare and nothing changed. Education reform in 2016 is based on the same big lie in new clothing. It has been a 33-year war on public education, teachers and teachers unions. It seems all of America believes that our schools are bad and that education reform is a critical need.
A Nation at Risk appeared to provide unassailable statistical proof that student achievement had dropped. The average scores the report cited were not fiction. They were lower. But it didn’t mean what the report concluded.
The 1990 Sandia Report found seemingly contradictory facts. The average test scores of all American students had gone down, as A Nation at Risk claimed, but the average test scores of every single sub-group (by class, race, and every other variable) of American students had gone up! How can that be? Enter Simpson’s Paradox, a simple and fascinating statistical phenomenon.
To illustrate:
10 students in subgroup A each scored 80 points.
10 students in subgroup B each scored 60 points.
10 students in subgroup C each scored 40 points.
Average score = 60 (1,800 points divided by 30 students).
Change the subgroup size:
10 students in subgroup A each scored 85.
20 students in subgroup B each scored 65.
30 students in subgroup C each scored 45.
Average score = 58.3 (3,500 divided by 60 students).
T
he overall average dropped from 60 to 58.3 yet every student group actually improved by 6 to 12%!
This is essentially what happened in America. Population growth and increased student enrollment in less privileged communities changed the relative sizes of groups by race and class. But the achievement of every group, including the poorest kids, went up.
The same thing is true in 2016. Politicians and reformers cite poor results on tests, particularly the so-called gold standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In both cases, a Simpson’s Paradox examination reveals that each subgroup of students in America is doing slightly better than before. We just have more poverty and income inequality, so the subgroups have continued to shift in size as in the illustration above.
The costs of this lie are enormous too. The ill-considered No Child Left Behind law left schools and children in test-stress tatters. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on tests, test preparation, Common Core, and other medicine for a disease that has been misdiagnosed. America’s most shameful problems are racism, poverty and inequality, not teacher unions or insufficient testing.
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Just magnificent, Steve! I need a copy of this book.
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Sorry for the gratuitous self-promotion!
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Great book, Steve.
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Is it possible for this blog’s host and commenters to recognize that people can differ from the party line here without those people being evil and/or stupid? “A Nation At Risk” was praised by lots of well-informed people across the political spectrum, including many liberals who were – and still are – dismayed by the poor results at so many public schools.
It has been obvious for many years that this blog is nothing but constant shilling for the traditional public school establishment, advocating for unlimited additional resources but no effective accountability. The general public – including liberals like me outside of the education world – aren’t buying it.
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Kathy,
Have you ever read “A Nation at Risk”? I have, many times. I have written about it. I praised it when it was published. I served in the first Bush administration, where we acted as if it were gospel.
But since then, others have shown have the data were cherry-picked. James Harvey, a member of the staff, said the inflammatory language was purely political.
That was 40 years ago. If ANAR were factual, our nation would be a failed state by now—but we lead the world on many economic measures. How can that be if the 90% who went to public schools were damaged beyond repair.
Our schools are not failing. They do the best they can in a society that has high levels of child poverty, abysmal levels of prenatal care, and an elite intent on destroying public schools.
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Diane, I appreciate your candor about ANAR.
I once emailed (it was very new) you during your days with the Bush administration —protesting comments about what English teachers were doing/not doing. You replied which knocked my socks off. We came to agreement that you had been quoted out of context. Ironic that this thread 40 years later includes questions about English teacher education! And mind boggling that this week, I sat through a faculty meeting during which high school cross content teachers vociferously agreed to reinstitute more testing—because students need to feel more anxiety. Sometimes I feel like Alice through a broken looking glass. After being part of the enterprise on ground level since 1974–I sometimes wonder if things would go better if teachers and school leaders could be allowed to decide what aspects of a reform initiative make sense to them—separate wheat for chaff. The use the wheat — kind of like what we do now that Value Added has become a diagnostic tool vs an evaluative one.
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School in the U.S. is a mixed bag. In some places, it’s pretty darned good. In others, it’s terrible. The standards-and-testing regime imposed by Gates and Coleman, the deciders for the rest of us, has led to a dramatic devolution of pedagogy and curricula, and this is a HUGE problem. If you correct for the high levels of poverty in the U.S. test-taking population, our scores on international tests are among the highest. We try to educate everyone, and that’s difficult. We really need to improve our preparation of English teachers. Here are recommendations for doing that:
See also
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No one, Ms. Bania, thinks that our schools are as good as they can be. But a lot of us are concerned that one reason why they aren’t as good as they might be is the occupation of those schools by the forces of test-based Education “Reform.”
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Stop sending me your blog at this address katban12@gmail.com
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Kathy,
I did not sign you up and can’t unsubscribe you. Do it yourself.
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“..this blog is nothing but constant shilling for the traditional public school establishment,…”
I guess you could dismiss me that way, since I rarely have time to do anything but report my observations as a teacher, now a retired tracher.
