Prove Progress Since "A Nation at Risk," or Start Ducking Now
By Rich Bagin, APR, Executive Director of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA)
The 30th anniversary of the landmark report, A Nation at Risk, occurs this month. We can bet that national and perhaps even local media will use this event to ask, “What has changed?”
And then they will ask the natural follow-up question, “Are our nation’s school still at risk?”
We must be proactive and anticipate how these questions will play out for your local communities. If we do not take the lead on this one, the education-bashing machine will again turn our schools, staff, and leadership into punching bags.
As NSPRA colleague Larry Ascough noted in his Texas daily newsletter:
The 30th anniversary of the landmark report, A Nation at Risk, occurs this month. We can bet that national and perhaps even local media will use this event to ask, “What has changed?”And then they will ask the natural follow-up question, “Are our nation’s school still at risk?”
We must be proactive and anticipate how these questions will play out for your local communities. If we do not take the lead on this one, the education-bashing machine will again turn our schools, staff, and leadership into punching bags.
As NSPRA colleague Larry Ascough noted in his Texas daily newsletter:
Anyone who has set foot in a school of late already knows that education today is not anything like it was 30 years ago. It’s improved, and it continues to get better. Teachers and kids are doing things no one could even imagine in 1983. But
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