‘A Nation at Risk’ Turns 30: Where Did It Take Us?
By Edward Graham
On April 26, 1983, President Ronald Reagan stood before the press and television cameras in the State Dining Room at the White House and held up a report titled A Nation at Risk. Eighteen months in the making and written by the blue-ribbon members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education at the behest of Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, the report examined the quality of education in the United States—and the findings were anything but stellar.
“Our nation is at risk,” the report boldly declared in its first sentence.
Over its next 36 pages, A Nation at Risk lambasted the state of America’s schools and called for a host of much-needed reforms to right the alarming direction that public education was seen to be headed.
“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,” the report said. “As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”
The commission found few signs of encouragement about the American education system. Test scores were rapidly declining, low teaching salaries and poor teacher training programs were leading to a high turnover rate among educators, and other industrialized countries were threatening to outpace America’s technological
On April 26, 1983, President Ronald Reagan stood before the press and television cameras in the State Dining Room at the White House and held up a report titled A Nation at Risk. Eighteen months in the making and written by the blue-ribbon members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education at the behest of Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, the report examined the quality of education in the United States—and the findings were anything but stellar.“Our nation is at risk,” the report boldly declared in its first sentence.
Over its next 36 pages, A Nation at Risk lambasted the state of America’s schools and called for a host of much-needed reforms to right the alarming direction that public education was seen to be headed.
“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,” the report said. “As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”
The commission found few signs of encouragement about the American education system. Test scores were rapidly declining, low teaching salaries and poor teacher training programs were leading to a high turnover rate among educators, and other industrialized countries were threatening to outpace America’s technological