But so many people post here and have posted here that do not deserve your dismissive attitude. From Laura Chapman to Peter Greene, their homework is solid. Please disagree with the facts if you don’t agree with them.
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Kathy, did you NOT read the piece about which you commented, or did you not understand the Simpsons Paradox example that was provided?
Because your comment reeks of ignorance.
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The ONLY thing Reagan could do is “READ the TELEPROMPTER.” Other than that, Reagan was a DISASTER for democracy. Plus, he’s a polished blow-hard.
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Exactly right. The only saving grace with Reagan is that when he actually learned from advisers what the consequences of a nuclear war would be, he moved to create detente with Russia and the INF Treaty, which Trump and Putin dissolved.
But yes, mostly, his was a corporate presidency in which others around him actually rant the country. Like Trump, he was profoundly ignorant, though he was not quite a stupid as Trump is. During his second term, Reagan had full-blown dementia. He often, in the words of cabinet members, “wasn’t all there.” He negotiated to keep our citizens imprisoned in Iran until he took office and then traded arms for those hostages and used the money to conduct an illegal war (one that had been deauthorized by Congress) in which American weapons were used to murder entire villages of men, women, and children, including toddlers and babies. And, ofc, Reagan, like Nixon, was a deeply racist person. It’s just appalling that we renamed our national airport after this guy.
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Reagan may have been ignorant but, prior to his mental decline, he definitely wasn’t stupid. Nobody can watch his stump speeches for Goldwater and conclude he was stupid like Trump. He was an ideologue (much moreso than Trump), but not an idiot.
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True that, Flerp.
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Bashing St. Unca Ronnie now are we???
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Like Bush, Jr., he was a fool who was used by some very bad actors to do a lot of evil in the world. Again, the shining light from his administration was the detente with Russia BECAUSE OF THE WEAPONS CONTROLS THAT RESULTED FROM IT. So, it was a mixed bag. Oh, and Peggy Noonan was/is probably the most capable speech writer in our nation’s history.
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The sad reality is that the lies about public education continue on a loop from the mouths of conservatives and in the mainstream media. “Learning loss, learning loss. The economy will go off the cliff from learning loss.” The hyperbolic chant is pure propaganda. Now that so much public money is in the hands of private individuals, it is difficult to get to the truth at all. Representatives of the charter lobby backed by billionaires continue to pull strings and influence education policy in the DOE today. Though those that wrote the big lie in A Nation at Risk envisioned regulated privatized schools post public education, what has emerged is worse. The vast majority of privatized options paid for by tax dollars remain unregulated and are often rife with fiscal abuse. Our public funds should remain to serve the interests of all our people. These funds must not be an unaccountable slush fund for special interests.
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RT for Secretary of Education! Your analysis is spot on.
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I recently posted a NY Times article reporting that “learning loss” from The pandemic was less in the U.S. than in other countries, demonstrated on the international PISA test.
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True, but the main stream media neglected to give this fact any air time while “learning loss” was a recurring theme on the evening news and in various publications.
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Yeah, the whole moral panic about the cataclysmic learning loss that occurred was bs.
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That is why we need to increase our effort to spread truth in 2024. The have billions; we have people.
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“. . . demonstrated on the international PISA test.”
No, it was not demonstrated by that invalid international standardized test. Using standardized test scores to make a point about anything is, as Wilson puts it, “vain and illusory.”
Or as I put it a crock of horse manure.
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No Child Race to the Top
by Jack Burgess
Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
If up were down, and black were white,
if Jesus were Satan, and you made a sect
of that, if yin were yang,
blood came from turnips,
and penciling bubbles was as
beautiful as painting
or singing, or god forbid,
daydreaming–or writing poetry–
it would be possible to combine “No Child
Left Behind” with “Race to the Top.”
If John Dewey were alive today
he’d be turning over in his grave.
“Learn by doing,” his legacy,
so kids today learn to take tests,
learn to get grades,
learn how little
we value them,
how bright we are.
We who sang songs,
read poems, wrote essays,
leave them the brain bending,
standardized, multiple guess.
No wonder they turn away
to the electronic matrix,
taught that Reagan the Great
was the beginning of history.
Schools will be fracked,
will be squeezed until
profits ooze out,
but can the imaginations
of childhood be wrung dry
for corporate greed?
Will children really stop
gazing at the moon
and loving one another
for either political party?
Or just burrow more deeply
into the sweetness of cyber space?
Orwellian logic would have
it that love finds a way
when Big Brother is not looking.
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Another magnificent piece, Mr. Burgess. Wow. Thanks for this.
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Thanks. And feel free to share any poems or comments I post on this blog.
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Thank you, Jack! Wonderful work.
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By now, the headline should be an NSS statement.
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How to make schools better:
Pay teachers what high-level professionals make in the business world so that you can attract and keep the best and brightest.
Make teacher preparation programs correspondingly more rigorous and substantive. French teachers should be fluent in French. Literature teachers should know the canon and a wide swath of YA and children’s lit. No one should be teaching who cannot do the calculations necessary to standardized scores or grade on a curve or who cannot explain to you the primary contemporary models of personality and motivation.
Stop micromanaging teachers. Return autonomy to departments and department heads in junior high and high schools.
End the federally mandated testing requirement, which leads only to a) invalid testing, b) lost learning time, c) and devolutions of curricula and pedagogy to make them test preppy.
Cut the number of classes per day for junior-high and high-school students and provide time to them between classes for rest and relaxation and for prep for their classes.
Supply them with adequate facilities–good libraries, good media centers, fully equipped stages for theatricals, excellent science and art labs, adequate ventilation, heating, and cooling.
End the bs state “standards” and replace these with general frameworks.
Create a free national wiki of lesson plans, vocabulary lists, reading lists, assessments, curriculum maps, and other teacher materials that researchers, curriculum developers, and classroom practitioners can freely add to and take from.
Allow once again, as in the mid-twentieth century, for the flowering of the default, de facto curricula and pedagogy that teachers practiced before they started being micromanaged by morons, which was remarkably consistent across the nation despite not being mandated by anyone and was born of actual classroom practice passed on from teacher to teacher, department head to department head.
Return to building-level curricular and pedagogical autonomy constrained only by state graduation course lists, including autonomy in the choosing and purchasing of instructional materials. THIS WILL ALLOW FOR REAL COMPETETION AND INNOVATION, AGAIN, IN THE EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS INDUSTRY.
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I was a first year teacher in the spring of 1983. One positive I got from “A Nation at Risk,” is that it called me to act against the forces that demean our schools. I took a wonderful course on the History of Education as an undergrad that prepared me see the scam that was ANAR. As the 1980s progressed I became active in the local Teaching Learning Center in Charlotte. We spent a great deal of our energy helping individual schools tackle their problems through community strategies that included all constituents starting with reflection on current and past practices followed by strategic plans to overcome challenges. We had some momentum as we moved toward the 1990s, but events like the 1989 Education Summit hosted by President H.W. Bush with Governor Bill Clinton as chair of the nations Governors squashed most innovative approaches to improving schools. My district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, was very good at jumping up and down for national attention and it, along with the state of North Carolina, soon embraced the recommendations that would become the “standards movement”. There was no room for encouraging individual schools to make site based decisions. I once thought that federal involvement would be good for encouraging southern states to make full investments in our schools. What I didn’t see coming was a U.S. Department of Education stepping back to allow many states to begin a process of disinvestment through the ruse of privatization. ANAR gave opponents of public schools permission to make teachers the “boogie men” against progress. The increased number of “right to work” states has prevented a unified front in opposition. Teachers, like LGBTQ and various minority populations, are easy targets because they lack resource power. Those who trumpet the impact of ANAR are the very interests that believe disruption always works in business or public policy. ANAR introduced a capitalist mindset into public education that does not force educators to better serve our students, but keeps us from working together to improve opportunity. In that sense, ANAR has been a cash cow for private equity and tech bros represented by Stanford’s Hoover Institute, but not so much for the nations children.
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It’s interesting, isn’t it, that people still say they love their schools and teachers, by and large, even the ones who claim that the schools in general have utterly gone to hell. You doubtless experienced what I did, Paul: unevenness in the quality of the curricula and pedagogy being delivered but, for the most part, people who were really, really devoted to their jobs and trying their damnest to do the best they could.
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I would often cringe at principal meetings when a district administrator would say “it is about the kids.” As if teachers didn’t make their decisions for the good of the students they actually knew.
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ROFL. YES!!!
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One of the huge problems that I see today is that administrators are so often unwilling to enforce discipline for fear of parents and because of their extreme job insecurity. Being a principal used to be a lifetime job, if you wanted it to be. Now the average tenure for a principal is only a little over 3 years. They are scared to death of the parents, and the kids will tell you this. They aren’t stupid. They know.
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My experience as a principal was that I found I could get a lot more done with a variety of challenges when I included my staff and parents in the process. They knew the students and the needs. The district was often clueless about supporting the school house.
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In the 1970s, one of the great debates in education in the United States was whether we should have district- or site-based management. The districts won, alas, and our system has suffered greatly because of this.
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Good administrators work well with others when they encourage cooperation and collaboration within the school community. Politicized education results in a culture of fear and mistrust. Unfortunately, that is what a lot of the country is facing.
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One must wonder whether Race to the Top would have happened if the DOE had in fact been abolished during Reagan’s presidency. It would have still been technically possible, but seems unlikely to me, as RTTT was the culmination of decades of cabinet-level politicking about national standards and the woeful state of American education from the Department of Ed.
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